Alden - Taiwan - September 4, 2011

Dear Family.


So this week the work has been a little slow. all week we contacted. the good news is we now have a lot more new investigators. We had about 8 Investigators before but we could never get ahold of a lot of them. Or they couldn't find time to meet with us, especially with our crazy schedules. But, all is well, we are being blessed for our efforts to find.

This week not a whole lot happened. Besides a lot of contacting. I had my first incident with a car. Don't worry it wasn't a crash or a near death experience. I just got a little love tap from some car that happened to be there when I was turning around in the road. So all is well. This next week we have transfer calls. YaY. My companion and I have been talking about it, and it is possible that we will split. Which is crazy because normally you are with your trainer for two transfers. But its OK. If I do get moved I hope it is to zhonghe near Amy. Then we could party all the time.
OK so ya I am alive and well I am feeling great. The work here in Taiwan is moving along.
well that's about it. OH... last night I left my bike lock key at the church when we had the fireside. so when we were heading home, I had to carry my bike. sounds like fun. you should try it.

OK well that's it.

Love you all sooooooooooo much.

Elder Alden Papritz.

Alden - Taiwan - August 29, 2011

Hey Fam!


so for the big event this week. we had a baptism!!!!!!!! Yay!!!. But of course my first baptism had to have some crazy thing happen.

about 30 before the baptism we went to go fill up the font. I went in and plugged up the drain and began to fill it up. all was well. my companion told me to go and check to see if the water was warm so I went and saw that it was not too warm, but wasnt too bad. but i did see that there was some stuff in the water just a few little pebbles not really anything to worry about. as we were thinking about if we should clean the little pebbles out before we filled it my companion turned off the water. we decided that we didnt need to worry about it. we began filling it up again. however there was no water coming out. yep none. no hot water or cold. none. at all. we had a baptism in 25 minutes and there was no water for the baptism. we left the pipe open so it could fill up if water decided to come out, and some did, but then it stopped. for about 40 or so minutes we sat there thinking of what we could do to fill it up. while every few minutes a little more water came out. but still not enough. finaly we decided we might have enough to baptize him if he sat in the water and then just layed down. right before we started the bishop and brother cai praticed. it would work. but before the meeting there still was not enough water for even that. however we needed to start. so we went up to the chapel to begin the meeting. remarks were said and the talks given. I think everyone was stalling. finaly we went down to baptize brother cai and guess what there was barely enough for him to lay down in the water. so it worked. we had a baptism and it was very nice.

so that was the event for the week.
 Love you all.

Elder Alden Papritz.

Alden - Taiwan - August 21, 2011

my dearest Family.


This week has been great. Last wed I got to go to the temple with AMY!!!! It was so cool. I loved being there and feeling such a strong spirit. Amy and I sat in the Celestial room for a long time. just sitting there and talking. we were the second to last people to leave, so we were there a while. afterward we went to Taipei main station where we ate. then we went our separate ways. It is so amazing having her so close.

after our Preparation day on wed we then had English class. OH JOY!!! it is great. It really is. I teach the Advanced class all by my self. This class is the one that have learned a lot of english and are able to speak it very well. so i dont need to speak chinese. it is great. But as always there are those weird people that come that... are just.... they are weird. this one lady always askes about random things. last week she asked me if i could tell her the lyrics to Transformers. she told me that all she remembers was "transformers robots in desguise" and that was it. I told her that that was all i remembered. she asked if there was some way to find it. of couse you can use the internet. she was very supprised that you could find it online. so i told her that if she really wanted she could just look it up. she then just told me in her fairly rough english "well, isnt that a little idiotic" yes, yes it is. She is the one lady that always askes about random things that i dont know. and it has nothing to do with english. just other things. and most the time i dont understand her. well that was one of the crazy english class things for the week. most the time I just answer quetions mostly about myself and America.

now for some amazing news. we are having a baptism this saturday. YAY!!!!!! brother Cai is getting baptised. it is so amazing. his wife is a member, she was baptized about 6 or so weeks ago. we have been teaching her husband since i got here. He is so amazing. he and his wife are always looking out for us. mainly giving us food. also last night we went to a ward family home evning at a family's house. they had a lot of food. and sister Huang, bothers Cai's wife, kept giving me more and more food. I used my eating tactics and ate slowly so that hopfully she wouldnt give me any more. but that did not stop her. she just kept pilling it on. the members where also being very nice and inviting me to eat more and more and more. I thought I was going to die. I don't think I will die here from starvation but possibly from choking or from overeating. I dont know what to do.

so ya Baptism, YAY!!!.

ok also this week we went on exchanges again. so far I have gone on an exchange every week, because my comp. is the district leader. anyways this week i was with Elder Zhou (Elder joe) he is the Zone leader. he is just plain crazy. I thought I was going to die. but I didn't. We went contacting almost the whole day. I was so tired by the end of it. just so mentally tired. but I survied.

well that is about it for this week. Love you all. write you all next week.
Love
Elder Alden Papritz.

