Linz Austria Week 10

Wow what a week! This one went by quick but we had a lot of cool things to do! This week consisted of lots of free ice cream, finding a golden family to teach, wearing a short sleeve for the first time of the year, and finding some sick graffiti!

Starting with the highlight of the week would be meeting the Büll Family! The Bülls family consist of Erik, Karin and there 2 year old son Fabio.  They had seen some missionaries in Linz before and were curious about what they believed so one day they decided to talk to the missionaries! They taught them for a while and they seemed really golden! They lost contact because Erik and Fabio went to Brazil for 3 months because Erik is from Brazil and they never really made contact with them after that. We do not really know why but nothing really happened. So basically we talked to one of the old missionaries that was here in Linz and he said to dig up their record and give them a call. We did that and made an appointment last week! They are the coolest family! Like I said, he is from Brazil and she is Austrian. They are Catholic and have strong ties to the Catholic church but they love our church so much! They said that the time is coming when they need to decide if they want to stay where they are, or make the big step and become Mormons! They did say that they would rather raise there children in our church because it's a better environment! As you can see, I'm really excited about them! They are so great! We are going back this week so I will keep you updated on how it goes! 

Well, other than that things are pretty normal. The senior couple here in Linz is going home this week so that means the new couple is coming! That should be fun! Our ward is also having a baptism this Saturday which will be cool! She is a older lady that is being taught by the sisters after we the Elders found her (pat myself on the back for that one). We are all really excited for that!

We also found ourselves eating free ice cream EVERYDAY this week! I am just eating my way through all the flavors. I'm really enjoying that. It is filling all the holes in my arteries which is always healthy. 

Well that was my week. Odds are this next one will also be good! The mission is always an adventure!

Love,

Elder Lyman

Linz Austria Week 9

Hi friends and family!

Another week and come and gone for me here in Linz! This week has been full of good experiences! 

At the beginning of the week on Tuesday, we had Zone Training in Salzburg. It is just a meeting with all the missionaries and we get training from the Zone Leaders. The Zone Leaders are Elder Plumb and Elder Cavin. I lived with them both for a transfer so we are really great friends. It was really fun to go back to Salzburg and see all my mission friends. After the meeting, all of the missionaries go to this really amazing Döner Shop in Salzburg. I think I have already explained what that is. Basically it is really good Turkish street food that is really popular here. It is super good. We kind of made it a tradition to go there after meetings.

In the middle of this week, we did not really have much going on. Elder Spencer and I wanted to try some door to door contacting to see if we could find some new people to teach. We found this really huge apartment building that had 19 floors with hundreds of doors. We spent hours knocking on doors and we only talked to a couple people. It was fun but it did not really work as far as finding people. 

Another highlight of this week was that we had stake conference this weekend also in Salzburg. It was really nice to see a lot of the members from the Salzburg ward. It was nice to see that people actually remembered me! They have to have the meetings in a hotel conference room because none of the churches are big enough for all the members. It was really cool. President and Sister Kohler were there as well so it was really fun to see them. They are great people. Everyone loves them!

The last highlight of the week was today. The Bishop of our ward, he and his dad own a bunch of ice cream shops here in Linz that opened today! They told us that we can go there everyday and get free ice cream! We went there today and it was so good! I am super excited to go there everyday until I leave Linz! I will just need to work out harder in the morning so that I don't feel guilty. 

Well that is about it everyone! I hope that everyone who reads this letter is doing well.  Have a great week and I hope to hear from you all soon!

Shöne Woche,

Elder Lyman

Linz Austria Week 8

Well hi everyone! I have had another great week in Linz! Where do I start? Well I will start at the beginning. 

