Austin - Milwaukee Wisconsin - September 7, 2010

Hello my beloved family,

My what a fine week that has been. I must report that we have had no violent encounters with people under the influence of alcohol or illegal substance, but! we did contact a half dozen drunk guys (it's hard to avoid them since it was a holiday weekend) and it's actually not a bad strategy. We talk to them while their drunk and laugh with them and get all of their life problems from them and then we make an appointment with them later for when they are not drunk. Then when we meet with them they only have good, fun impressions with us and we know how to help them haha. It's perfect. But really, have this one investigator, Enrique, who is an awesome guy. He took the Book of Mormon and read it the night we gave it to him. He's a pretty shy guy though so he didn't go to church and he was embarrassed that he didn't have any church clothes so he's planning on buying pants and a white shirt, and I told him I'd let him use one of my ties. He's a cool guy.

Also, this was our first real week to work together, Elder Cook and I, since the first week I was just getting oriented to the area and then the second week we were in a threesome with one of the other Elders beacuse of the trainer's program that lasted 4 days. It's been awesome, we've met tons of cool people and we've added 6 people to our investigator pool, in one week! Not bad huh?

Also, I kind of explained earlier that I don't speak like a Mexican, there are actually a lot of different Spanish accents, but since my teacher in the MTC spoke like a Dominican and I was really paying attention to how he spoke to help learn the language, I speak like a Dominican more or less. And since then I've just tried to run with it. And it's really cool because there are a few Dominicans in the ward here but they are all inactive and all for pretty much the same reason ...because they didn't feel welcome in the ward (which is largely Mexican). But they were so flattered that I spoke like them and I was asking them about Dominican specific words and we just chatted it up, Elder Cook had such a hard time understanding them but I was right at home, (think of the difference between the way white people and black people speak in English, more or less.) So we helped reactive all the Dominicans (at least that we are aware of) in the branch. That was way cool this week and they love me haha, they've all offered to feed Elder Cook and I some delicious Dominican food any time we want haha.

Mommy, I have wonderful news! I changed a car oil for the first time in my life! Our branch mission leader is huge in to cars and so we spend a couple hours helping him out every couple weeks. He is such a cool guy. But I got some pictures of my with a dirty white t-shirt that I found in our apartment. But it's totally easy and now I never have to waste money taking a car to the shop to get an oil change. You'd be so proud of me mommy haha.

It's definitely getting a lot colder here, and a heck of a lot windy. There was a spectacular lightning storm Monday morning, the lightning was just huge and bright. I got a video of it. 

There really isn't that much of an update on my health. I've only been taking the pills for 4 days so I feel like I've seen a little better difference but it's hard to tell because I also haven't done anything very physically straining. I haven't gained any "side-effect" weight from it yet but I think I might be seeing a little more roundness in my face, not sure, I might also just be imagining things from my childhood. I'll update you next week for sure.

I'm way excited for Autumn's mission call and thanks for those pictures, Abby honestly looks older to me, even after not seeing her for only 4 months. Weird.

Love you a bunch,

Elder Papritz

Amy - MTC - Aug 30, 2010

Da jia hao wo de jiating!!!

    This week was crazy but AWESOME!!!  Last Saturday was the last time I taught in English so this last week we have been preparing like crazy for our lesson. I had to really up my game and learn twice as many words as last week. It was really hard but the Lord really helped me. For our TRC appointment we had to talk about and order food and then share a scripture and apply it to our mudaoyou. All in Chinese! Then we gave our lesson in Chinese. Craazy!! It was really fun though I learned a lot. Sister Bready and I both worked so hard. There is still a lot of room for imporvement but thats ok. Thats why I have 6 more weeks here. But I love it here. Teaching our first lesson in Chinese really made me realize how much I have come and how much I know.

    So this week for our Devotional it was PHENOMINAL! Since I have been here in the MTC the gym has been closed where they usually hold devotionals adn firesides because they are replacing the seats in there but this week they opened them. We also haven't had a General Authority come so we all knew we were way over due for one. So this week everyone was buzzing about who would come and speak on Tuesday. So after dinner my tongban and I rushed to get seats in the gym and saved some for our district. No one was sitting on the stand. But while we were singing the prelude music the speaker walked in. It was ........ ELDER HOLLAND!! It was amazing!! I love Elder Holland! His talks are so powerful and full of the Spirit. I wish dad that you could have been here to hear him speak. We were sitting in clear view of the pulpit. Everyone was so excited. He spoke on the importance of missionary work. He said "Without missionaries the General Authorities wouldn't knwo what to do. They love us and honor us." He also said so powerfully, "Not a day goes by that I dont' think about my mission more than 50 years ago. DON'T LET A SINGLE MOMENT PASS! DONT' WASTE A SECOND!! NO REGRETS! I meet so too often with missionaries who wished they could go back again and do their missions over. DON'T WASTE THIS OPPORTUNITY FROM THE LORD!"