Alden - Taiwan - August 16, 2011

Hey Family. how is it going.


so this week has been a lot of work and a lot of trials. honestly it hasn't been that different from other weeks but the work can get fairly hard out here. I love it here in Taiwan, but it can get very discouraging very fast if you dont keep yourself up. once again, we are contacting a lot. we have a good amount of lessons each day but we are always contacting. everywhere we go we are talking to people, or at least i am trying to. It is very sad when i start talking to someone I think is interested and then they need to leave. it Sucks. but besides that I am loving it here.

Ok so just so you all know, I Will not starve her in taiwan. not only is the food very good and very cheap but we have great members who want to qing us chi. wich is to take us out to eat. or they bring us food. all of the time. there is one sister who brings us food every time we teach her husband. it is amazing. I love it. But sadly Im not so sure if all of this running and biking can make up for all of it. so maybe I will lose weight or maybe not. I dont know.
Oh next week I have a baptism, YAY. for Brother Cai, his wife is the one who brings us all of the food. they are amazing. I love them so much. Brother Cai is doing very well. he is very accepting of the teacings and really tries to understand them. He is always great to see. I am very excited to see him get baptized.

ok just a quick side note. sitting here in the internet caffe, in the background we can hear the tv or some video. and it is full of just crying. first a baby then a man then some lady. all just crying. very loud and very very very long. it is crazy I didnt know there was such a channel as the crying channel.

ok well All is well. It is great. I am loving it here.

well I love you all. gongxi gongxi to katelyn and kyle. love you all.

Elder Alden Papritz.

Austin August 9, 2011 Kenosha, Wisconsin

Dear Family,

We are on fire here in Kenosha, Wisconsin. We just tore through another week getting 20 lessons and plenty of new investigators and referrals from members and non-members alike. It was almost just a hilariously weird week. It's almost guaranteed that the more you are out the more likely that just crazy stuff will happen. While we were teaching this one guy in his front yard I heard the engine of a bus driving down the road in front of his house. We kept on teaching the guy and it was going really well, he really understood the restoration and committed to read the Book of Mormon. Then I noticed this African American man and Hispanic-looking teenager walking up to us. The guy interrupted our lesson and handed us a pamphlet. He told us they were just talking to people on the street and encouraged us to read it and told us he wasn't trying to pull anyone away from their church or anything. So I thought, okay, fair-enough; we do the same thing so I can't be too annoyed. And then I thought he was done and then he started probing asking, "So are you guys saved?" I looked over at our investigator expecting him to answer because at that point it hadn't occurred to me that he was really just talking to us and I forgot our investigator didn't speak any English. And so I answer, Yes. And then he asked, "Well how do you know you're saved." "Because grace in Jesus' atonement saves me and through faith, repentance, baptism and receiving the gift of the Holy Ghost." I replied, hoping to be able to shake him off fast and get back to the lesson. But no no, he wasn't satisfied with my answer, "Well sir, the baptism isn't what saves us. That is merely a demonstration, it symbolizes His death, burial and resurrection. It is merely how we show to God that we are truly saved through Jesus." To which I possibly too boredly replied, "Which is why I said that I am saved through Jesus' grace and atonement." So I asked him, "Do you know what we do?"

-"No, I'm not sure I'm familiar with what you do."

-"Where are missionaries for our -"

-"Oh that's great, we have missionaries in Brazil and Peru. We support them as they spread the word of God"

I realized he was really just there are fight with us on no matter what we said. So I just stopped paying attention to him. He eventually tapered off and walked away. The whole conversation his co-hort shaking his head in agreeance to everything the Baptist pastor said. I looked over and saw them hop on the bus that I had heard earlier, like a SCHOOL bus with like 12 teenagers in it. I looked around and realized there was no one else on the entire block. He literally stopped that giant bus and got out to stop our lesson and argue with us. It was way lame.

Then another day we were riding to our last appointment for the day and I noticed a tiny, tiny rabbit in the road near the curb. I decided to stop to try to scare it in to the grass. When I approached him he tried and tried to jump above the curb but he couldn't even jump high enough. So I told Elder Woodward we should try to catch him. It was pretty funny with us running around the street, bent over trying to catch him. He'd only run from one side of the street to the other and when he'd get to the curb I was sure he would just run and jump over it and head off in to the grass but instead would just jump straight forward and slam his head in to the side of the curb. It was so cute and sad. He did it like 4 times and finally got so disoriented that we were able to grab him. He was no bigger than one of my palms. We took the spur of the moment and decided to keep him (against our best judgement). So we went to a nearby member's house to get a cage for him (after we figured out that the investigator we were going to visit wasn't home anyways.) And we biked him with a little rabbit in a cage. We got home and realized we had no food for him and so we headed back out to this Italian family that we met on the street that sold vegetables from their front yard (that's a funny story, I'll have to share that one next week) and he gave us some rabbit food because we knew he owned rabbits. We also ran in to his neighbor and had a way sweet lesson and passed him on to the English Elders and they tell us that he is doing well (which is about the only good thing that came out of all of this). We headed back home and tried to feed him but he wouldn't never do anything but just sit in the corner of the cage and just stare at nothing. So we hit the sack and just left him in the cage. When we woke up (Sunday morning) he wasn't in the cage. Yeah we didn't put the top on the cage but the walls are a good foot high and he couldn't even jump 5 inches on to a stinkin' curb. We were befuddled. We started tearing through our apartment to find him and eventually Elder Woodward took some stuff from under his bed and I could tell he found him because he jerked back. It kind of startled him; there was Genesis (we named him Genesis) just sitting there....in the dark...staring back. So we rounded him up and put him back in the cage and left for church but THIS time with the cage closed. But then when we got back from church HE GOT OUT AGAIN. So we declared him a devil animal and we found him in the corner of our closet and we went outside and put him in the grass in the front yard. We sat there for 5 minutes and he didn't even go anywhere. It was so bizarre just like a horror movie or something, it's like he doesn't move if we are looking at him and then he just POOF and then reappears under beds and in closets from an ENCLOSED CAGE whenever we're not there.

