Gonna Go Serve in Metz!

Heya! So I'm going to Metz! It's a city right on the border of Luxembourg and France, So I'm actually going to be able to go into Luxembourg on exchanges and stuff! Pretty exciting!

This week was pretty good, we had some good lessons with Pierre and Aka, They're pretty solid as usual, but we're just working hard on getting them baptized! It's hard when people are so busy all the time! But they'll get there!!!

We did A LOT of contacting this week and we found some cool people, but we just couldn't fix return RDV's. This week looks like it's going to be great for whoever's coming in and I'm super happy! I really hope that I can just work hard and make every area better than I found it. I'm really starting to realize that people here in France are READY and I'm going to find them, and the church is going to grow, and the members are going to get excited and WE ARE GOING TO EXPLODE!

My companion says that he loves you. His name is Elder Rigsby.

Remember that this church is the people of the covenant, and even though we cannot control how others use their agency, we can control how we use our own!!! DO ALL THAT YOU CAN, ALL. If you do that, then you don't have to worry about anything, you just have to keep moving forward, and when you don't do all that you can, REPENT, and start doing ALL THAT YOU CAN!

It's that simple :)

Love you all,

Elder Bruno

The Week of Finding

Hello!

This week was a week of finding. We had a couple RDVs set up, but nothing even close to what we normally do, and so we decided to go finding. We went finding in the morning, we went finding in the afternoon, and we went finding at night. It was kind of awful... We had a lot of rejection this week, but there are two cool miracles that happened

The first was that we met a little asian guy named Sy, he was such an awesome guy and we taught him about prayer. It was weird because I had never met someone who didn't really have a christian background, but we asked a couple inspired questions and he talked about how he really would like to know how he could be happy in life. We prayed with him and afterwards he felt soooo good and it was really awesome. The only sad part is that he didn't know his phone number because he barely moved here to France (we actually taught in English) and so we set a RDV for a different day and he didn't show up. He has our card though, so there's always hope!!!

The second was when we were on the bus. I was kind of just sitting there praying for someone, and on walked a man, who could have easily sat in an empty seat, but instead he sat next to me. This just happened to be on a day that Franny sent me two letters and I had decided to put them in my bag and read on the bus. It turned out that the man(who was from congo) had lived in the Czech Republic for 5 years and spoke fluent czech. I pulled out my letters and he even told me what some of the words she wrote meant. We set up a RDV for this Saturday because he's so busy, but we'll see what happens!!!

I'd have to say this week is definitely an example of not giving up though. Even though we had a lot of hard times during the week and a lot of impolite people, we had a lot of miracles. When I sit down and think of the week that's all I really think about. Life might be filled with hard times, but I know that if we don't give up all that really matters, all that we really remember are the good things. That's why we just keep on chugging along.

Have a good week

Love,

Elder Bruno

Allo

Hello there everybody!

This was a pretty good week! It did have a pretty crazy twist at the end though!

So this week we got to see a lot of our amis, we saw Alex and Andrea and extended a soft baptismal invitation, Alex said he wanted to when they got married, but Andrea didn't see the reason for being baptized again, and even after we explained it for a couple minutes, she wouldn't accept it. She keeps telling us that she's catholic and that's it. Hopefully we can talk to them about marriage next time and she'll see a little more importance!

We met with our ami Aka and set a baptismal date for the 18th of may. We filled out a little calender and it was a really great lesson about the gospel of Jesus Christ. He's really excited about the fact that we can recieve the gift of the holy ghost and we still have to teach him the commandments, but he's awesome and we're really excited!

Pierre is still questioning everything, but his questions are always really great and apply to the lessons. We taught the plan of salvation and he accepted a soft baptismal invitation.

We also got a referral from the Zone leaders in the Paris area and so we started teaching a really awesome man named Corneil! He's an electrician looking for work right now and he's from the Congo. He didn't totally understand the Restoration and so we went over it again and extended a soft invite and he accepted! super awesome lesson.

