Munich Germany Week13

Hi friends and family! 

Wow this has been a crazy and busy week but we have seen a lot of amazing things happen! I think that our ward has turned into a small piece of Africa because right now we are teaching like over 10 people from Africa! It is really funny because we do not even really go out and find these people, they find us! I think in the past two weeks like 5 people have just showed up to church and said that friends told them to come and that they want us to teach them so they can get baptized! I will go though everyone i can and give a little summary of who they are and how we found them.

Osman - He is a new convert from Sierra Leon. He got baptized just before I came to Munich. He is about 25 and super cool! He has stayed really active after joining the church. He got the priesthood a few weeks ago and passes the sacrament each week! He always reminds me that I am, "a man of God" haha

Andrew and Rebecca - We all know this family! They got baptized about a month ago. We are still teaching them the new convert lessons. Andrew got the priesthood two weeks ago. They are sooo strong in the gospel and know the Book of Mormon inside and out! They have made my whole mission worth it! They are hoping to come to America someday to "learn the word of the brethren in Utah" there four daughters are the cutest!

Vito and Precious - Vito and Precious are friends of Andrew and Rebecca's that they brought to church. Also from Nigeria. They have two boys who are 2 and 2 months old! They are learning the gospel really fast and as of this week they or scheduled to be baptized in about a month and a half! We teach Vito and Andrew German every Monday together which is really good for them. They said they got their answer this week that the BOM is the word of God!

Godman - He is a man of God for sure hahaha he is also from Nigeria. He is the one we met when we starting teaching his neighbors. He was about to get baptized in Italy but then he came to Germany. It was a miracle we found him. Now we just need to help him come to church on Sunday:)

Mercy - Also from Nigeria. She lives in the same building as Godman and one day when we were leaving Godmans house I saw her out on a lawn chair and I had the feeling to go talk to her! We ended up having three great lessons with her last week and she came to church as well! She was really impressed with my ability to speak a little Nigerian dialect with her. I picked some up by working in the international ward;)

Charles and Oieyehe - I am still trying to figure out how to say her name too! They Zone Leaders here in Munich found this Nigerian couple and brought me with them to a lesson so we could start teaching them because our ward is in English. They are a great family with a 7 year old daughter and a 2 year old son named Destiny! They love the Book of Mormon and really want to get baptized! We just need to make sure they understand everything before they make the commitment!

Syre - He is Nigerian but moved to Munich a month ago from Italy. He walked into the church one sunday and told us that he had just got baptized in Italy a month ago. He is maybe 20 years old and really cool! He brought his friend to church today and we are going to start teaching him this week!

Samson - Friend of Syre who i just talked about. Came to church with Syre and really loved it! We wants a Book of Mormon really bad. We have an appointment with him on Tuesday so we will see how it goes!

Siste Opare - Wife of a member. They are from Ghana. We starting teaching her a few weeks ago. She is pretty involved in her own church but she is making slow progress. Whenever we go teach her she cooks us tons of good African food! I felt pretty brave eating fish bones in the fish she gave us. "You got to eat your bones"!

These are not all but the main people we are teaching right now! It has been amazing to see The Lord send so many of His children to us so we can teach them! I will try to take a pic next week at church with all of them and send it home! That has basically been the week!

Another small miracle was getting a little "care package" from the member that lives on the U.S. base in our ward. I will attach a pic and you'll see what I mean.

Also props to my brother for getting married yesterday while I am gone....well played....

Have a great week everyone and I will hear from you all soon i hope!

Elder Lyman

Munich Germany Week 12

Hi again friends!

This week has been a busy one but a fun one! I will try to go through the days that were the most eventful and describe what a normal transfer week is like for a office Elder! 

Starting with Wednesday - Wednesday is the start of all the chaos! The new missionaries come into Munich International Airport in the morning from the MTC in Preston. We drive about one hour to the airport with our huge VW van for all the luggage. We get there, wait for the goldens. Once they come, we get all there luggage and load it into the van. We drive the van back to the mission office while the Goldens ride the Sbahn which is like a little train from the airport back to the office. We give them copies of the BOM to give out to people which is pretty funny because they can mostly barley know how to say there own name in German. They get to the mission office, we have lunch and then there are a few hours of training that they go through. I have a part of the training that i do which is fun just because new missionaries are soooo funny!  Anyway after that they go to the mission home and have dinner and find out where there first area is. Then based on how big the group is, they will stay at the mission home or go stay in a hostel in Downtown Munich. 

Thursday - This is the day that is the most crazy for me. We show up at the train station, and wait for the first group of missionaries to come in. Munich is the hub of all the travel so all the missionaries come through Munich if they are crossing the mission. We have the master plan of all the missionaries that are being transferred with all there connecting train times and stuff like that. They show up, we tell them where to go next, give them a ticket, and tell them,"viel glück!" which is "good luck" in English! That usually lasts for 3-4 hours till all the missionaries are gone. Then all the missionaries we have left at the train station are the ones that are going home that transfer. We then put all there stuff in the van,(the beast as we call it) and drive it to a church in central Munich while they take the subway. They get there are have interviews with President Kohler and have dinner and cry a lot because they are going home. We all know they are secretly happy though.

Friday - We wake up early and drive the fan BACK to the airport while the dying missionaries take a train there. We get there, give them there bags, flight info, check them in and say Tschüß!! Also a very emotional time, but its tons of fun. I had lots of friends that went home this transfer so it was cool to be there with them as long as I could! Then we drive home and that is that!