This week had been a lot like weeks in the past. We have been spending a lot of time "unterwegs". That is a perfect German verb that describes my life right now.  Immer unterwegs which translates to always being out and about walking and talking to people. We are visiting a lot of former investigators right now wondering if maybe they have some interest to learn about the church again! We have found this to be a pretty good way to find people to teach. We will maybe get in contact with 1 out of every 20 people we go by on. It is not great, but its better that 0 out of 20! While we are traveling to where these people live, we try to talk to everyone that the Lord puts into our path. We hear a lot of people tell us that they have "keine Zeit" which is no time or that they don't have interest.  It is good to even hear that because that means we were lucky enough to even get them to stop!  I learn to just smile and be nice to the people that are not so nice to us!  It can be funny sometimes!  I have really enjoyed talking and getting to know so many different people on my mission. It is interesting to see what people are like outside America.

As far as the people that we are teaching right now, Maxim is the only promising one. We are working hard with him so that he can get baptized ASAP.  It is hard for him to find time to meet during the week because he is so busy but is it going good.  He is a really cool guy who you can tell is really looking for the truth! We are really excited for him!

As far as P-day adventures today, we just like to keep it simple. The main street in Linz is called Land Strasse. It has lots of cool stores and stuff like that. We usually just walk up and down going into the different stores while maybe eating a pretzel or two or three or four or five. They are really good over here. I just try on all the nice European cloths that I wish I had the money to buy. Its great! emailing is for sure the highlight of the day. 

Well friends that is the report. The work is work over here but we are enjoying it and having fun! I am grateful to be a part of the Lords work!  Have a great week everyone and I hope to hear from you all soon!

Shöne Woche,

Elder Lyman

Linz Austria Week 7

 This is Elder Spencer's "I love doing work in the rain 

while listening to Elder Lyman sing" face .

Hi friends and family of me! Wow the weeks are just flying by so fast!  I can't believe that it is already March!  I still have a long ways to go on my mission but the time is going by so fast!

Things in Linz are going really well!  I love this city more and more every day!  It is still really cold and rainy but I think it is almost over.  I really can't wait for it to be warn so that I can go outside in just a short sleeve shirt!  

We had a great week.  We set a baptismal date with one of our investigators!  His name is Maxim and he is from Ghana.  He plays semi pro soccer here in Linz and he is a total BOSS!!!  He is really humble and just looking for the truth.  We set the date for April 4th and then realized that day is General Conference.  We might have to push it back a little for that reason but he is getting baptized none the less! We are really excited for him! 

We also had dinner with our less active member that we have been doing service for and his wife this week!  He has been coming to church a lot more lately which has been really cool! His wife is not a member so we really tried to give a bomb spiritual thought at the end and I think we really nailed it. The spirit was so strong.  After our thought she said that she would like to learn a little more about the church!  We are so excited and hope to start teaching her this week.  It was so cool to see the spirit speaking to her as we testified about the restored gospel!  You could see it in her eyes that she felt something!  It is a great feeling to be an instrument in the Lord's hands and to help people know how much God loves them!

Other than that it has been just a normal missionary week.  We did not really do anything crazy for p-day today.  I finally gave in a bought some cool clothes that I can't wear until I get home but that's ok!  Other than that, we just visited with some cool people while it was raining today! That was a fun!

Well . . . that's all folks!  I'm sure enjoying myself here in Linz!  I hope you all have a great week!  I hope to hear from you soon!

Habe euch lieb,

Elder Lyman

Linz Austria Week 6

Hello friends and family! Its me again. Another great week in the mission field. We had transfer calls this week and found out that Elder Spencer and I will be staying together for another transfer! He only has one more after this one so maybe I will "kill him" here in Linz! I do not really want to because I got really "trunky" when Elder Kingery went home, but who knows what will happen? I was actually sick most of this week with a cold so that was a bummer. We had to stay in the flat for one full day. I am feeling much better now, which is good! 

I would like to tell a story this week just to spice things up a little and add some length to my "short, dry" weekly letter -- whatever that means?  A funny thing happened this week which pretty much reflects how my mission has been going so far.  We got a call from a guy who joined the church here in Linz back in 2012.  He then left the church  a year later to become a Muslim (kind of weird i know).  Anyway, he called us and told us that he heard a voice telling him to go back to the Church. He said he wanted to meet with us so that he could be re-baptized because he had his membership removed.  Of course we went over and had a great lesson with him.  We were super excited for him to come back to the Church!  He described the feelings he had as we met with him as "coming home” — so he sounded pretty golden to us!  We were really happy and excited!  This is when the story gets interesting.....The next day we woke up and we had a voicemail from him saying basically he had NO INTEREST in coming back to the Church and he wanted NO CONTACT with us for the rest of his life!  He literally said, "I never want to see you again!" Anyway we were obviously sad — but got over it.  The mission will definitely throw you a curve ball every once in a while!