The crazy part of the week was when we taught a man that lived on the very border of our sector. He lived in a really highly muslim populated neighboorhood, and after we finished our lesson with him we didn't have enough time to go home and eat, so we ate a pretty missionary popular cheap fast food invention called a kebab. After we left the kebab shop we saw a couple of guys on motorcycles playing chicken with the buses and there we probably 20-30 teenager Muslim kids watching them. Finally a cop car showed up and started chasing the motorcycles, When the cop car showed up the muslim kids on the street started throwing plastic bags that would explode. We found out pretty quickly that the bags were filled with tear gas, we weren't super close to the gas, but it still hurt super bad and me and my companion got out of there as fast as we could. It was insaneeee! moral of the story though, tear gas really hurts.

ANYWAYS, in terms of spiritual thought for the week, I would have to say be aggresive, be be aggressive. by that I mean be a go getter, if you go out into the world and you do everything you can you'll be alright. God wants us to do his part before he does his, go work hard and then you'll be blessed. I've seen that this week and so It's my invitation for you to do it too!

Love you ALL!
Elder Bruno

Teaching Our Friends

This week was good.

We didn't see tons of things happen, but that's alright because there's always next week!

The week started out good, we had exchanges on Tuesday. I went to the District leaders area (which is north west Paris) and we had a pretty good time, we had a RDV with a less active and we ate dinner at a members house with the young adults. The only sad thing is that I missed the RDV with Jeremie and Estelle (The part member family that we're teaching right now). Elder Stoker said that their RDV went amazingly (bittersweeeet!), and hopefully we can see them again this week. We had planned on giving a baptismal invite, but Elder Stoker didn't get the chance so hopefully we can try to fix a date this week!

After exchanges the week went pretty normally, we didn't have tons of success, but the other Elders did try to pass us an ami. her name is Darling and we did get her to church, but our lesson was just not good. It is without a doubt the worst lesson I've taught on my mission (including when I couldn't understand a single word people were saying). Yeah, not well taught. She did like the members at church though, so hopefully she'll keep meeting with us. We tried to set up a RDV, but she can't this week, so we'll see!

We taught our ami Aka another lesson, we can only meet with him on Sundays, and he doesn't remember a lot so we kind of just went over the restoration again and said we were going to talk about the plan of Salvation next time. He's sooo cool and he's going to get a couple weeks off for Easter, so hopefully we can meet him a lot more often soon!

That's kind of our week and the exciting things that happened, it seems as though in Paris people will give you their phone numbers pretty easily, but they NEVER answer their phone. It's tough getting ahold of people to meet with them, but it's going to happen! This week in terms of spiritually cool stuff I think the most important thing i learned was the need to chill out. According to one of my favorite missionaries, being stressed out just shows a lack of faith. If we do everything we need to and we put our faith in the Lord we shouldn't be stressed out when something goes wrong, we should accept it as a part of what God has in mind for us and we should continue. So much in life happens after the inital plan goes haywire that if we're constanly worrying about things that go wrong we'll miss all the amazing things that come after that. Do what you can, and then just chilllll, I've learned that everything works out in the end.

Have a good week everybody,

Love you all,

Elder Bruno

Easter Contacting

Bonjour mes petits amis,

haha

anyways,

This week was pretty good, we had a good ole time running from Rendez-vous to Rendez-vous, but mostly getting cancelled on right as we got there. That or they just wouldn't show up or answer their phone. It was sad. BUT, we did start teaching two FAMILIES!

Yeah, that's right. families. We've been splitting up our areas since we have three companionships in the same area, and so president asked us to split them up so that we could work more effectively and also because we're starting a new thing called EASTER CONTACTING! Where we drop fliers in peoples mailboxes that say that we're coming by later to knock on their door and talking about the ressurection of Jesus.

