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