Well there it is. A story. Take it for what it’s worth. We have a few solid appointments this week with some new people. Hopefully I will be able to report next week our progress with these new investigators!

For P-day today, we rode this little train up to this really sick old church on a mountain here in Linz. It was super cool!  Pöstling Berd is what it is called. Maybe you can google it. Anyway we went up there with some people in the district and it was awesome. It has a great view over all of Linz, so that was cool.

Well, that is it people. We are enjoying ourselves here and working hard. I hope everyone back home has a great week!

Shöne Woche und viel Spaß!

Elder Lyman

Linz Austria Week 5

Hi friends and family! This week has been just great here in Linz! 

First, we had a super cool mission conference in Munichl!   We all piled into a rail jet train and headed to Germany.  About 60% of the mission was there.  Elder Kearon from the Seventy was our presiding authority and spoke to us. It was amazing!  He is a really great guy.  It was also nice to see a lot of the missionary friends that I have not seen in a while.  It seems that when you first come on a mission, you obviously don't know anybody -- but as time goes by, you leave with so many cool friends! It is kind of amazing to see that! Anyway, that was the big highlight from the week.

Today we had a cool district P-day as well.  We all went to Wels, Austria which is only about a 15 minute train ride from Linz -- and we went bowling! It was really fun! It reminded of all the times I went bowling with all my pals back home! We have district meeting tomorrow back in Wels and we are going to this really good schnitzel place.  We’re celebrating that an Elder in our district is dying this transfer.  (That just means he is going home.)  Somehow I got roped into paying for it because I have some extra money for the month. I guess that is what I get for having a big mouth about how much money I have.

We did not do to much teaching this week. We have a lot of investigators but it is just hard for them to find time to meet with us. We just need to keep working hard to find new people to teach. Actually one cool thing happened today — on our way back from Wels, the guy next to me was wearing a jacket and it had a patch on it that said something about the Rocky Mountains and SLC. I asked him if he had ever been to SLC and he didn’t even know where it was.   Anyway, I ended up giving him some stuff about the Church in Linz, so maybe something will come from that?   It was just nice to talk with someone.

Other than that, it is just same old!  We are just going to keep plugging along -- working hard!   Thanks for all your thoughts and prayers for me!   Love you all!

Shöne Woche,

Elder Lyman 

Linz Austria Week 4

I love this little fire place!

We are getting so much snow!!

Gettin my Harry Potter on!!

Cool new ties for 3 euros each!!

Hallo everyone! I 'm afraid this weekly letter will be rather short because my family had taken most of my time to email.  Anyway this was however a fantastic week here in Linz!  It is snowing like crazy here and has been all week!  It can be really pretty at times,but I'm ready for it to be warm again! 

This week we found some new cool people to teach!  One little thing that happened was this really cool young guy just showed up to church wanting to learn more about the Mormons!  Normally when that happens they are homeless or really drunk and he was neither!  He was normal!  He came to the investigator class after sacrament meeting and then we talked about the restoration with him 3rd hour!  It was really cool!  It kind of shows that the Lord will send the people he had prepared right to you!  We are going to meet with him again later this week so that should be really great!  His name is Andreas if you want to pray for him!

We also did some more service for a less active man in the ward which was fun!  Same person as last week.  We are taking out these really tough steel door frames with a jack hammer which is really fun! I'm really sore though.  He has been coming to church as well which is really great!  He even said we could come over and talk to his non-member wife about the church! 

Well that is about all this week folks.  I'm living the dream here in Austria!  God bless you all!

Shöne Woche,

Elder Lyman