Anyways, this is important because it means that there's been a lot of passing of investigators between companionships the last week, and so that's where a really cool couple named Alex and Andrea come into play. they're really the other Elders investigators, but they lived in our sector and so we started teaching them this week, THEY're super cool, they have two kids, speak spanish, kind of french, and an itty bit of english. Alex's family is Mormon and he knows the church is true, but Andrea is SUPER catholic. we're trying to get them to have a family home evening with a really cool family from Mexico though, hopefully that will help! They have two kids, but they're at school when we have Rendez-vous and we haven't met them yet.

Our other family is Jeremy, Estelle, and her half brother Jessie (as well as Jeremy and Estelle's 2 kids). They're SUPER awesome, Jeremy is a member who kind of fell away when he was 14 and started dating Estelle. They live together with their two kids and we helped them move a couple weeks ago. Now that they're done moving though they've had time to meet and we taught the Restoration lesson (well, most of it). We watched the video with them and at the end we asked Jeremie to pray at the end. HE FELT THE SPIRIT SO STRONG. He said he had never felt a response to his questions when he prayed before. They sadly couldn't make it to a baptism that we had yesterday for an 8 year old girl in the ward, but we have a RDV with them tomorrow!

That's pretty much the most exciting things that happened.

Spiritual thought for the week though I would have to say is focus on the young'uns. The church is centered on the family and I have to say that for most people in this world the most important thing for them is their family. Always look for ways to help children grow in their understanding of the gospel, by seeking to strengthen the family the family begins to flourish and missionary work is helped as well. This week we really focused on teaching so that even a child could understand, there is no better lesson than one in which a child can learn and grow. I starting to feel as though the best lessons are the simplest, and the best teachers are children.

Love you guys,

Elder Bruno

Racklette

Good week, we did some good work and really had a ton of help from members.

It started out pretty crazy and stayed the same way pretty much all week. Being in Paris it takes around an hour to get to most Rendez-Vous, we so well that most of the work we did was traveling from rendez-vous to rendez-vous. It was awesome, we didn't do as great as we normally do talking to people on the trams and buses and what have you, but we did schedule do a really amazing weekly planning, which helped us get in contact with a lot of people we hadn't been able to.

This week, we ate and we ate, and we ate. We had a crazy french meal called racklette for district meeting (it's just cheese and potatoes and meat, but you do it with this crazy cool machine), we ate with members (tahitians) who literally would not let us leave their house until we ate all the food they had prepared (and it was a ton of food) and we had racklette again at a members house. The members are getting to be super awesome and only once when I asked for referals did they say they didn't know anyone. The ward is starting to catch fire and it's awesome!

In terms of amis, our crazy evangalist ami is doing great, we got him to church and he's coming around on the Book of Mormon, our old ami is still super old and super catholic, but the sisters are having another baptism this week and hopefully we can get him to that, and we have this super cool new ami who actually speaks English. The first time we taught him we had to translate the pamphlets from French to English, but the next time we came MUCH better prepared.

All in all, awesome week. I really learned this week that you cannot get comfortable. It's not enough to be in a comfortable situation and continue, you should be constantly working to progress and to help others. Whenever you feel comfortable it's the perfect opportunity to turn outwards and serve others. Always look for opportunities to serve and while serving to share the gospel at the same time. It's funny because this week we walked by a lady painting her fence, we stopped, turned around, and asked if we could help her. She said, No thanks, but your colleagues already asked. She then asked what we do. And so, we shared what we did. It was cool. It's my invite to you to find someone to serve this week and to share the gospel while doing it.

Love you all,

Elder Bruno

Overweight Missionary

Good week, we saw lots of good things happen

We figured out that the biggest problem with our super old ami named Jackie is that 1-he's old and 2-he'd like to see a baptism before he actually is baptized. The only problem is that it's a little while until the next baptism (about a month), but it's not a huge deal! we're going to probably stop by once a week with a little spiritual thought, get him to church every Sunday, and get him baptized after he sees a baptism!

