May 2012 - A transfer to LYON

7 May 2012
Greetings from Gerland... a neighbourhood in LYON

Elder Bennallack and Elder Temanaha-moo

Boom! yeah I got transferred, I'm now with a Tahitian who's name is Elder Temanaha-moo, I know him a little, so pretty pumped for the transfer. Lyon's huge though so I am a little nervous but I'm in with Elder Allen as ZL and Elder Smith should be coming down mid transfer when they move the mission office from Geneva to Lyon, so that's sick. Elder Allen told me at the 'gare', Lyon is a party, all we do is party and baptise. Obviously he was joking, he is a hard hard worker, but I am hoping that we will have fun here too. There are sisters in the ward I am in I believe. In Lyon there are actually 3 wards, I know there should be more, but that is my first city with more that one missionary equipe.


Before talking about our 'amis', I am going to tell you a long story about one of the experiences we had this week. Sorry in advance if its too long


Monday night after we were planning, and Elder Frazier was praying, I mustn't have been a very good collegue because my mind was wondering. During the prayer I had the thought to go at 10 am the next morning near a round-about about 10 mins away from our apartment. Having the thought that I would meet a Polynesian man there. So even though we had already planned our day, I told Elder Frazier about the thought and we planned to leave the apartment a little early the next day to go to this round-about.


The next morning we walked out to the round-about, being a public holiday there was hardly anyone on the road. When we arrived, there was a french man that we talked to, then an elderly woman who wasn't interested. Cutting our losses we planned to go continue with our original plans. When we turned around to continue, there we saw a polynesian looking man going for a morning jog heading towards us. We called out to him and said that we share a message about Jesus Christ. Running passed us he told us that he didn't have the time and kept running. THEN about about 5 seconds later he turned around, ran up to us and told us that he at least had the time to say'hi' to us; then adding but he didn't hve the time to talk. I then said to him, "well could we run along with you??" "Why not!" he said, so we set off, the 3 of us running down the street. Long story short, the run became a walk, then we ended up just talking. Jesus Christ is this man's Saviour and he loved the Book of Mormon. He was still in a hurry but he quickly showed us where he lives and we will head around there this week when he gets back from vacation with his FAMILY. Oh and for the record, he's New Caldonian.

Long story, but I loved it, afterwards we were SHOCKED about the blessing that we were showed, so we thanked Heavenly Father again.


Other highlights of the week: Last night we were able to see a less active family that we have started seeing since Elder Frazier arrived. Tthe Family Diaz, mother with 3 daughters, the youngest whose name is Sidney is 11 and isn't baptised yet. Last night we were able to eat with the family and the boyfriend of the oldest daughter (21) and give a dedicated Book of Mormon to Sidney and explain a little bit about the Book of Mormon with the boyfriend. Awesome family and I really feel that the mother is wanting to come back to church, but is wanting to do it "doucement".


Ok now to Sam, our engagé. So we weren't able to see him at all this week. It killed me. Having said that, we still have daily contact with him, but daily contact wont be enough to get him ready for his baptism. Currently his date is the 13th, he will not make it, but we will try to do the 20th which will be the Sunday when he is in Besançon. He didn't come to church this week, he played an away game, but because they lost, they are out of the finals which means his season is finished!! Blessing for us. So hopefully this week we will be able to see him, by we I mean Elder Frazier and his son, (his new trainee) and fix solid plans to help him be baptised.


Germaine, a girl that we met at a bus stop 3 weeks ago, came to church for the 3rd week in a row. Unfortunately we were also unable to see her this past week, she is one of the appointments that fell through. Although she is going good, loving the branch, and we can't wait untill we can see her again to invite her towards baptism.

To clarify things, 'doucement' means slowly,' engagé' means they have a baptisimal date, they are "engaged" for baptism. 'Collegue' is companion and I think thats all the 'fregnlish' I used. Frenglish is going to KILL me when I finish. When I speak French I throw in English, when I speak English, I throw in French, which ever language describles the situation better.

To go back to the story about the New Calidonian, one thing I liked about the contact is his answer to our question. I think like Elder B2, we are trying to start contacts with questions, I asked him a question while running. I asked him, "so for you, who is Jesus Christ?" He looked me dead in the eye and said, "He is my Saviour". Boom, spirit started pumping my heart, it was a nice moment. Actually there were lots of cool little "coincidences".