Well that is why things get pretty crazy around transfers! It is fun but very stressful. It takes a lot of preparation but when the work in done right, things work out ok!

One other cool thing that happened this week, was that we starting teaching a family that is friends with Andrew and Rebecca! They brought them to church last week and they loved it! We have met with them three times this week and they are excepting the gospel and are acting on it! They are a great little family! They have a two year old son and a one month old son! They are also from Nigeria! They should be coming to church tomorrow so we will see how things go! 

Well that has been the week! I hope everyone is enjoying life as much as I am! Missions are a great time is peoples life and I'm so happy right now is my chance to experience this! Have a great week and I hope to hear from you all soon!

Elder Lyman

Munich Germany Week 11

Hi friends!

A great week was had this week by us ! I will just start from the beginning and talk about some of the big highlights that happened this week!

The first big thing would be that on Monday we found out all the transfers! I will be staying in the Mission Office but one of my comps Elder Evans has been transferred to a place called Lahr! He will be missed. Elder Evans and I did all of our office work together so now I'm the main guy. The other crazy part of these transfers is that no one is coming to replace him so I will be the only office Elder on our side of the office for the next transfer! I will be a lot busier which is good, but I might be stressed out about a lot of stuff. We will just wait and see how it goes! And after we find out transfers we have to re start to build the transfer plan for the whole mission. All the travel and stuff like that. That has kept us pretty busy this week.  It's a lot of work but we have a pretty good system!

Another cool highlight of the week was that we found a special new investigator! There is a family in our ward from Ghana and the husband is a member but the wife is not. She comes to church a lot but is really strong in her own faith. The ward has been trying to get her baptized forever but it just never works out! She had never even met with the missionaries in the past. Well we went over for dinner this week and they cooked us a ton of African Food which was tons of good, but then we gave a spiritual thought based on temple work because that is something that her husband  said she was interested! We talked for a while and she seemed really interested is temple work so we explained that temple work is just one of the many amazing pieces of the restored gospel that could bless her life. We invited her to have us teach her the missionary lessons from Preach my Gospel and she

excepted! We are really excited to start teaching her with the help of her husband! Should be promising!

We also had a killer Pday today! We have been trying to find a way to go visit this really amazing beautiful manner way at the bottom of our area, but it had just been really hard to do because it's so far away.  But, we got invited to have dinner with a member family that live on the U.S. Base that is really close to where we wanted to go! We got lucky and got to drive down there and visit the schloss as they call it in German, and then have dinner at there house on the base! Before we went over to there house we met him at the grocery store at the base pick up a few things. It is an American store so we roomed the isles of the store in amazement to see Root Beer and Dr. Pepper in two liter bottles with flaming hot Cheetos and twinkles and stuff like that! We did leave the store with some A&W and a bottle of Ranch dressing so that was a total tender mercy.

This week was also big because yesterday marks my one year mark of leaving for the MTC! I didn't do anything crazy life burn a tie or a shirt or anything. I simply enjoyed thinking about all the great

things that have happened on my missions! All the amazing people I have met, and all the experiences that have changed me and my testimony forever! I can really say that I know better than ever that the gospel has been restored and that the church of Christ lives and is run by his called leaders! I'm so grateful to serve a mission and I'm so excited to see what the next year brings!

Have a great week everyone and I hope to hear from you all soon!

Alles Gute!

Elder Lyman

Munich Germany Week 10

Hi friends and Family!

Well it's me again! Well this week has been pretty good I would say!  We have not been doing too much but we had some cool stories I could tell!

So on Tuesday we got a call from a member in our ward. They have a 17 year old daughter and a friend of hers who is from Washington DC was staying with them this week. He friend is not a member but she is religious and had tons of questions about the church. They called us and asked if we would have time to come over the next day and meet with them and there friend! We were quite excited and excepted the invitation gladly! We went over and had a great conversation! We answered a lot of great questions that she had, and taught the restoration! She understood it really well and seemed really interested to learn more about the church! We got her information and and going to pass it on to the missionaries in DC because she said she would glad to stop by to the church visitor center there and learn more! It was really great!

Another funny thing that happened this week was on Thursday we got a call from President Kohler asking us if we could go to the air port and pick up a missionary that was coming back into the field. We set off to the Munich airport to get him. It took about a hour to get there with the car and then we just waited for him at the gate. We waited for about 30 minutes at the gate of his flight and he never

showed up! They then announced that all the passengers that were on that flight were through the gate already but he wasn't there. We called President Kohler and told him what had happened, and he said he would make some calls to find out what happened. We went and got a Döner in the mean time. We found out later that the Elder had no idea that he was  supposed to re-report into the mission that day. It was a big waste of time but it just shows that we have a perfect church run by imperfect people.

Well all our investigators and new members are doing great! Andrew and Rebecca are still the best and they keep growing in the gospel! It is so great to see! We also met with Godman this week. He is the new person we found last week in kind of a miracle of way. He is progressing really well and is bringing a few of his friends to church tomorrow! We will see what happens!

Well I can't think of anything more to report on! We will find out on Monday the transfers for next transfer so Elder Evans and I will be busy next week putting the transfer map together! Should be fun!

Have a great week and I hope to hear from all of you soon!

Liebe Grüße,

Elder Lyman