Monday, December 9, 2013

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

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