Our super evangalical ami named Emmanuel was super cool too, he came to church and he sat in on a blessing. He's doing his legality to stay in France, so he asked for a blessing too. We gave him one and he was super excited about it. I will say that the man might possibly be a little crazy, but he's super nice and I really hope that he can understand eventually that he needs to get baptized by THE PROPER AUTHORITY. Yeah...

I gave a talk about where we're going after this life. It was good. I only had to give a 5 minute talk, so it wasn't too bad. It's hard talking to a room full of people in French though.

We also taught a man named Akay this week. He's from Nigeria and he speaks English (which is actually suprisingly hard to teach in when you've taught everyone in French up until this point). It was a really awesome lesson, the only problem is that he wasn't wearing pants. We taught the man whilst he was wearing his underwear and a t-shirt. It was a little weird...

ALSO, members working with missionaries EXPLODED this week. There were a ton of members who invited us over, asked to teach with us, and were just overall super friendly. The only problem is that when we eat with members they always shove us full of so much food I think I'm going to explode. It's not good. 26 pounds and still gaining weight.

Yup, it was a good week

Spiritual thought of the week- Always put God over everything else. I was talking to a really cool kid who's part of a less active family. He's 14 and I sat next to him in sacrament. I looked at him and I just remembered all the times where I wished I was doing anything other than sitting in sacrament meeting on a nice sunday afternoon. I talked to him a little and he said that his friends had invited him to play basketball, but in the end he had decided to come to chuch and his friend made fun of him for it. I told him that there was no better place for him to be than there. There are always times when we want to do something more than we want to go to church, or we feel like we're too busy to do something to help someone else (especially the missionaries!!!), but the work of God is more important than ourselves. We as missionaries invite other people to come closer to God and we invite members to open their mouths and do the same thing. When me and Angel finished talking I invited him to invite his friend to church. He said he would. Work with the missionaries, wherever you are, invite your friends to come to church, to read the book of mormon, MEET YOUR NEIGHBORS! Talk about the gospel with everyone, and always put God above everything else.

Love,

Elder Michael Beneamato Bruno

Just Another Week in the Life of A Missionary

I cannot lie, sometimes I feel like missionaries are all just part of one giant wheel. We might be on different places, but everyone puts the same amount of effort and somehow in the end the work just keeps on rolling. This week just felt like one of those weeks where the wheel just kept on turning. Anyways, This week we did pretty good, we taught 4 lessons with members (which is really good). They were pretty good except for the fact that they were with an 80 year old man who always seems super tired and sick and a 30 year old man who defines himself as a Lutheran Adventist who was baptized by immersion in an evangelical church and believes that the Book Of Mormon is the word of prophets, but not the word of God. BUT, they were still pretty good lessons even if they were hard, AND Jackie (the 80 year old) came to church. I've decided that I'm going to look at all the positives in life (since doing otherwise would make me go crazy) and looking at this weeks positives makes me feel pretty good about the future. This week was transfers, I'm staying with the same companion. Yeah... Nothing really changed, I just thought I should put this in here. Oh yeah, we got invited to a political rally by a member, she didn't tell us it had anything to do with politics before hand and we had to have a very awkward conversation explaining that missionaries cannot be involved in anything political and that the best place to invite us is to family home evenings or other family related activities with their friends/neighbors. That's just about the highlight of crazy things that happened though. OTHER THAN THAT/SPIRITUAL THOUGHT- Find time. Everyone is busy in this world, if you feel busy or stressed out and you can't change anything and there's something that you can do for God, FIND TIME. Everyone is busy, everyone has lives. Sometimes in life we have to just find time to do things. Missionaries need your time, The work is hastening, and we need every single person we can to chip in and help the wheel to roll. No matter who you are, where you are, what you're doing, find some time and (to quote a very well known missionary who said this 5 seconds ago) GET STOKED. Do some missionary work, period. Love you guys, Elder Bruno

