Una Fiesta Latina

August 28th, 2017

Bonjour à tous, 

T-minus thirty-one days left as I'm writing this email. Time is really short now. It's crazy how once apon a time I had two years left on my mission, and now I'm only down to a month. How crazy time is... 

It was a nice week of missionary work. It was a little up and down and all over the place with some rendezvous falling through and the wrap-up of the summer vacation season. But we had some nice things happen as well. 

We had a nice Ecuadorian mangezvous with the Castañeda family. Man, they cook so much food and it's so delicious. I missed eating South American food. 

We found a cool family from Colombia. They're actually from the same town where Elder Dorado was born. It was a young woman with her mother and like most Latinos are practicing Christians who love Jesus. They're very nice and accepted a rendezvous for this upcoming week. Dorado was thrilled to see that. 

Also, we found another lady, Vilma, who's from Ecuador. She's an older woman and she's a practicing Catholic. She kind of knows who we are but doesn't really know our beliefs. She says she'll never change religions but accepted one rendez-vous, hopefully we'll make it two. 

And also this last weekend, there was a Fiesta Latina in a huge park here in Brussels and our Ward Mission Leader told us to go check it out, so we went and it turns out it was all gated and you had to buy tickets to get in. Funny enough, right outside the entrance were two Mexican Jehovah Witness would had the same idea as us. It was apparent that they weren't seeing much success as they looked rather bored.

Mais bon, it was a nice week as I said. And remember if life gets rough or you're feeling down, just remember that the Church is true. 

Que Dieu vous bénisse. 

Love, 

Elder Aburto

Picture of the Embassy of Qatar

Back to the Start

August 20th, 2017

Greetings from Bruxelles.

It's been just an amazing week to live as a missionary. It felt like an eternity, but it's going really good. Leaving Brest was a little sad, and I basically didn't have anytime to do anything besides packing. Transfer Day was stressful and hectic as usual, but at the end of the day I made it back to Brussels safe and sound.

My new comp is Elder Dorado. He's from Calgary, Alberta but he was born in Colombia. He's hilarious. He makes me laugh hard multiple times a day. Finishing a mission is easy with him as a companion.

We whitewashed in so it's like a new clean slate for the équipe. We've been doing lots of finding so we're starting out things a little slowly. We did, en fait, get a chance to meet one of our amis, Lupe. She's an older woman from Ecuador. She's very sweet and loves life. It seems like she might like having us around merely for good company, but we'll see in the upcoming visits.

I been able to see lots of the members and good friends that I made forever ago when I started my mission. Everyone else seems happy to see me, too. It feels kind of weird to be back as a missionary, because it reminds me of the young, foolish missionary I was in the past. I'm really grateful for this chance I have to serve Brussels for another transfer.

Time will really fly by. I can feel it already. My goal is to simply make these last six weeks the funnest six weeks of my mission.

I wish you all an amazing week.

Love,

Elder Aburto

Once Upon a Mission

August 14^th, 2017

What a great week.

It all started on Wednesday with a great rendezvous with Thierry. We went over the gospel of Jesus Christ with him in 2 Nephi 31. He loved it and it all made sense to him. It was his birthday the next day, so we went over and gave him a card and a little gift. He recognizes us as servants of the Lord, but also as his friends. It was nice to spend some time with him on his birthday.

Then we found this awesome new ami, Audrey. She's from Gabon and she's a very believing Christian. We had a short first rendezvous but it went great. She met with missionaries a good while ago and was very happy to be able to talk with us again. She seems pretty cool.

We met up with a potential, Mohammed, and we had dinner with him at Flunch. The food was alright, but the discussion was a lot better. He's a young Muslim man, yet he's very open-minded. He very willingly took a BOM and said he'd read it. So, on verra.

Then we had a soirée familiale with a less-active family on Friday with some other members. They hadn't been to church in a while, so we went over to see how they were doing. It went pretty good. We emphasized the importance of the sacrament and taking it regularly. Well, it turns out, they made it to church on Sunday. Go figure.

On Saturday we had a Finding Day in Lorient. Turns out, it was the last one for a while. It went good. The branch had a lot of members come and help us out.

Today is Monday and with the new mission president things have changed and we got the news for next transfer today. Well... I'm leaving Brest to another area.  But the area won't be foreign to me because I've already served there before. In fact it was my "Bleu ville". Yeah. I'm going back to Brussels for my last six weeks as a missionary and I'll go back to the Spanish équipe. My new companion is Elder Dorado, from Canada. We'll be white-washing. It's a dream come true. Christmas came early this year. These next six weeks will literally fly by.

God bless.

Love,

Elder Aburto

Keeping Afloat

August 7^th, 2017

Bonjour à tous,

Well, times just gets shorter and shorter and you come to realize that you don't have much time left. I feel like it's just starting to soak in that my mission is ending in less than two months. I don't know what to think. I don't know how to because I've never completed a mission before, but I understand that there is a time for everything and one needs to appreciate life as it happens. Soon enough, I won't be a missionary anymore, and I miss serving in this capacity. So I need to take advantage of the opportunity at hand.

This week was good. Our boy, Thierry is progressing well. We had a family home evening at a member’s home and he came and had a great time. The fellowshipping of the members is making an impact on him, and I'm so grateful for them and their support.

