Your little weather update: It was cold this last week. It's warmer now but been raining :) All is well :)
Spiritual Thought! President Patrick is really stressing the Hastening of the Work with us because we have to have the vision as missionaries. He really puts it out there that we don't do the work. Now you might ask yourself "but Elder Brooks, you go out and talk to people and teach them and baptize them and do missionary work stuff, aren't you hastening the work?" And I would reply no. Honestly the work is not done by the missionaries. The Lord can do his work without us but he lets us take part so we can learn and grow and have joy. I think a lot about D&C 18 in that "the worth of souls is great" and D&C 88:73 that the Lord will hasten HIS work in HIS time. That mindset is key because if I'm selfish and wanted to do MY missionary work for MY two years, it's going to be pretty rough. When we turn the work over to the Lord it all becomes a joy and so much easier :) So here's your "are you stripped of pride" check ;) from my experiences though, yes I am out and about in the name of the Lord but he is the one who brings people to us and prepares them before we even talk to them and it is a pleasure to be a part of it :)
Monday 20th:
So after emails I got myself a new trendy watch :) Happy Birthday to me from home :)
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| My watch :) It's cool :) |
We had a great FHE with Sabine and other members about the Gospel of Jesus Christ and playing charades with Book of Mormon stories. Then we rushed off to teach Cheri and Frank about hope. Hope is so important and we can have so much of it thanks to Christ. Moroni 7:40-48 is a great example of that :) To finish out we taught Michon about prayer. He's been used to doing his "our father" prayer but he hasn't been getting any answers so we taught him how to really pray sincerely and personally :) It went well though! He continues to progress little by little!
Tuesday 21st:
We had the best first branch missionary correlation meeting ever! It was us, Fr Donovan, and the Lévesques and Fr Donovan had an agenda printed out for us and right there we got a rough sketch of a branch mission plan set up to be ready for the first branch council that night. We had a sad experience in contacting in that we were talking to this girl who had some good questions but wasn't really willing to listen to intently to our answers. Then when we presented a Book of Mormon she said "Oh I know all about you." Yeah she had no idea what she was talking about.... But it was sad because it seemed like she was trying to "open our eyes" and show that we aren't free in our religion. But truly we are free to choose always and following the counsel that God has given us makes us free. :) That night we had our first Branch Council and it was BEAUTIFUL!!! It seriously went like clockwork and seemed like something out of a missionary training video. Having an old mission and stake president for a branch president is the best :)
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| First Branch Council! |
Wednesday 22nd:
I love how in the Sermon on the Mount (I was reading from 3 Nephi 12) that Christ explains the Law of Moses and then adds his higher law to it, completing the old law :) Pretty wonderful stuff :) We had district meeting that day and afterward I went to St Jean with Elder Gonzàlez from Guatemala/California. It was great to get to know him more and work with him. We worked with some less-actives over there and had a dinner appointment with some members. It's funny though because I knew some of the members there better than Elder Gonzàlez because I've been here so long and he's only been here a little while.