It was so powerful! Elder Holland talked about how missions are so important and vital to the gosepl that the church arms us with everything that they can to help us spread the gospel and have the Spirit to be with us including having missionaries go through the temple and make covenants. The world needs us. I am so grateful that I can be on a mission and share the message of the Restoration and the Atonement with the people of Taiwan. Elder Holland also said "that we are at war. We have been since before we came to earth. Luckily we are the good guys. We chose to be on the right team. As missionaries we are like the Red Cross. Instead of shooting guns we bring the bandages." I loved that part. So many people in the world have wounds weither physical, spiritual, emotional, or mental wounds that the Gospel of Jesus Christ can heal. There is nothing that the Savior hasn't felt or experienced that he can't help us with. Its amazing!! This whole talk was amazing. I could go on for hours about this talk. Unfortunately I only have 15 more minutes. I'll have to write about it later. I wish you all could have been here to hear it especially you dad because I know how much you love Elder Holland.

          The rest of this week has been great. After we taught on Saturday we started studying again for next week. It never ends! haha I love it though. Also, I practiced with Sister Riggs and Elder Kim because She and I sang in Sacrament meeting on Sunday! We sang the song The Olive Tree. Elder kim played the piano. Its the same song I think Autumn, Katelyn, and Melissa sang at Katelyn's homecoming. It was fun! I am so grateful to share that talent with the people of our branch. Thanks mom and dad for giving me the opportunity to take voice lessons and sing. Our branch is really small now. We only have about 30 of us since the older missionaries left but we get 30 new missionaries on Wednesday including 4 sisters!! We are all so excited for them to come. It will be great to have new missionaries and to help them just as the older missionaries helped us.

      Oh before I forget THANK YOU for the packages this week. I am so glad that you sent me my coat and all of those goodies. I have been eating them all week and loving it. Also thanks mom for the popcorn and for the magnolia flower. It was such a nice suprise to see the flower. I wish I could be there to see them for myself on the tree.

      Well family time is short.. to coin mom's phrase at the end of every letter. haha I love you all so much. Thank you so much for your love, prayers, and support. I really appreciate them. I can feel you love for me and your help especially this last week. I know that this Gospel is true. I know that Jesus is the Chirst. I know that this Gospel was restored to the earth through the prophet Joseph Smith. I am so grateful that the fullness of truth was restored and that I have the opportunity to share that with the people of Taiwan. I know that the Book of Mormon is the word of God and that it does testify of Christ. Wo zhidao Shen shi women de Tianfu. Ta renshi women he feichang ai women. ( I know that God is our Heavenly Father. He knows us and really loves us)  I love you all so much! Share the Gospel with those around you! There are so many people search for the truth and need the Atonement in their lives! Help them have the joy and happiness you have through the Gospel! Love you!!!

All my love,

Yang Jiemei

Sister Amy Papritz

Austin - Milwaukee Wisconsin - Aug 30, 2010

Hey Moommmy,

That package was...the bombbb!! Thank you so much. It was hilarious because there were a bunch of Elders over at our apartment because there was a leadership conference here in Milwaukee and when I opened it up they immediately took the head massager and started massaging each other and saying stuff like, "Just pretend like I'm your girlfriend back at home." And they'd close their eyes and pretend hahaha it was funnny. The curry was an awesome idea too because we have a ton of rice here and it is the perfect thing to spice up the rice. Thanks a ton.

I sent off a package with a memory card, letter and one of my schedules. Did you get it? I'm not sure if I put enough stamps on it and I stupidly put the return address as the mission office so if it has come back to me then I won't found out for a while.

Yes, Elder Cook and I can teach whole lessons. We can speak fine, the only thing is that we have a hard time understanding and so ideally if we asked someone a question we would want to continue the lesson using the wording of their answer but it's hard to get the details of what people talk about but for the most part we can get what people are saying.

