6 month mark, A new nephew

Here's Elder Lyman's most recent email: "Monday again. Well that's definitely cool news about whatever his name is, hopefully I'll find out next week. I'm glad it sounds like everything is going good and all, congrats Jeremy and Heather and Livvy and Cohen. I can't wait to get pictures. Also congrats to the triathloners, that doesn't sound very fun.


Jeremy's and Heather's new baby McCoy



The "Triathloners"


As far as what my days are like, that depends on the day. Monday is p-day and then FHE, Wednesday night is english class, and Saturday morning we play soccer and have an activity at the church in the evening. Those are the only fixed things and other than that it just depends.

These last couple transfers we've been doing quite a bit of work and things with members, quite a bit more so than first transfer, so we have service and member rendez-vous and stuff quite often. We also contact and sometimes try to pass by investigators' and less-actives' houses. We also teach a recent convert quite often, generally a few times a week. So it just depends.

As far as who we are teaching, we have people but we are really having trouble getting a hold of people right now. We teach a less-active member and his non-member wife, he is an African guy from the Congo and she is French. We have a guy who we haven't taught for quite a while but with whom we are still in contact who is an African college student who is Muslim. We are now teaching a lady who is a friend of our recent convert that he brought to a rendez-vous one day, she's just a French lady. Then we have a Chinese guy and girl who just showed up to church one day, I think I've talked about that. And that's kind of it for now.

We had a kind of crazy thing happen yesterday with the Chinese guy and girl. For a few weeks we've been calling him and trying to set something up with them again but he hasn't answered and finally the other day we got a text from him that said he needs to think for a while about whether or not they want to keep seeing us. So that was just kind of that for now, and then yesterday we were walking home from our recent convert's house and we passed a man on the road who walked up and stopped us and started talking to us. He then suddenly went and open his door and pointed for us to come in and sit down, so we did. So we sat in his house and talked to him for like 45 minutes and he was kind of crazy and at some point he talked about how he rented a room out up stairs and how he had people from all over stay there and how at the time he had a Chinese guy and girl there. We asked what their names were and he told us and they were their full, long Chinese names but each had what sounded like the names by which our investigators went in the middle. So we kind of wondered and then they came down stairs and we could see them through a stained glass door and it looked like them. So we walked over and sure enough it was them and they were pretty shocked. They asked us how we knew where they lived and we said we said we didn't but their landlord had just invited us in. So that was all that really happened and we still don't know if we'll start teaching them again but it was pretty crazy and at least now we know where they live so they can't really hide. It was just pretty crazy that in a city with about 150,00 people and thousands of homes we just stumbled into theirs. So that was kind of crazy and took up some e-mail space.

But anyways other than that we didn't do a ton. We did have a really cool activity with the ward Saturday night which I don't really have time to talk about, but it was cool. Also tomorrow we have our interviews with president and it is also my 6 month mark, so that's that. Love you and miss you all."

Feeling good about the French language

Here's Elder Lyman's email which arrived Monday, July 20th, 2009!

"Monday again. To Answer questions: I'm feeling fine about my French, it's not great but it's not a real source of stress or anything usually, but some days are better than others. We haven't been able to contact our Chinese amis for a while but I think we will soon and will continue teaching them. Right now we are teaching them, a referal from a recent convert, a less-active guy and his girlfriend and trying to get ahold of other amis.

It has been really hot around here, it was really bad a couple weeks ago for a while but it's gotten better recently, but yes the humidity is what makes bad and I'm not sure how hot it has been exactly.

We've done a tiny bit of teaching this week but mostly have had a lot of trouble getting ahold of people. We did have zone conference which was cool because Elder Caussè, a seventy, was here. He is, I believe, the first French general authority. So he did the zone conference and he is really cool. He did all the training and stuff and it was really hot and everyone was tired, so to keep us from sleeping and being bored he switched back and forth from English to French. I was really impressed with him and it was really cool to meet him.

Elder Gerald Causse'

Yesterday after church we ate at a member's house and that was really cool. The family is kind of one of the big names in the church in France and they are really cool. I'm just waiting to hear some day Franck Poznanski announced as a new general authority. He is also President Staheli's counselor so you need to be on your best behavior around him. It was really cool though as it generally is there. Those were pretty much the noteworthy things that happened this week.

Anyways as usual I need to get going to FHE.

Love and miss everybody.

Celebrating the 4th of July in France

Here is part of Elder Lyman's email:

Well monday again. It sounds like it was a fairly eventful week there, it wasn't especially eventful here. It was a little difficult to realize that the 4th was happening there and I was missing it. We didn't do a whole lot to celebrate, though we did wake up first thing and listen to the national anthem sung by Jericho Road and waved around little American flags, which were provided by my Scottish companion, and that night we made hamburgers.

We did have somebody we hadn't even met just walk in to church this week, which makes 2 weeks in a row. A lady came who I believe was catholic but was too far away from a catholic church or something so she just brought her 2 kids to see what our church was. A member came and got us out of sunday school to tell us she was out there so we just went with here and her kids to primary and I think she really seemed to like it, then we went to sacrament meeting and I believe she seemed happy with that too. She wasn't way big on the idea of giving us her number and being taught just yet but she has ours and I think she might come again next week. And the week before we just had a chinese guy and girl come who had just heard about the church from a friend who we have taught before and we are now teaching them so that is cool. Then yesterday we went to another member family's house for lunch. They live rather far and since we don't have a car we had to just have them drive us and when we do that we are just kind of at their mercy as far as when we come back so we were there for about seven hours. They are a rather crazy family and it's always interesting with them so it was quite a day. This time they spent they whole day planning a wedding for a son and an adopted daughter, that's one wedding, not one for each of them. But it was really fun, though their lasagna made us all a little sick today. But there isn't really a ton else going on here. love you and miss you all.