Vienna Austria Week 1

Vienna week one! 

Wow this week has been one of the craziest weeks of my mission! The beginning was really busy saying goodbye to all the members in Munich. We had not too much time but it worked out good. It was realy hard to say goodbye to everyone cause I had made so many good friends in that ward. I will miss all of them but I know I will stay friends with some of them for a long time! 

Well on thursday I got all packed and headed to the train station for one last time! I helped direct traffic so a little but then at 12:55 my train left heading to Vienna! I rode the train with 5 new missionaires which was soooo fun. Goldens are the cuttest. So got to Vienna at like 6 that night and my cute companion Elder Mitchell was waiting at the train station for me! He is the best guy ever. Like really I don't understand how he can be so nice. He made my bed like twice this week. He is from Washington and he is going to BYU after his mission so we can stay friends. We were in the MTC together so we know eachother really well. We have had a few crazy first days here in Vienna too!

We serve in the Vienna second ward which is known to be the best ward in Vienna. We have the coolest parts of the city in our area and the ward is really big. There were 155 people at sacrament meeting yesterday which is pretty good. The missionaires call this ward "The Show" cause everything is done really well and smooth. As grandpa would say, "they do a bang up job". There are tons of young cool members and even some people that I already knew from earlier on my mission. I am really excited to get to know them better!

Well ya Vienna is crazy and I can already tell that I am going to really like my time here. I don't have too much more time to email but I would love to hear from you all soon! Have a great week!

Love is in the air,

Elder Lyman

Munich Germany Week 27

Well Family and Friends.....the time has come.

As many of you know, I have been serving in the mission office in Munich as the secretary for the past 7 months! The time here has been really amazing. I have learned so many things and have met so many amazing people. The ward has been my favorite so far and I am going to miss them all sooooo much! We have taught lots of people that I will miss you. So I guess that all this talk of missing people must mean I am leaving! We had the office staff meeting on Monday and I found out that I am being transferred to the beautiful city of Vienna in Austria! When I found out I was going to Vienna i was totally Jacked! I could not be more excited! Salzburg, Linz, Munich, and now Vienna! My mission has been pretty great so far! I am going to work with a good friend of mine named Elder Mitchell. He is from Washington state and we are actually in the same MTC group so we know each other pretty well. We rode the train together our first day to Salzburg where he was picked up by his trainer Elder Plumb and where Elder Kingery picked me up! I talked to him on the phone today and we are both pretty excited to work togther. Should be fun! There are 5 wards in the city of Vienna and I am going to be serving in the 2nd ward. I will have more info next week! I take the train on Thursday so Salzburg, then a train through Linz, to Wien! 

Well I must say that that has been the big highlight of the week! We have been pretty busy in the office with all the transfers making all the travel plans and stuff like that. We have also had some pretty cool appointments with some cool people.

Our friend Brahim was actually going to get baptized this week but did not have time to do the interview this week so we had to push it back to next week. I am sad to miss it but the important thing is that he gets baptized. He is doing really good though and we are so happy for him.

We found a cool new guy to teach this week named Ayran. He is a refuge from Pakistan. he got to know the church in Pakistan from his brother who is a member. He ended up almost getting beat to death when people found out he was going to a christian church so that's when he decided he needed to leave and go somewhere where he could join the church. He packed his things and a few months later he made it to Munich Germany. He submitted his info on mormon.org and we got it and made out an appointment. He is a really cool guy and we can't wait to start teaching him. He is really committed and has lots of potential. 

Well, that was the week! We will stay busy till I leave on thursday! Next week I will send a big letter with lots of pics from my new city!

Until then, lots of love!

Elder Lyman    

Munich Germany Week 26

Hi friends and family!

Wow this week has gone by very fast! I think most weeks do but this week was especially fast. We were pretty busy so that must have been why! 

The Office is doing great! We have been finding ourselves with a little bit of extra time at the end of each day and I could not really figure out why. I thought that maybe we did not have as much to do as other days but I think it is the case because Elder Derksen and I are able to do all of our work really fast and efficiently. He has gotten to the point to where he does not really need me to help him with things so we can both just work away till things are done! It is nice to know i'll be leaving things is good hands...assuming I leave in the near future. 