So Milwaukee is still super great. So the story with the two high black guys:

We had just finished playing volleyball with the ward youth and we were riding the bus back home and we were waiting for our next bus and it was late on a Saturday night in south Milwaukee and I hear this guy behind say, "129, we got number 129 right here." (And I knew he was talking to me because I had a shirt on has that number on the back. And then when he passed by us he turned to us and sorry, "I'm sorry fellas but I'm as hiiiiigh as kiite right now."  And so we started talking to him, he was soooo funny. He was also walking with a friend who was dressed like a thug and had a joint in his hand smoking it and talking to a very drunk lady that we had also had fun with at the buss stop. But the funny guy was just in jeans and a flannel shirt and he was telling us how we were the future of the world because we were students at Marquette. And we were just talking and I told him to analyze his friends techniques (because he was clearly trying to pick up this drunk chick) and the guy was like, "That right there......that's.. Neanderthal technique. Man wants girl....but girl don't want man." Oh man we were all crrraaacing up. And then his thug friend came over and started cussing us out and being really vulgar and he thought we were trying to beat up his friend. And he started speaking in fake Arabic and started fronting Elder Cook and Elder Cook started getting really tense, I thought he was going to swing a fist at the guy but thank heavens he didn't.  And while he was cussing us out the funny guy was giving us hand signals like helping us to know what to say to calm his friend down. And while he was back there he held up four fingers and mouthed the words "four roaches" which means he had smoked four joints that night hahaha. Oh man, it was a cultural rich experience.

  

We are only on bikes and bus. It's scary around here too, the bike lane is only 3 feet wide and right next to the lane of traffic and the parked cars lining the street. I can't help to think that if someone were to open their car door while I'm passing by at 20 miles an hour, I'd lose my legs. We just kind of trust God it won't happen and try to space ourselves as much as possible. I don't have a clue what I'm going to do for the winter...it's going to be miserable being on that bike in the winter. It's going to be so cold. The branch is soo much bigger than in Madison. Madison has like 50 members total with only 15-20 active. The Milwaukee branch is 50 active with 400 total. That's why we are so focused on less active work here. If we could get all the inactives to church we go seriously have 3 wards.

Oh, your little stressful situation made me think about how stressed you'd be when my branch president told us the speaker for the day wasn't going to be there because he was sick and so he needed one of us to speak. None of them felt really comfortable speaking impromptu so it fell on me. It went pretty well, the only thing is that I've been practicing my Dominican accent (my teacher in the MTC spoke like a Dominican because there was a lot of those in New York) and so I don't actually speak like a Mexican, there's a couple things the Dominicans do differently including not pronouncing the letter S in a lot of words and some of the funnier members came up to me afterwards and were making fun of me but it was cool.

So Elder Campbell developed this awesome plan that we've been following here in Milwaukee. It is an inspired plan to reactive less actives and it's been going great. We've spent tons of time planning it out and so our numbers have been pretty bad because we have had to take time to plan with them and make different object lessons and stuff but finally we are starting to see some results. At church today the President gave us the third hour to talk to the adults and youth, Elder Cook and I took the youth while Elder Campbell and Hullet took the adults. By the end of the meeting the had a handful of papers with referalls on them, eighteen in total. It was incredible. I'll try to explain the plan more later but it's tight. Other than that, we have a terrific investigator that we picked up last week and she is awesome. Her name is Calendaria and she has an awesome little girl that we all call Sonrisa, which means smile, because she is literally ALWAYS smiling, she's only 2 years old. Theyre great and we're going to commit them and her husband to baptism this week.

I love you a bunch. I'm so glad to be on a mission if for no other reason than I appreciate my family more than ever. God must think families are pretty important, he's got some cool stuff for them. And I get to teach that every day! Cool.

Love ya,

Elder Papritz

Amy - MTC - Aug 23, 2010

Da jia hao!!!

