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