Walking in the Same Direction

Haha, So my companions face is the size of a basketball right now. He's not liking it so much, but there's not much we can do right now other than get him better. This week was really awesome in terms of having things to do, but not so awesome in terms of actually teaching people lessons. This week we went on exchanges. I went with Elder Johnson (who's only in his first transfer) and it was pretty fun. Elder Johnson didn't speak any French, but we actually did pretty well. I gave him lots of advice and told him that I understood a lot (which I do since I'm still pretty new here). Whilst on exchanges I got my Christmas package. I didn't think I was going to get it at all, but everyone laughed since it WAS 2 months late. I was super grateful for it though. Shout out to GIGI and Eric Harris et la petite bébé. After that we had a day where we got lost on the way to a service project, and when we finally got there we didn't have anything time to do anything else the rest of the day and so we just ate there and helped them paint their apparment for a couple hours. It was super awesome because we got two referrals out of it. Je suis tres reconnaissant pour ça aussi. Then Saturday nightElder Stoker felt like he was okay enough to work (he wasn't, but we still did) and so we went out for a couple hours and just talked to people. The first couple people we talked to weren't super interested, and after that nobody passed us but a lady on a cell phone. We didn't want to interrupt her so we just kept walking. After her I finally saw someone in the distance and I told Elder Stoker, I WANT TO TALK TO THAT PERSON WE NEED TO CONTACT AS MANY PEOPLE AS POSSIBLE! Elder Stoker said no and turned around. He said we weren't contacting for the right reasons. He said we needed to look for someone who was ready. I didn't see anyone in front of us except the lady who was on her phone so I felt a little annoyed, but then The Lord decided to humble me. Elder Stoker talked to the lady walking the same direction as us. I know that doesn't seem like a huge deal, but if you're a missionary, it can be incredibly awkward to talk to someone going the same way as you. At first I was kind of freaked out, the lady had just gotten off the phone and we were walking the same direction as her and it was WEIRD, but as we talked to her we found out that her mom and sister had died a couple months ago and that she had felt really sad walking home. She said she thought that God had put her there for her, I told her about what had happened with Elder Stoker forcing me to turn around and I told her that God loved her. She started bawling. She made us come home with her, and say a prayer with her family. It was amazing. It also brings me to my spiritual thought, DON'T BE SCARED TO TALK TO SOMEONE ABOUT THE GOSPEL! Everyone is walking the same direction in life and it's awkward and uncomfortable to approach them with different things. I can promise you that if you do though, they'll feel happier than they ever had before in their life. I never knew how important members were in missionary work until I became a missionary. members are key, if you're back home and you know non-members, invite them to meet the missionaries. Do it, even if it's uncomfortable because you're both headed the same direction in life and you know you're going to be seeing each other after you've talked to them. Invite, Everyone wins when you do. Have an awesome week. Love, Elder Bruno

Week of the 14 Year Old

Hey my peoples! This week was pretty good, I bought a really awesome oufit that I will definitely send pictures of next week! The highlights of the week were that our really awesome ami that we met on the metro (whose name is Emmanuel) has already been baptized by immersion and really does not see any reason why he needs to be baptized again and our indian ami (whose name is Soham and is really actually indian) now has a class at 11:30 on sunday. So, pretty much we're back to square one, but it's alright. Me and my companion have been working really hard and I know that we're going to see some really amawing things happen this week. Two really awesome miracles that did happen though are that the family that I left back in Le Havre just got baptized!! and the other miracle is that while making phone calls to invite people to a baptism that the sisters were having, me and Elder Stoker got a phone call from a random number. It turns out someone ACTUALLY called us from a card we handed out. We met  them on our way to the baptism and they were there to see it. They don't believe in God, but they loved the baptism and are really excited to learn more. The only problem is that this person is a 15 year old girl named Animatn. We had to pass her over to the sister missionaries to teach. She's super awesome, but unfortunately when dealing with single women, we have to pass them over to the sisters. The saddest part of the week though: Not a single Valentines on Valentines day :(

Anyways, I don't have a ton of time, but in regards of spiritual stuff and all that good stuff, surround yourself with the spirit! This week I learned that going to church and church related activities and all that stuff takes a ton of time, and people get annoyed by it! I feel sad for these people because there is no better place to be, especially with your family. Every second spent on the spirit is 1000 times better than anything else in this world. Always place the church and your family above everything else in this world, I don't think I've met anyone happier on my mission than people who do exactly that!