Now I am in Lyon and Lyon is the centre for transfers. That is to say that missionaries pass through Lyon to go to other places. So today is a bit messy.

Besanson will be missed, we worked crazy hard there. Like I would say on average we only ate 4 or 5 meals a week, and it was rarely at our appartment. Ok not counting breakfast, we ate that every day, but lunches and dinners were rare. Work work work. Bu tit should be cool. Elder Frazier will be training someone this transfer so that's great.

Gros bisous
Elder Bennallack

15 MAY 2012

The ward was nice, but I didn't get to meet everyone, but they loved the fact that I'm from Australia.

Actually it seems here that everyone wants to come to Australia. They "dream of [our] country". So that's 'aight'. I'm looking forward to meeting more of the ward. Actually there are a lot of YSA's because there are alot of people that come here to study. Most of the recent baptisms are YSA's so thats chill. The fact that they have a young single adult center here in Lyon, in the centre of the city, helps a lot.

Originally there was Ecully Ward. This ward grew so much they make another. That other grew so much they made Gerland, where I am. At the moment they both have about 80 attending and Ecully has 200. They are soon going to break that one up and make a 4th ward here in Lyon. Actually the Stake President here is amazing. He has a Mormon messgage of him rock climbing. He's young and has a huge 10 year vision where he plans on splitting the stake by the end of his time. And he is on track. Already Oen Branch has become a ward and the Ecully ward will probably next year split. But he is the man!

So what did I do yesterday? We contacted alot, taught a less active, then contacted again. This week because we have zero investigators I think that I might take a lot of time to go into the surrounding villages in our area. This is where all the families are hiding and to me it makes perfect sense because that is where the vast majority of the ward lies, in these surrounding villages. So we will have the occasion to find, and also visit allot of members. Should bring forth fruits.

Yesterday we walked passed a catholic church, a beautiful building, and there was some poppy concert going on. The guys out front called us over, so we went and talked to them a little bit. One of them had in the past a Book of Mormon, but they weren't interested in being converted, just to talk. They invited us to come in and feel the Holy Ghost as long as we don't try and start to preach to everyone. I can't remember how the conversation turned, but we started talking about how the Holy Ghost can be felt in a lot of places. For example, I was in an evangelistic church and felt the spirit STRONG there, probably because no false doctrine was taught in that meeting. Then I said, but we wouldn't ever to a night club to go teach because there is no chance that the spirit would be there. One of the guys said, 'wait, so you don;t go into night clubs to preach??" We both started laughing but he wasn't. Then I asked him, "wait, you are serious?" he said "yeah of course!" and we started laughing some more because he said that catholic priests go into night clubs to preach. Then still laughing I ask his friend, "wait is he actually serious?" and it turns out that yes! they were both serious. Then he added they don't go in with their collars because that would scare people but they go there and I think he said they do it whilst DJ-ing or something. But bottom line is, catholic priests are in night clubs. So the next time anyone thinks of going and being dodgy in a night club, remember, there is a catholic priest watching hahahahaha! (so creepy!)

I also accidently contacted a prostitute. She wasnt really dressed skanky and we had a great conversation about God and her desires for her 5 year old son. Then we quickly realised when another hooker came over and then a pimp drove past to pick them up, but then because he thought we were hitting on them he kept driving. But it's sad, soo sad.

We also met other cool people this week. Most of the people who gave us their number and, or were interested in talking again, had already had contact with missionaries in the past;, So that's an interesting side note

There is lots and lots of work to do this week. We will spend Wednesday moving the office down to Lyon, which means there will be a new number if ever you need to call the office, but apparently you have already been notified.

Elder J Bennallack



22 May 2012
My email is still being silly so I didnt actually get to read any of the emails that were sent to me. I sent an email to the church people incharge so hopefully by next week things will be sorted out.

This week was 'aight'. The mission office moved from Geneva down to Lyon, so for a couple days we were all of us here in Lyon in our civil clothes helping the office move. Lots of heavy things and it was lots and lots of fun. I think one of the funnest moments was when we were unloading the piano from the truck. It was one of the last things to take off and we were waiting for trollies to roll it to the elevator etc etc. /There was my district leader, one of the assistants, me and President waiting with the piano on the corner of a street. I said to the assistant Elder Claflin that he should play us something, so he started playing 'I am a child of God' with a great baseline on the left hand and it just sounded soo good, soo happy.

