Be Grateful for Whatever You Have

Bonjour tout le monde!

This week was pretty good, I don't have a ton of time since I'm in a threesome right now and we've had to do everything together, so I'll just throw in some of the highlights and hope that you're okay with that!

 

This week we didn't see a ton of success with old investigators. They're all pretty busy with the holidays coming up and we didn't get a chance to see a lot of them. The ones we did see were for pretty quick visits. Some awesome things that did happen though were that as we were porting a neighborhood a family let us in and we got a return appointment with the tonight! Exciting stuff. So that was our second family and we were pretty excited about it since we didn't know if we were going to find another family (that has been one of our biggest goals since in the mission we have the goal of baptizing a family before Noel!) so, it was pretty sick when we found out we found another family, we then had a rendez-vous with a guy named Patrick in which I feel like we copied the district 2 where they wait a million years before Remigo will finally pray. Patrick prayed and it was amazing. That gave us three new ami's this week, which was more than we had done in the past weeks and it gave us our goal, but the Lord decided to bless us one more time before Elder Hall finished his mission and at 8:00 on Sunday night we went to see a member. It turns out that the members (who are a pretty young couple) lives with the wife of the couples sister and her husband. 5 new investigators in one week. That's almost double the amount of investigators that we've gotten in the last 5 weeks. It was amazing, partially because it's a ton and partially because they're all SOLID investigators. Now I'm with the other Le Havre Elders to finish out the transfer (which is Wednesday) because Elder Hall left early to go on exchanges one last time before he takes the plane home. It was awesome having such an experienced missionary as my first companion and I'm pretty excited to meet my new Comp. 

 

spiritual Enlightenment!

 

Before my spiritual thought I think that it's always important to look for the spirit and at least say a quick prayer in your heart to be able to teach accord to that great and powerful presence that can make a person who comes from humble places become wise. I've been listening to a lot of general conference talks in any spare time i can find (which basicaly is only when I eat) and before each talk I hear them talk a little about how they pray the spirit to be with them, to help guide them to help others. I have to say that i'm not the most spiritual of people or the most knowledgeable. In fact, i don't think I'm the most anything of anything, so as I write this I pray INCREDIBLY hard that I might get just a little bit of inspiration! This week I feel like my spiritual enlightenment has to do with gratitude. I feel like a lot of times in life we go by doing pretty well and we just forget to be grateful for everything we have. Throughout a six week period I feel like maybe the reason that I was sent to this windy rainy little town to open a new area is to understand what it was like to have nothing. I feel as though those who have nothing may be the most blessed of all. How much easier is it to be humble and grateful for the things that the Lord see's fit to give us when we start with nothing? For me the answer is A LOT EASIER! over the last six weeks me and Elder Hall worked our butts off to make sure that we were progressing this part of the vineyard, but I think I'll forever be grateful of the time when we had nothing. For anybody I'm writing on a mission (who I know doesn't actually have time to read this), i guess the application of this is to be grateful for whatever you have, wherever you have it, and especially be grateful for the blessing of nothingness. To start out from scratch is the Lords way of telling you that he trusts you! For those of you in the "Real World" I guess the application is a little bit tougher. I guess the way I would think of it is to count your blessings. I feel almost like a hypocrite since I never really did it myself, but all I can really say is that blessings come in all shapes, colors, and sizes and when I look back at everything I'm starting to recognize that I've had a lot more blessings in my life than I would have thought. My advice in the coming week? Count your blessings and say a quick prayer thanking God for each one. And if you're truly grateful for the things that he's given you so far, He might just give you some more :D!

Have an awesome week everybody,

 

Love,

 

Elder Michael Beneamato Bruno

Too Much of A Good Thing

BONJOUR TOUS LE MONDE! this was a pretty awesome week! I forgot my journal though and so i'm not a hundred percent sure about everything that happened, so I'm going to just have to give you the highlights!

We went to an old fort/botanical garden for P-day and we met this artist who was just drawing a picture of the city! I asked if i could take a picture and lo and behold we're teaching him (Although I'm pretty sure that it's more because Elder Hall has a very strong personality and this guy didn't have a chance of getting away). We've gone back a couple times and we just teach him on a hill overlooking the city. The reason that it's so exciting isn't his willingness to accept our message though, it's simply the fact that he's the first person that i've met here that i just struck up a random conversation and we got talking about the gospel. OPPORTUNITIES ARE EVERYWHERE! Or something along those lines ;)

 

WE HAD THANKSGIVING

AND THEN WE HAD IT AGAIN

and again

and again

 

French people like to eat.... a lot. I'm trying a lot of different things, some of them are thingshad before, some of them are new, and some of them are cheese that has been left out for a month and is no longer a sold material... I cannot lie when I say that escargo is delicious though, you just have to get past the fact that it feels like you've just stuck and enormous booger in your mouth :D

It was awesome though, the members gave us food for one thanksgiving, we had a thanksgiving with half of our zone (the other half lives too far away from us to be able to celebrate with us) we had another one with the members, and then the members decided to fast for the missionaries and then we broke the fast with a huge meal (even though nobody called that thanksgiving, i still count it). Oh yeah, the heavenly material called speculoose that i talked about? I made peanut butter cookies only instead of peanut butter i used speculoose. It was incredible

 

We were busy!

 

It was totally awesome! We literally ran sometimes to get places! we had somewhere to go and somewhere to be and i REALLY feel like my legs are about to fall off right now! Anyways, the last thing i think i wish to talk about is faith!