So that was weird and kind of funny.

Well, I got to go. Everything is going sooo well. I started P90X today and it was ROUGH but hurt oh so good.

Much love,

Elder Papritz

Amy August 7, 2011 Taiwan

Dearest jiating,

Whelp another great week has come and gone. This last p-day was epic. Between meeting Alden and moving to our new apartment we were both exhausted. This week was back in the normal swing of things. We met with Li xian min. She is the investigator that said she wanted to get baptized in two weeks. We made the plan to teach her 3 times a week. We only met with her twice last week. She did a temple tour on tuesday and really loved it. She told us that she has been thinking about it and doesn't want to get baptized on the 20. She says that she thinks it will be too fast. We told her that Heavenly Father would help her understand what we will teach her but she still thinks it will be too fast. We are still going to keep meeting with her and teach her up until she goes back to China. I hope and pray that when she comes back in 3 months that she will keep learning about the Gospel.

This week Sister Jensen and I also had the great opportunity to do temple tours. Having the temple so close is such a blessing. The spirit is so strong whenever we introduce the temple to people. Just a quick trival fact for ya'll, the asia area where our mission is goes all the way up to mongolia down to indonesia and from taiwan all the way over to Pakistan. In that large area with the worlds most populated areas there are only two temples. Hong Kong and Taipei. Luckily for us it is only 20 minutes away. We are soo blessed!!! I love the temple. I love going to the temple and feeling the Spirit so strongly. Whenever I look at the outside of the temple I can feel Heavenly Father's love so strongly. Everything we teach is to point our investigators and new members to the temple. I also think of my own family and the blessing that we have to be sealed for all eternity. It brings such sweet peace to my heart to know that no matter what as long as we are all faithful to that covenant that we will be together forever.

On Saturday our dear Liu cai xuan got baptized!! It was great!! She has such a sweet testimony of the Gospel. When we started to meet with her she didn't seem that happy. Now she is beaming! The second or third time we met with her she asked us if she could quickly get baptized! She said she will do whatever she needs to so that she can get bapitzed! I love her so much! So much faith. The great thing about her baptism is that He dixiong baptized her. I dont' know if ya'll remember but he just got bapitzed about a month before. I taught him. It was so great to see how much progress he has made. He is now a worthy Priesthood holder and being a great example to his two boys. The Gospel really does change lives like Autumn said in her e-mail.

I could write so much more. A lot happened this week. Blast that we only have an hour to e-mail. I love you all so much. The work is going so well here. Despite the bad things that are happening in the world, the Gospel continues to spread. Even though there might be the temptation to be pessimistic about the world and the future. I think we have every reason to rejoice and be optimistic. The gospel is the only thing that can save this world from its own self destruction as President Benson says in Preach My Gospel page 2. I love this work.

All my love,

Sister Amy Papritz

Alden - August 7th 2011 - Taiwan

Hello family.

So once again TAIWAN IS AMAZING!!!

Ok so this week was mostly a normal week in the field. Except every day my companion had some meeting. Or we had exchanges or some other odd thing during the day this week.

Ok a lot of it is a blur. But there are still some amazing things.

First, last week I Saw AMY!!! yay!!!! It was an epic reunion!!! Tears, laughs, awkward silences. Yep it was amazing. It ends up that I will see her a lot. With so many mission events and exchanges. It is going to be great.

Ok, so this week. I have had a lot of great experiences. Especially dealing with the members here in Taiwan. They are great. I am making such great relationships with them here. One member, named Huang Jiemei. She is great. She just got baptized 5 weeks ago, and she is amazing. Right now we are teaching her husband. He is going to get baptized on the 27th. It is so amazing. We saw her at least 4 or more times this week. And every time she brings us food. It is so crazy. She is so great! Ok well I am really starting to draw a blank now. Well it is amazing here. Next week I need to write down what I plan on emailing because there is so much I could say.

Well its all good here in Taiwan. I can’t believe I get to wake up every day in Taiwan and I get to do missionary work. I love it. Well If I have time and if I can think of anything else I will email again. But for now. Love you All.

Sorry I am so terrible at emailing. But. yep.

Ok well I love you all a whole lot.

LOVE YOU!!

Elder Alden Papritz

Yang Zhanglao.