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