We have been having some interesting stuff going on with our investigators so I will try to give an update.

Eleanor - We meet consistently twice a week with her and usually at different members houses in the ward. She has made lots of friends so it is really nice to be able to teach with them too! Teaching with the members is the best. It really helps her but it helps them too! After the next time we meet with her we will be done with all the lessons! She has been really praying and fasting about when she should get baptized so we are just patiently waiting. It will happen soon though I have no doubt. She is the coolest!  

Sister Opare - We visited her in the hospital for hopefully the last time this week. She has surgery last week and she has just been recovering sense then. She should be home now so hopefully we can start teaching her again in a few weeks! It was sad cause she said, "Elder Lyman, you not gonna to be at my baptism because you will probably leave soon". I told her as much as I would love to be there the most important thing is that she gets baptized! She will make it, but it could just take some time.

Brahim - I don't know if I have talked too much about Brahim a.k.a. "Slug" as his africans hommies, "us" call him. He is from Sierra Leon and his sister is a member and she told him that he needed to get baptized! He has been coming to church for the past few months and we will be done teaching him everything next week! He should be getting baptized on the 6th of December so that will be great. Pray for him to make it then!

PDAY - We had a great Pday today! Went down to Garmisch Partenkichen which is this way cool ski town in the Alps at the bottom of our area. A way cool memeber named Micheal lives there and he wanted to take us on a hike though this gorge in the mountains! It was way amazing! More pics are yet to come on that one!

Everything is great with me! I am just going to keep working hard for what could be my last 2 weeks in the mission office. More transfer news will come in a week or two. Mal sehen:)

Have a great week everyone!

Much Love

Elder Lyman

Munich Germany Week 25

Hi again!

Well this week has been another good one for us Elders here in the mission office! 

I started this week with going on a really fun exchange with Elder Smith, a member of my district. They work in a city called Rosenheim and it's about a 40 minute train ride east of Munich direction Salzburg. Elder Smith and I were actually in the same MTC district so it was fun to work with him. We had a Zone Training meeting in Munich that day and it was all about finding. We got all pumped up afterwards to find lots of people to teach so we made it a goal to find someone on the train that we could talk to about the Gospel. We sat down next two this couple with a really cute baby. We started talking and I found out that they actually were going home to were they live in Austria. I found out later that they actually live in my old stomping grounds of Linz! We talked about that for a while and they new exactly where the church in Linz was and that they would love to go there on Sunday! We talked all about the church and at the end when we had to get off we got all their info and gave it to the Linz Elders cause they said they would love a Book of Mormon! It was a good experience and testimony that when we talk with everyone the Lord will guide us! We had a great exchange that involved doing some fun service for a member who lives in a really beautiful village in the far south of Bayern. It was pretty.

Oh the highlight of the week for sure was this next part. So this member of our ward from Ghana called Brother Opare,(the husband of the lady we are teaching) was talking on sunday that he was so sad cause the person who cuts his hair normally stopped cutting hair. I don't know if I have mentioned this before, but in Salzburg I bought hair clippers to save money and I have cut my hair and my comps hairs for my whole mission. I told him that I would cut his hair this week gladly! He accepted and we scheduled an appointment for Wednesday night. I went and gave him a nice hair cut althought it was pretty different to cut his hair just cause he is African! He liked to cut I gave him but at the end we just told be to buz it cause he wanted to clean his scalp really good! haha it was tons of fun and it looked pretty good at the end. We will see at church tomorrow if it still looks ok.

Well those were the highlights of the week! Other than that we had a pretty normal week. Thanks to all the people that care about me and take the time to read my boring letters! I hope you all have a great week!

Liebe Grüße,

Elder Lyman 

Munich Germany Week 24

Hi my loving pals!

This week has really not been the most interesting but I will do my best to make it sound like it was! 

Well we have gone a couple weeks now with our new companion Elder Jensen who is the coolest! We love having him in the office and it is fun to be working with my MTC companion. We all make a pretty good team and we all love to have fun so that is "fun".

