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

OH LA VACHE (HOLY COW)

Yeahh... so, the lights turned out a couple times in this internet cafe and we don't have a ton of time, but I just wanted to let everyone know that all is well! We had a baptism on Saturday (it was epic) and he's getting confirmed next Sunday (he had to go out of town). He wants me to confirm him, which i'm pretty excited about, but also super scared! We also set two baptismal dates for a couple that comes from Cote d'Ivore! They're getting baptized February 1st! I'm just getting to see a ton of miracles and it's super awesome and I wish that I had longer to write, but we have to get out of here pretty soon and start dinner! Other exciting things that happened are I got to sleep in for Christmas and play some sick ping pong, I still think that this French desert called flan feels like sticking a sponge in my mouth, and it's really hard to find people to  teach in France.

My advice this week:

Faith and love, Faith and love. That's how we get stuff done out here. Happy new years everyone, good luck with your wedding Annika!

Love,

Elder Michael Beneamato Bruno

All Is Well but Crazy

The sum total of this week is described very simply as a lot of rejection knocking on doors and talking to people, but a TON of success with all the Ami's (investigators) that we already had!

So this week we started using a method called Christmas contacting, which is essentially just bringing up the concept of Christmas with talking to people on the street and when knocking on doors ask to sing a Christmas song and pray with them. The entire week we got into one house to sing (and me and my companion were so awful she stopped us in the middle and told us that she didn't really have time right then :/).BUT we did see a lot of miracles this week. We haven't been able to teach Ian (our miracle investigator) all the commandments and his baptism is this Saturday. We told him that in order to get them all we would probably have to meet at his house and have a couple  more lessons or postpone the baptism. He got pretty defensive at first, but we just explained how it works and he said he would talk to his wife about it. His wife came to church with his daughter on Sunday and we're visiting him tonight! Teaching him the law of  tithing is going to be scary, but he's so awesome I know that he can handle it! I'll let everyone know how his baptism goes next week! Other than that we have two awesome Amis who live with a family from Africa. They're married and they have two kids and they are just absolutely incredible. The husband accepts everything we teach (which is surprising because he knows a ton about the bible and all these different religions) and they can to the Christmas party we had (which was just a ten minute video and a lot of eating-Typical Frenches) AND they came to church. They're so awesome they invited us over for Christmas (I LOVE THEM A LOT!) We're giving them a baptismal invite this Thursday, so say some prayers for me (I'm extending it and i'm still pretty scared about stuff like that). Anyways, that's really all that happened this week that was exciting, and as my mission progresses I'm starting to realize that it's pretty hard to remember bad times when so many good things happen in life! Have an awesome Christmas everybody and don't forget that the season is about Jesus!

 

Merry Christmas to all and to all a good morning (since I'm at least six hours ahead of most of you)!

 

Love,

 

Elder Michael Beneamato Bruno

Crazy Busy

Hey Everybody,

This week was awesome but I don't have a ton of time so I'm going to have to take the lame route and go highlights again.

 

So, this week we had a lesson almost every day. It was awesome because my goal was to teach at least one lesson everyday, so it was cool that I got really close to accomplishing that, but we fell short on saturday. It's awesome though, because we have 5 progressing investigators right now, and we have a ton of people we can teach. As an experienced 6 week old bleu (in France we're bleu and not green) I've come to realize that problems arise in every stage of missionary work. Right now our problem is scheduling conflicts. I'm feel like everyone in the world is just REALLY REALLY busy. It's not anything we can't work around, but it gets pretty challenging sometimes. I have to be honest though, I'm just glad we have people to teach. This week. since my companion left on Monday(too long of a story to explain) and I went into a threesome I had to lead 3 lessons, and for one of those lessons we had planned on giving a baptismal date. I'm happy to report that my first baptismal invite was successful!!!!!! I asked one of the coolest people in the world to be baptized on the 28th of December and he accepted! We've just seen so many miracles here in the now 7 weeks i've been here I just can't believe how awesome the Lord has been to me! I can't lie when i say that giving that invite and having him accept was one of the most amazing experiences of my whole life. Now we just have to get to teaching him (we still have a lot of material to go over). Honestly, I don't have time to talk about all the miracles that we've been blessed with this week, I can just say that we're teaching 3 families, we have tons of investigators who are all super solid, and the work here is moving. I might have believed that missionary work didn't happen in France a couple weeks ago, and when I got here I know that I needed to be humbled just a little bit (Which i was) ;), but now the Lord is moving the work and I get to be part of it. For my spiritual thought this week I just have the very simple fact that MISSIONARY WORK IS FLIPPING AWESOME! Do it, and you'll see. Have an awesome week everybody.

 

Love,

 

Elder Michael Beneamato Bruno