As you may know, the branch here is pretty small, and this last Sunday we had a family move out. So the branch is looking even smaller for now. Our branch president is really pushing to have the members find the less-actives and help them. Yesterday we had two less-active families come to church for the first time in a long time. So there is hope out there.

We found this guy about a week ago who left us his address. He said he lived in a hotel and gave us the room number. We weren't sure if it was just a straight up lie or not, so we went to go check it out. It turns out there's this placed named Hotel de la Rade which is actually a refugee shelter. It looks like a hotel from the outside but everyone there is taken care of by the government. Nice, huh? We haven't found the guy yet though.

Keep having fun.

Love,

Elder Aburto

Pouring Rain

July 31^st, 2017

Hello and bonjour,

This week really flew by, since we've been all over the place, so I don't know how long this one will be. Nonetheless, we had a great time once again.

Thierry is going well. We taught him the plan of salvation and he loved it. When we were talking about the afterlife, he asked if animals get resurrected too, because his cat died a while ago and he misses him. It was nice to let him know that he will have the chance to see his cat again through the plan of salvation. It made me remember of my dogs that have passed away in my life. Where it's sad to see our loved ones die, but life doesn't end at death.

He's progressing slowly as well. He's reading the Book of Mormon and loves the passages he reads and we read a chapter weekly with him.

We also went to Paris once again this week for Elder Ho's legality. Boy, did we spend a lot of money on transportation. Paris is a nice place to visit, but it sure is expensive.

We had our finding day on Brest on Saturday and it was raining hard. Nonetheless, we went out and did what was needed. We ended up getting several potentials among both equipes, and hopefully we'll be able to fix rendezvous with those people. We've seen that right now, a lot of people are on vacation, so it's hard to see most people currently.

But, yeah. This week literally just flew by.  Hope this next week will go slower so that we can get more work done here.

See you next time.

Love,

Elder Aburto

Pioneer Day

July 24^th, 2017

Hey,

Happy Pioneer’s Day!

It's been a good week with another Zone Conference and a week full of work in Brest, so let's get to it:

We had Zone Conference on Wednesday and it went great. I can tell President Sorensen feels pretty uncertain and inexperienced about himself, but I know he will do a good job. He emphasized finding and miracles a lot, and made an initiative to have 20 solid contacts per day, and 140 per week. We understand that it's not super easy around here to get that accomplished, but it's possible.

Starting our goal to have 20 good contacts a day (consisting of a principle taught and a commitment extended), we've seen some good fruits already. We found this very nice and open older woman, named Valerie, and we had our first sit down rendezvous with her last week at her house. She's an English professor so her English is basically flawless. She's very catholic and practicing, but didn't say no to having a discussion. So we had a discussion and gave her a BOM. She seemed quite engaged. She's going on vacation soon so we'll probably see her again in a couple of weeks.

Another guy we've met is a man named Jean-Marie. We stopped him on the street and he came off very sympathetic and calm. It turns out that he actually has met with us in the past and had a great time learning from the missionaries and going to church. But all of that stopped for some reason. He considers himself Christian and Jewish and embraces all good things. He's just all-around a good, respectable guy. He's going on vacation this week, too, so we'll see him in a couple of weeks, hopefully.

Our boy Thierry is doing well. He read Alma 22 on his own and marveled at the teachings found therein. He's embracing everything we give him so well, and it's making a difference in himself. He's truly finding the peace and comfort found in the gospel. He has some word of wisdom issues, but we're confident he can fix those.

And voila, there it is. What a better way to celebrate the day when the saints arrived in the Salt Lake Valley to establishe the church, than as a missionary.

I hope you stay safe and have a fantastic week,

Love,

Elder Aburto

La Fête Nationale

July 17^th, 2017

Bonjour, tout le monde,

It's been another good week in the life of missionary work. I'm now getting to the stage when the end is approaching quite soon, so many emotions go on simultaneously. Regardless, the work must go on.

We saw Thierry again this week and he's doing well. We followed up on the Retab and it went great. We committed him to start reading the Book of Mormon and he gladly accepted. He's going well.

We saw Jeremie again, after a little of not seeing him, and he's doing alright. We had a nice talk about his progression, and what's keeping him from being baptized. He's come to grow a testimony of the things we've taught him, he's just a little worried about the commitment to be baptized. We helped him understand that it's just a step along our eternal progression and we're not going to be perfect. The thing is as well that his sleep schedule is terrible which doesn't let him come to church in the mornings either. We have hope that he'll be able to
change, little by little.

Our ami, Anina, came to church and expressed that she wanted to continue meeting with us, but her husband doesn't like us and doesn't want us to come to their house. It made us sad to hear that, but she said she'll keep talking to him to try to convince him that what we're doing really is good. We hope it goes well.

Well, this upcoming week we'll have yet another Zone Conference with the Sorensens. 7-week transfers, new president, new vision, etc. They're saying there'll be lots of important information in this one.

We just celebrated Bastille Day here. July 14th was like the Independence Day of France. Every company in the nation was closed for the day and there was a big celebration at night with fireworks. Too bad we couldn't go.

All in all, it was a nice week. As always, this next week has lots to look forward to. What an exciting life it is, being a missionary.

À la prochaine,

Love,

Elder Aburto