Do it

Love you

Love,

Elder Bruno

The Story of the Three Tangerines

This was a gooood week, it's been tough going two weeks in a row without really seeing anything, but things are really starting to pick up.

The first part of the week was pretty tough, mainly since it was exactly like the last two weeks the only exception to that was the story of the three tangerines. With the beginning of the year we've been trying to visit all the members and share the Ward Mission Plan with them. It's been a nice break since all we've done in the last two weeks is try to find people to teach, but the members gave us a bag full of tangerines when we left. It was REALLY nice of them to do, but we were going to be late if we stopped and talked to someone, so we decided to take the metro straight home without getting distracted. While we were taking the Metro, i got bored and I started juggling tangerines. My companion said something to me in English, and the man standing right next to me on the metro asks us where we're from. It's not an everyday occurrence for this to happen since people In France don't like to talk on the tram, but to make a long story short, we exchanged numbers, The rare event of HIM calling US happened the next day and he came to church on Sunday where afterwards we invited him to be baptized. The only problem is that he's already been baptized and he doesn't really know about the whole authority side of things. It's okay though, at least we have somewhere to start.
In reality we didn't really see a ton of success until Friday when I decided just to start calling every number that has ever been written in our area book. There are a lot... Anyways, we taught some more interesting lessons after that and we ended the week with an awesome Sunday in which our Indian Ami, who had dropped off the face of the earth, came to church and the whole tangerine story worked out.

In terms of Spiritual advice and all that good stuff, I guess I would have to recommend learning how to juggle tangerines. Just kidding (a little). UMMMM, I guess just be happy. I think I've already said that before, which means I need to take my own advice sometimes, but sometimes just letting out the kinda crazy awesome person that you have hidden deep inside is really good. It's tough and sometimes embarrassing to do crazy things, but comfort zones are Lame. The only way to grow is to leave your circle.

I hope you guys all juggle tangerines this week.

Love, Elder Bruno

God Is My Witness

This week has been pretty tough. I think every missionary week is tough when you don't see tons of success. We chipped away this week trying to get some new amis, but unfortunately we're not really seeing tons of success. Our week was a little crazy at the beginning and from there it just turned into a lot of finding. Spending every second of every day trying to find people and getting rejected is a hard way to live as a missionary. For those of you who already know, yeah, and for those of you who don't, take my word for it. There was one golden light in my week which came from an amazing Hungarian lady named Grace who talked a lot about the light of Christ, and also was coincidentally the only phone number I think we got this week. People in Paris are very reluctant to give you their phone number, and if you don't get a phone number here, seeing that person again is very unlikely. Other than that, I got sick pretty sick and spent three good hours we could have been knocking on doors in bed (which was pretty tough for me, but I don't think I could have worked if I had tried), and I met our less active recent convert. This guy is awesome, his name is Seuldieuestmontemoigne, which means only God is my witness. We call him Copain and he's got a disease that has messed up his body and makes it hard for him to hear, but he's an amazing guy. We gave him a blessing and we're going by next week to see him again. Not much other than that happened this week.

In terms of spiritual enlightenment, I don't really feel super qualified to give any this week, I think that I can really give is the small piece of advice to chip away at life. I know it doesn't really sound the happiest or the most motivating of things, but honestly, sometimes there's not much more we can do other than chip, chip, chip and hope that the stone wall of life that we're chipping at isn't too thick. We have the option of being sad about being hit against a stone wall a thousand times, or we can be happy that God's using us as his spoon. I think I'll try the second one this week.