 

So, what did I learn this week?(I learned that we are spending the last week me and Elder Hall have together entirely in French, so don't tell him i'm writing this in English). But this week what I really learned was that you have to have faith like a monkey. And it sounds a lot like I'm trying to be funny (which is partially true), but it's also pretty serious. We all hold on to things by our fingertips. We don't want to change, we think that there's only one tree in the forest, one solution for every problem, one way to raise your kids, one way to hold a church service, one way to find someone as a missionary. I guess that this week i've seen a lot of people (including myself) holding on to this one branch. When I say have faith like a monkey, i guess what i'm really trying to say is don't be afraid to hold on to another idea. There are always different ways of doing everything and if we don't take a look around, then we might get stuck with a weak branch that eventually just breaks. Have faith like a monkey, trust that when you let go of one branch, there's going to be another one to grab on to! That's my email for this week! Bon chance everybody, do good wherever you are

 

Love,

 

Elder Michael Beneamato Bruno

Testimony Changes Attitudes

WHAZZUP!!! I say only because this week was pretty dang epic! To all my friends in the MTC who I've neglected to put into my emails, i apologize. a quick recap of the last couple weeks goes in the following manner. I received my trainer and learned that we were opening a new area. I then learned that it was my trainer's last transfer and that he had been an epic missionary (former zone leader, former assistant to the president, no big deal). The first couple weeks we got here were pretty rough, nobody wanted to listen to us and all that good stuff. Anyways, he got over it and started having a good time and then this week came around.

Tuesday

We had district meeting and we taught a single lesson. That's what the numbers say, but I feel much more like numbers don't tell the success we're having here. During district meeting we learned a ton, we practice taught a ton and we started coming up with better ways of finding people (because what we're doing now isn't working). I had ratatouille for the first time (it's okay, but not as amazing as the movie makes it out to be). I also ate heaven on a slice of bread. they have a strange peanut buttery like substance here that's called speculoose. It literally is the most delicious thing in the entire world. It's a lot like delta flight cookies in a creamy form. Anyways, our lesson that night was with Ian, our investigator sent from heaven. He basically walked into church and knew that everything was true. we taught with a super helpful member and got through the first half of the plan of salvation. It was a very very good day!

 

Wednesday

Wednesday was a lot of fun, but I cannot for the life of me remember why. A lot of people cancelled on us and it was so cold I thought i was going to die (for anybody that's just gotten added onto the list, I'm in Normandy which is the north western part of France and it rains incredibly cold rain everyday for around 16 hours a day). That was Wednesday though!

 

Thursday

Thursday we finally celebrated Elder Hall's birthday by going to a slightly disgusting Chinese buffet. I really don't like buffets for anyone that doesn't know that already. After that we went on exchanges with the only other companionship in our district. It was pretty fun, I went with Elder Garner and we taught two lessons and contacted some people. The first lesson was pretty much me not understanding anything, but I'll talk about the other lesson a little later. Oh yeah, we got a senior couple too, they're pretty cool. Their name is Piepgrass and they're Cannuks (Canadians) The sister is Belgian, but she's lived in Canada for like 40 years so they're Canadian :)

 

Friday

Friday was a day full of contacting, porting, and getting rejected. Same old same old. After me and Elder Hall got off exchanged though I learned that Ian had told them that he wanted to be baptized (exciting!) But he had to talk to his super Roman catholic wife (Scary!)

 

Saturday

Epic Saturday in which we got our first opportunity to do service, but it ended up taking all day (which was not what we had planned). It was a lot of fun though! We scraped the wallpaper off of a member's kitchen and they were super grateful (I actually think that was why he agreed to come to our lesson with Ian, it was a righteous exchange). Not much other than that though.

 

Sunday!

I don't remember when we taught Fahed, but we taught this Muslim kid who is super cool and open. I'm not sure if he wants to learn the truth or convert us to Islam, but so far he's keeping his commitments and he told us that if he thought our church was true he would join. The members are super awesome to us now, even though we keep trying to set up appointments with them so we can pray with them and then go port in their neighborhood. They're starting to give us the opportunity, we have our first trial run on Tuesday. 

 

ANYWAYS, we didn't get to do a lot of work on Sunday because we had church and two hours of companionship study and all that, so I thought this week was going to end with a pretty lame sauce porting session, but once again the Lord decided to prove me wrong. We found a really awesome lady who we have a return appointment with on Friday. It's funny how you only find people after you're ready to go home, but you decide to try just a couple more doors.

 

SPIRITUAL STUFF!

I'm going to have to say the theme for this week is don't give up! When I went on exchanges with Elder Garner we went to teach a lesson with someone and it turned out that he wasn't home. His wife answered the door and almost sent us on our way before Elder Garner decided not to give up. He taught he the restoration and then the lady started talking and saying how she didn't think our church was any different than any other. I bore my testimony. It's funny because I only had a small understanding of what she was saying, up until this point I hadn't said anything in 30 minutes, and it seemed like the lady just wasn't interested. At this point in my life I can honestly say that there is nothing I have in this world that is more important or powerful than my testimony. This woman changed her attitude completely, Elder Garner succeeded in getting her to a family home evening and I think she's coming to church next week. It just showed me that perseverance is amazing and that this gospel touches peoples hearts. I didn't bear my testimony with perfect French and it was pretty simple, but I know that by small and simple things great things can come to pass. regardless of who you are or what challenges you're having right now, Don't give up. Sometimes overall goals aren't achieved by perseverance and we fail, sometimes we feel that despite our perseverance nothing will change. I don't think it matters, and I know that sometimes we don't change the world or even another person, but I know that trying over and over and over (and over) again without giving up changes us, it makes us better and that is what life is all about.

 

Have an awesome week everybody, if you made it this far into my rambling letter thanks! Remember not to give up!

 

Love,

Elder Michael Beneamato Bruno