Heaps of people who were walking in the streets were looking at us, cars were looking at us while they were driving past and President Murdock was kinda just leaning against the piano waving at all the cars and people walking past saying 'bonjour'. It was just one of the funniest moments on the mission, soo funny. I wish I had a recording of it. The scene, the music, the sitation, just everything about it was a memory.



Besides the move, we did a lot of finding. As it was good weather we took the board and went out to a place, or a square or however you call it in English and talked to the most amount of peoplel we could. Actually on our big board we decided just to put a smily face. Kinda like this : = ) but right way up, and normally because there are pictures of Jesus or the First Vision or scriptures of things written on there, a smiley changed things up. It was sooo much fun. People were loking at it and were curious. So we started asking people, "for you in life, what makes you happy??" Then we would tie that into how the gospel of Jesus Christ has for a goal to make us more happy etc etc. It was fun. I look forward to doing it more. Although right now it's riaining and the weather is pretty average looking, we will have to wait a few days before we will have the change again.



Other than that, things are cruising; loving the mish. My companion is funny, always has a story to tell. Although I have to admit, I am not a fan at all of the Tahitian accent in French. But that's ok, I will just have to teach him Engish. haha! Actually it's pretty funny with all the non-english speakers, because often they get taught random expressions from missionaries like freaky freak, etc etc. So often he comes out with not the most constructive english but it makes me smile in any case..

Elder Bennallack

oh btws the rue de l'abondance address is the adress of the new
mission office, but they ask that all letters etc be sent straight to
my appartment, the address i gave you last week

New Mission Office address:
La Mission Française de Lyon
Attn: Elder Bennallack
Lyon Business Center
59 rue de l’Abondance
69003 LYON, FRANCE


29 May 2010

Yesterday was actually a public holiday in France, so we did a bit of a half a pday yesterday and then half today. Yesterday we quickly checked the emails then I was replying to dad when my companion reminded me that we had to go to our RDV. Lucky I have a good colleague haha!

That's right we had to go to our RDV. boyah!! It is actually with one of our two new investigators we have picked up. She is AMAZING; her name is Jia Hong, yeah guess where shes from? We call her Lucie though. Lucie is her French name. We found her, on the side of a big busy sidewalk with our board. She has actually been studying with the Jehovas Witnesses for the past 3 months, and loves Christianity. So that's great. She has been nicely prepared to understand and accept what we have :) For our first RDV she came to the YSA Institute Centre that is here in down town Lyon (handiest thing EVER) where they hold institute and other activities throughout the week. We gave the little tour and she saw the display with all the photos of the YSA's here, she looked at me and said: "are they all Christians??" I said with a big smile, "yes! they are all Christians". haha! I think she was a bit shocked. So far we have seen her a few times since our first encounter last week, she came to church on Sunday, not to our ward but the ward in the arvo, which was good because there were a few other chinese recent converts/investigators in that ward that she already knew from the YSA Institute Centre. We saw her yesterday and will see her tomorrow, and she is just excellent. It's my first real chinese investigator and I just love them. It's true things have to be taught simply and slowly, but it's just excellent!

Also at church, there was our 'walk in self refferal' from the week before. Simon is his name. A 40 year old African who is basically French because he has lived here since his childhood. He devoured the first 15 chapters of the Book of Mormon this past week. That's great! We should be seeing him for the first time this week. So lookiing forward to that! He is just like a sponge, wanting to absorb everthing there is. haha great guy.

It seems like our finding efforts are starting to yield fruit. Lyon is great! It's starting to warm up and I just LOVE being in a city with more than 2 missionaries. It's soo fun. Seeing them at the Institute, doing stuff together for Pdays, it's just wonderful. I'm lucky to be in Lyon for such an exciting time.

Elder Bennallack with President and Sister Murdock at a recent Zone Conference

This past week there was a zone conference; sooo much love between us missionaries; especially as we all know eachother really, really, well now..

France continues to be great, our apartment is on the 6th floor of a building. On the ground floor there is a bakery. Most mornings we wake up the the smell of french patisseries wafting up and filling our room. Especially as it begins to get hot and we have to sleep with the windows open. The downside is that the fly screen never really did make it into France so mozzies get in, alot. We are experimenting with different solutions for this problem.

Elder J Bennallack

A giant eclaire type patisserie..