I hope everyone else does too.

Have an awesome week mes cher amis,

Love, Elder Michael Bruno

Paris!

This week was pretty crazy! I found out that I was getting transfered to Anthony (which is a Parisienne suburb) and so I had a really awesome night where we ate at a members house on Tuesday and then I got to Paris on Wednesday! And so far I've pretty much gotten destroyed. I came into an equipe (which basically just means team in french) that has no progressing investigators, which was pretty hard when we just had 7 people keeping all their commitments and we're on track to being baptized and now we don't really have anyone. I decided that it was alright though, I was going to get to work. Me and my companion planned for what we needed to (which wasn't very much) and then I dragged him out of the appartment. Pretty much my week from wendsday to sunday was talking to people as boldly as i could without offending them, testifying my heart out, feeling the spirit start to work on them, ask for another rendez-vous, get shot down, ask for their phone number, get shot down again, give out a lot of cards, call people missionaries found 3 years ago, and see VERY little success.

 

Paris is hard. I can't lie when I say that I feel like i've been working as hard as I could and i'm just not seeing any success. Which isn't something i'm not used to, I went a long time in Le havre without seeing success, I think the hardest part is just that the Zone Leaders live in the same appartment as us and they're seeing a ton of success. I know that i've been seeing a lot of success, I've taught the restoration six times since i've gotten here (it didn't actually count as a lesson because the person would always refuse to pray with us in the street, which I can't really blame them for because it's basically like praying in the middle of Paris with two random guys in white shirts) and we've given out 4 Book of Mormons.

 

 I even told a story the story about the debtor who demands justice while the man who owes money asks for mercy and it's only resolved by a friend paying the debt for the man (Jesus parable!) and right before I talked about Jesus the man who we were talking to (who was Muslim) said he felt goosebumps. Then I said the man was Jesus and the man got very defensive, buuuut I KNOW that he felt the spirit. That basically sums up my entire week, and i know that it sounds a lot like complaining, but it's not! I'm just telling you guys this now so that in 6 weeks when this area is rocking with baptisms and baptismal dates you guys can know how truly amazing the work of the Lord is. My spiritual insight this week is much like my spiritual insight a couple weeks ago: si nous ne voyons pas le point plus bas, nous ne pouvons jamais savoir quel hauter nous sommes. In English, If we never see the lowest point, we can never know how high we are. Low points are always going to be there, work through them and when you look down, you'll be able to truely understand how incredible everything in this life really is.

Sorry if it's not new insight, but hopefully it helps you a little throughout this week

Thanks for making it through my jumbled mess of random thoughts and words, Love you guys.

Love, Elder Michael Beneamato Bruno

P.S. I kind of forgot my own birthday oops

Deblueification

I'm not blue anymore! It's a good feeling. This week was pretty awesome, we did a lot of porting(knocking on some doors!) and we actually saw a ton of success. Every single time someone told us to come back another time we did, and then we did again, and then we did again, and finally they would let us in (or yell at us and tell us to stop coming back). We taught 4 first lessons this week though, and we have a lot of really awesome people lined up for next transfer. The only sad thing about it is that I'm pretty sure that I'm getting transfered. I'm glad I got to open up this area though, it was awesome! We're getting somewhere with all our Ami's, even if it's incredibly slowly and because everyone can only meet once a week and it seems like they're all Roman catholic or they don't believe in God. Our miracle ami's are still stuck on the Word of Wisdom, but they're still really excited about the whole idea of baptism and they seem like they can get over it (fingers crossed, trust in the lord, what else can you do?).

Again, we had a strange week

1- we almost had to deplaque because we walked right next to a mosque that must have had 1000 muslims in it

2- I got yelled at by a muslim guy for porting because he said people we're sleeping (it was 8 at night) and he kicked us out of the appartment building very angrily.