Thursday 23rd:
Back in Granby we started out by teaching Père Marcel. Funny thought from him for the week is that "the Bible is always first but it's really hard to understand"... Yeah that seems almost contradictory. The word of God doesn't have to be difficult to understand thank goodness! I'm really grateful for the Book of Mormon in that aspect since even small children can read it and pick things out :) We were able to visit a less-active around our age. He's super great but just works so much. We shared some thoughts from Jacob 2 about the love of riches but also encouraged him to make the best of what time he has and read everyday. We also gave his roommate a Book of Mormon while we were at it :)
We were driving around a little later that day and we saw someone we'd contacted a long time ago. At first we just waved and kept driving but then Elder Noel turned us around and we went and talked to him more. It turned out he had read from the Book of Mormon just recently and found some good stuff in it! From that we got his address and he said we could stop by! Woohoo! Then later that night he called us and invited us over the next night for a little social gathering he was holding. Woohoooo! :D
For dinner we went over to Addie's and also had Jourdain over. We taught him the Restoration and it went really well. We tried to explain authority a little from the Bible which didn't work. After we kind of gave up on that he went back and said "I like the story of Joseph Smith, because he asked questions and got answers." Yeah we're just going to teach from the Book of Mormon with him now haha :) It was snowing after that (yes winter has some comebacks here...) and we had planned some knocking. Oh it was hard to get out of the car. But we saw some houses that we felt inspired to knock. On the first door we had a super awesome contact with a woman and we gave her a Book of Mormon and got her phone number. As we were wrapping up she mentioned that recently both her parents died and she was searching for answers... Again I repeat God prepares people before we even talk to them! Simply amazing though :)
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| it was kinda cold... snow and all haha :) |
Friday 24th:
We got to visit Tania and play dream interpreter again. We drew some ideas from Revelation 12 and Genesis 39 in fleeing from temptation and how Satan tries hard to chase us down. She was more relieved after we explained that :) During weekly planning I made the cake mix I got for my birthday :) While I was making the frosting though... I broke a spatula. Apparently getting butter fluffy can be rough on spatulas haha :) (We sent him a homemade cake mix from Hannah with instructions on how to make it.)
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| Birthday cake! :) Thank you! (Video follows - go to the blog to see it) |
But that night we were invited to Sebastien's place (the boyfriend of Kalila). We had pizza and then taught him for the first official time. It was awesome because he had questions and was super receptive! We talked a lot about what we do and why and then introduced him more to the Book of Mormon and committed him to read and find out if it's true :) So awesome! One thing he said is that a big difference he noticed between our church and others is that we talk so much about the Atonement. I like that a lot :) The Atonement is the best and so important because it is the center of everything :)
We then passed by Lucien's (the man we turned around and saw on the road the day before). It was a wine and cheese tasting... Pretty cool crowd though! I was reminded of the Velour back in Provo by how many were dressed and their hair haha :) Felt just like home haha ;) But we had some good chats with people there :) Then we finished out by spending some time with Leon at the Lévesques. It turned out he was excommunicated (he was de-membered from the church) but he is looking to become a member again! He's super cool and asked us form a couple Book of Mormons to give them out :) We expect great things though :)
Saturday 25th:
We taught all afternoon with the Lévesques. First we had Michon at their place talking about the Apostasy and the Spirit. Then Nannette was over there and we watched the Restoration movie :) We committed her to track her reading of the Book of Mormon so she can read it all :) then we headed out to Farnham and taught Shelley and Valerie about the Priesthood more :) It was a busy day! That night we didn't have too much going on but we passed by Tania and she continues to do well :) Sadly though, Mara told us she wasn't coming to church again. She hasn't come for at least a month now :( We are really sad about it but we can't take away her agency :( We're praying for her!
Sunday 26th:
Another sad event was that Reynold backed out of coming to church as well :( We're going to slow things down with him because we're not even sure he's completely accountable. But we had multi-stake conference which was a retransmission from Salt Lake. Sister Reeves of Relief Society gave a beautiful talk on Forgiveness and then Elders Andersen and Hales spoke to us as well. Super great! I really liked how Elder Hales spoke of the model for praying is personally, as a couple, and as a family. Then he said our scripture study should be the same :) that was pretty clear for me to see :) I gotta keep that up when I get home and later get married. We had dinner with the Wus that night and they broke the grill back out which means great cooking always :) But good healthy food there too :) They invited Addie and Sister Riggs over so we had a good crowd but it was fun switching back and forth from English and French :) In some pass bys after that we followed up with a family from Togo who we gave a Book of Mormon to. The daughter has started reading and so we gave her some specific chapters to read. Hopefully we can start teaching her this week! Then we had some good contacts on the street too and hopefully tonight we can see one of them :)
Today I got myself a jump rope :) Cardio workouts! :D
The work is going so well here! Our leaders are fantastic, we find new people every week, and we're busy with this wonderful duty of love :)
I love you all so much and I pray for you and wish the best :) Keep reading your scriptures and doing those simple things that we talk about in Primary :)
You're the best!
Love,
Elder Kennen Brooks
Elder Kennen Brooks
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