The missionaries need our help!!

From Elder Lyman's email:

One thing that is becoming very clear to me right now is that church leaders are right and we, as missionaries, shouldn't be the finders but the members should be sharing and finding so we can teach. I've always known that was ideal but have never worried too much about it because it is just not something that we see very much and I thought the chances weren't great that I would see much of that. In the past I guess it was ok because we had other stuff going on but now I really have the feeling that the work will go no where here until that is happening.

When we just find somebody it is very easy for them to feel the spirit while we're there and have a desire to change, but then between that and the next time we see them it's even easier to forget that and to think of how much easier it would be to just ignore us and not give us any of their time. I can't even believe how much I've seen that this transfer. So things aren't really moving here at all but I do feel a little good that I think that might help members get going here.

The members are great here and I love them, and they're certainly not different than any other members but it's just that here we have nothing else for the time being as where we got by elsewhere.

A French sentence to translate

Here's the sentence that Elder Lyman gave us to translate this week and the translation we came up with:

Dieu a appelé un prophète de nouveau pour que nous sachions comment retourner vivre avec lui

"God called a prophet again so we know how to return to live with him"

French sentence for this week

Hey everybody. Since you asked for more French here ya go; "Les adolescents se fatiguent et se lassent, Et les jeunes hommes chancellent; Mais ceux qui se confient en l'Eternel renouvellent leur force. Ils prennent le vol comme les aigles, Ils courent, et ne se lassent point, Ils marchent, et ne se fatiguent point."

This is what we came up with as the translation:

Teenagers get tired and weary, and young men stumble, but those that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength. They take flight like eagles, They run and not be weary, They walk and not faint.

New Companion

Elder Lyman got a new companion and is still "exiled" in Limoges

This is from his email dated 3/1/10

We got the transfer e-mail Saturday and I'm staying exiled in Limoges, as expected. Quickly, I learned this week that Limoges comes from the verb Limoger which actually means to exile. Anyways my companion is leaving and I am getting Elder Schwind, who if you remember was with me in the MTC and then lived with me in Angers for 3 months. If you remember I was super excited when he was going to be living with me in Angers because me and Dane were both good friends with him in the MTC. Well we're still friends and have actually joked a lot about being companions one day so it's cool.

Pictures from the baptism

We got pictures from this week of Cedric's baptism. They were so fun to see!!

Train Strikes in France....just a part of life.

Elder Lyman's email told about the adventures of the week:

Tuesday we had district meeting, for which we go to Poitiers, our district is us, La Rochelle, and Poitiers and Poitiers is the easiest for us all I guess. So we are here in the middle of nowhere far from everything so it takes a long time to get places and we have to get up way early for trains because there aren't a ton. So we woke up at like 5 and took a train a couple hours to Poitiers. It was our district meeting with the zone leaders and we did exchanges with them afterwards. So me and one of them came back to Limoges after district meeting. Generally exchanges are like 24 hours but since we're in France where they strike almost daily we got stuck here because of a train strike and they were a full couple of days, which was weird. Then we went to Poitiers Thursday to switch back, and again woke up at like 5. The travel took up more than half of that day.

Then yesterday we had interviews in Tours, so we again woke up at like 5 for a train. Then that train was cancelled and we took another one 8 minutes later, 8 minutes that made us just miss the connection we had to make to get to Tours. So we were stuck in the gare where we had to connect for an hour and a half or so after another train we needed to take got cancelled. We finally got a train to Tours and got there luckily right as things started, which we didn't think we'd be able to do. So that was our whole day yesterday and why we didn't have p-day.

A little more about Elder Lyman's transfer

Here's a map that shows Limoges where Elder Lyman has just been transferred. If you will notice just below Limoges is a town named Grenoble. This is where Josh's best friend Dane (another "Elder Lyman") was just transferred. He is serving in the Switzerland, Geneva mission. How crazy is that that they would be that close to each other!!!