Monday, November 11, 2013

Hard Work in La Harve

MMMkay!
Tuesday
Tuesday was actually a lot of fun, we had district meeting and the AP's were there. I really love the AP's and it was a lot of fun meeting everyone in our zone. It kind of felt like a day off too, which was fun except for the fact that I don't think I understand anything that they taught (French is killing me!). I'll get it though, I at least can answer people when they ask me questions now!
Wednesday
Wednesday started out pretty bad, it rained all day (and then it rained all day the next day, and the next, all the way until Sunday where we had a nice day, but we were inside for most of it). All that happened was that we got rejected pretty badly. After a little while I just stopped talking and I let my companion do the talking. He stopped in the Gare for a couple minutes, turned to me and asked me what he could do because something was obviously wrong. I just talked about how it was kind of tough. It makes it harder because my companion had a trainer who told him exactly what to do and he hated it. He promised himself that he wouldn't ever be like his trainer, so now he just kind of leaves it up to the people he trains to figure it out. I don't know if you've ever been in the situation where you just had to figure it out, but trust me when I say it's really scary. I just told him that I'm a little new here and I'll try my best if he gives me a little guidance now and then. From this point on we started doing A LOT better. Since we decided we were going to talk to everyone we saw, we walk down the street side by side and whichever side a person is walking down determines which person gets to talk to them. It makes it a lot easier than trying to decide who contacts who, but it's kind of scary because it turns the 1/10 people that I used to contact to 1/2. It's fun though and on Tuesday we met two or three people. We accomplished the great feat of getting two phone numbers! It was awesome.
Thursday
THURSDAY WE TAUGHT 3 LESSONS! They were the first three lessons of my entire mission and I don't remember much of them other than the people didn't seem to be very interested after we taught them with the exception of a teenage Muslim boy (we didn't know he was Muslim when we contacted him otherwise we wouldn't have been allowed to contact him) who agreed to read the Book of Mormon and keep meeting with us if we would read parts of the Qumran he printed out in English. It was interesting to say the least and pretty confusing, but we figure if he's going to keep his part we need to keep ours as well.
Friday/Saturday
Not going to lie when I say that Friday and Saturday just seemed like a blur of people being kind of rude and saying no, it was a lot more fun to go out contacting though and despite getting rejected a hundred million times, and a lot of tombe-vous, it actually seems like we set up a solid week next week. We got our first referral from the office and we're going to see her tomorrow and there's a couple people who responded to us when we called REALLY OLD investigators (I'm talking like 5 or 6 years old). I'm pretty excited about next week though! We have interviews with President, Exchanges with zone leaders, and a very busy week ahead of us!
Sunday
Even Sunday was a lot better, I tried to be more friendly to the members and we asked a couple if we could visit them this week. A random guy showed up to church and we fixed a rendezvous on Wednesday. It was crazy because he just showed up and before he left he told us how much sense we made as a church. Oh yeah, me and Elder Hall taught the lesson too this week for investigators class(Gospel principles is what we call it back home i think) and we rocked it! An old lady invited us over to eat on Saturday too, so I'm pretty excited.
OTHER STUFF!!
So, what do I want to talk about this week? I guess just talking it out. This week whenever I got frustrated or upset about something I would just let people know. I know a lot of times people can get annoyed of you complaining or think that you're sharing too much information, but I think that's worth getting whatever beef you have off your chest. Letting something fester just leaves feelings of resentment and anger and if you don't talk to people about the problems you have with them with the willingness to compromise on those issues, you're going to blow up eventually. I feel stressed out all the time here and it's cold and wet and nobody will talk to us, but this week has been a thousand times better just because I've spoken my mind. So, my message for this week is don't bury your problems, just fix them. I know it's not easy, but it's better to pay the price to fix things when they break then it is to try to go through life broken.
HAVE AN AWESOME WEEK EVERYBODY, help out your missionaries (Trust me when I say that they need it)
Love, 
Elder Michael Beneamato Bruno

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