We had a pretty great Thursday a couple days ago. We started off by having lunch with the Kohlers at there house with our great friend/investigator Eleanor! We had a great time and a great lesson after. I would recommend the Kohler family as a "joint teach" to anyone! It was a great experience and I think we all learned a lot. That night was the first part of our annual MLC meeting once a month. The Zone Leaders and Sister Training Leaders from all seven Zones travel to Munich, (travel plan created by your truly) and we always start by listening to a talk from the MTC. This time was Elder Bednar talking about going on a mission but not becoming a missionary. It was interesting to hear and was very insightful. I is sadly the case that too many people come on missions but never really become missionaries. Becoming a more focused concentrated missionary is something I could work on. I love having fun and joking around but there is always a time and a place. The next day we had the big MLC training meeting and we talked a lot about finding. I really enjoyed it and learned lots of new things. We had Subway for lunch so that was cool too;)

So I will try to give a update on the people we have been teaching! We have had a couple curve balls lately so I will try to explain!

Eleanor - Still doing really great! She has become such great friends with so many members of the ward and is really making good progress! I think at this point it is not a matter of if she gets baptized but a matter of when. She reads and studies tons so she is really doing a great job at finding her answer. She really wants to know if this is the right thing for her so I think it will come soon!

Sister Opare - So sister Opare who is the wife of a member was doing amazing but the past few weeks she has run into some major health problems. She ended up in the hospital last week and then she ended up having emergency surgery this week! We are not too sure what is wrong with her but we are hoping and praying that she can get better soon! 

Charles and Omoyee - We are still working with them so they can get married here in Germany but it is pretty hard. They are still waiting to get some paper work they need to make it all happen. in the mean time, there daughter turns 8 next month so we have started teaching her the lessons too! She is really young and sweet and we think she will be able to get baptized too by the time her parents are ready! These are kind of the main people to give an update on!

Well that was it! Great things are happening in the Munich 4th ward and we are going to continue to work hard! I hope everyone at home has a great week and may God bless you all.

Elder Lyman  

Munich Germany Week 23

 

Hi friends and Family!

Well this week has been really busy and crazy! I will just start at the top and go from there! 

Monday - So we have this car at the mission office that is registered in Switzerland and it is that time of year when we have to get all the tires changed. I am not sure how it worked out, but the only place we could get the tires changed would have been in St. Gallen Switzerland. When I found out this would be the case I quickly volunteered to drive the car down and get the job done! So on Monday Elder Samuelson and I drove to St, Gallen and got the tires changed! It was my first time on Switzerland and it was pretty cool. We drove past Bodensee which is one of the most famous lakes in my mission and it was really amazing! A great little trip for sure:)

Wednesday all of the new goldens came into the mission! That is my favorite thing about transfer week! It was fun to hang out with all of the new missionaries and get to know them. There were only 11 of them.

Thursday was the big transferday which was crazy for us. We had to make all the travel for all the missionaries and it is just lots of stressful hard work. Everything worked out well and everyone made it to there new area safely. We were basically just standing at the train station for like 3 hours just directing traffic and stuff like that. 

Friday - The highlight was getting to take all of the "dying missionaries" to the airport. This was really fun cause my good mission pal Elder Plumb was one of them. It is always a weird feeling to be at the airport with them helping them with all their bags and stuff. It was fun to say goodbye to some really good friends of mine though. That night we had a really cool ward activity too! Our ward had the Trunk-or-treat! We all brought candy and had a chili cook off and games and stuff! There were lots of people there and it was really fun! We all wore out Lederhosen and Bavarian cloths! It was really a great night! The highlight was for sure the donut on a string eating contest. I have a picture that sums it all up.

Today for Pday we did not have too much time cause we have to go to Stake conference tonight so we just went for a stroll in the English Gardens on Munich. We enjoyed some amazing fall weather and colors. I think I got some pretty cool pics so we will see how they turned out:)

Well that was the week! Very busy and went by fast! I am excited to see what the new week brings us! I hope that rest of you have a great week!

Liebe Grüße,

Elder Lyman