3- A drunk muslim man talked to us for an hour without letting us leave. He said something about loving jews and at the end he made us take a bag of nuts and some money, honestly I didn't really understand a lot besides that...

4- While riding on the Tram a muslim man asked me how Jesus was doing, then he started yelling things about Mohammed and prophets (I have no idea what was up with people of the Islamic faith this week)

5- we saw a guy without pants on...

6- a couple of chinese guys who spoke no french and only a little english asked us where they could find a strip bar...

This week was weird...

If I've learned anything in France though, It's work your butt off, you have to be EXTREMELY persistant to get appointments, and always give people a nice big smile. With those three things, life is made much easier

Love,

Elder Michael Beneamato Bruno

A Strange Week with Amis

Soo, this week was a little tougher than normal. Honestly we worked pretty hard, it was nice to get a full week of work after all the holidays, but we didn't really see a ton of success. It's kind of just one of those weeks you feel a little discouraged about, you look back at what you could have done differently, don't find too much, and know that you just need to shrug it off and try again. We had some interesting things happen this week though

#1- Let's just say that the plan of salvation got sidetracked by incest

#2- A bomb went off in a trash can while my companion was on an exchange

#3- We got asked to do an exorcism

#4- I got kissed by a man (not on the lips thankfully)

Needless to say, it was a strange week. I was a little bit sad at the end though, because we had to stop teaching someone because they just couldn't even open to the IDEA that God could or did exist and our two amis with a baptismal date are getting snagged on the Word Of Wisdom. It's all good though, we can't really do a ton to change the choices of others and this week the idea of God being the only person that can truly convert someone got emphasized a lot. The missionary purpose is to invite others to come unto Christ, I think this week more than ever I learned that an invitation can be rejected. All there's left to do after that is to find someone else to invite, and that's exactly what i'm going to do! ;). haha, I have no idea how anybody but a missionary could possibly apply this to their life, but that's my spiritual thought for the week (hey, it's my job to give it, not to apply it).

HAVE AN AMAZING, INCREDIBLE, STUPENDOUS, MOMENTOUS week everybody

Stay classy

Love the missionaries

because we love you

Love,

Elder Michael Beneamato Bruno

Un Petite Response

I'm pretty sure this was the laziest week that I've had (or will have) on my mission.

Essentially the first four days consisted of 

P-day

Pretty unsuccessful work until 5 and then dinner with our DMB (Branch mission leader)

A complete day off where we played ping pong

Traveling to Paris to do all my legality paperwork.

After that we had exchanges with the District leader and I went into the other equipe(companionships) portion of Le Havre. It's pretty funny because Mitt Romney served in the first Le Havre equipe forever ago, and so technically I served in the same area as Mitt Romney (even if it was only for a day). The only other time we had was Sunday, which every week is mostly taken by church and companionship study (every bleu(green) missionary in the world is on a 12 week program with 2 hours of companionship study every day). It was pretty amazing though,

I confirmed my epic ami named Yann (Ian in english, French people spell everything different) which was amazing, then we taught a lesson at 6:00 and decided to go knocking on doors, and so we knocked, and knocked, and knocked some door, and when it finally came to 9:00 where we have to either get a lesson or go home, we found someone. He's pretty legit (I've heard a lot of people say elect, but in this one respect I think I'm going to keep the word from my previous life). His name is Cedric and he's had some pretty bad things happen to him, but he's willing to try, and honestly any French person who's willing to try is legit in my book. I know there's a million missionary stories about perseverance but I decided to give you all just one more to put in your book.

Sorry about the jumbled mess this email is, i'm pretty tired and my thoughts get all jumbled together when i'm tired!!!!! All is good in France though, My quick spiritual thought this week is simply love everyone, even when you honestly feel like hating the world, love the heck out of everyone you meet and good things happen. It sounds simple and short, because it is! Have an awesome week (and year) everyone.

I love the heck out of all of you,

Elder Michael Beneamato Bruno