      This week once again has come and gone way to fast!!!! I dont' even know what to write about!!  Thank you so much for your letters and packages!!! I love them all! Unfortunately I love them too much because I have gained weight!! So if you could when you send packages send more healthy stuff that would be great. I will have a list at the end of this e-mail what I want. haha

        Our TRC went really good this week. It was our last lesson in English! AHH!! Next week we teach the first lesson in Chinese. Our task is to talk about food, and tell what we like and don't like. We also need to be able to share a scripture in Chinese and ask about what it means to our mudaoyou. Crazy!!! I'm really excited about it but nervous too. We did a practice run in our class on Saturday night just one on one with one of the other missionaries. I did really good suprisingly. It was awesome to see how much progress I had made. I also saw how much work I still needed to do. This week is going to be crazy!! I have made a sign to stick on my nametag that says "Sorry! No English!"  I am trying to speak Chinese all the time. Which is hard but fun too. You find crazy ways to describe things like if you stomach hurts we say "wo de duzi panjiao!" My stomach is apostate! haha we have a lot of fun. Its really crazy because the older missionaries leave this week! So now my district and the other three are the older missionaries! Its so weird! I dont' fell like I have been here that long but now its been a month! I'm excited to be the older missionary but I dont' feel like i know engough. i know though that the Lord will help me. This week I have upped my antey and am learning twice as many words. I know I can do it!

       Because of all the older missionaries leaving a lot of changes were made. namely, Sister Bready was named as the cordinating sister (Relief Society President) of our branch. Yay for her! and Yay that is not me!! haha jk. I'm so excited for her. I know that she will be a great coordinating sister. Church is so amazing!! We sing, pray and give talks in Chinese. The Spirit is so strong. I love it. Expect when we sing God Be With you Till We Meet Again for the older missionaries. So hard!! Oh something that was crazy this week. So Sister Ith was going to Taiwan Taichung with the older missionaries but last mintue because of her visa she got temporarlily sent to Nebraska! She will be there for a transfer and then hopefully come to Taiwan with us. Two other Elders were sent to Alabama. I dont' know who in Nebraska and Alabama speak Chinese but I'm sure that there is a reason for them to be sent there. Hopefully that won't happen to me. The reason for visa problems is that all three of them moved up in classes so they travel office didn't speed up their visas.

     I don't know what else to tell you. How are things at home? I want to see pictures of the finished coop! That story about Alaina and Abby breaking it gently to Mom about them being adopted was HILARIOUS!!  I was in the laundry room and about died laughing!! I told everyone that story!! Keep those funny stories coming!!

Well I love you all!! Please Dear Elder me! I have been getting a lot of e-mails and I would love to write but I don't have time to e-mail. I can only snail mail. But I would still LOVE to hear from ya'll. I love you so much!! I pray for you everday and think about you all the time.

All my love,

Yang Jiemei

Sister Papritz

Austin - Milwaukee Wisconsin - Aug 23, 2010

Hello my friends and family,

The city is soooo TIIIGHT! Everyone is so chill here. There are tons of latinos and tons of them just hanging out and chillin' out on their porch or having a fiesta on the weekends. For the most part they love the missionaries too. Oh and my new companion is *drumroll* Elder Cook hahah! What is the crazy chance of that?? Only our second transfer and we are companions again. It's nuts, we are both so green and yet they put us together. Him and I are going to tear up Milwaukee. And we've already had a crazy week, you would NOT believe what happened. A quick story:

So I got a new bike for 500 bucks but was worth like 800 because someone traded it in to the shop and it literally has no signs of use but anyways. I was excited for my one speed Biachi road bike and Elder Cook and I were riding down this alley way to go to a less active member in the morning. We actually moved our studies in to the afternoon which is rare to do but we felt impressed that we had someone to visit. So we were riding down this alley-like way and these two large latinos yelled out to us from 40 yards away, "Hey you two stop." And I first thought, sweet these guys want to talk to us. So we rode up to them and we dismounted our bikes and then the guy on the right, holding a beer, told us, "Give us your ****ing bikes." .....my heart stopped. I could not believe it. All sorts of thoughts ran through my mind like, do I fight? Could I win? Do they have weapons? Could I probably just outrun them, I mean, they weren't in shape by any means. I just looked to the ground and just said, "Are you serious?" And he was like, "Yeah I am, we need a couple bikes, Hey primo, which one do you want?" I just didn't know what to do and right when I was about to just hand over the bike the guy on the right says, "Nah, we're just ****in' with ya'll." ooooooh my gooooosh. I literally just layed on the ground. I was so pumped full of adrenaline and it just had nowhere to go. Nervously laughing, I asked them, Are you members? And they said nah they just saw us coming and wanted to play with us.

Seriously, I can not tell you how scary it was. Elder Cook said he was about to just punch one of them or do something, little old sheltered Arizona boy doesn't know how to handle the streets.* It was nuts, but they were so cool they were like, "Nah we'd never steal your bikes it would take one 911 phone call saying, "Hey there are a couple large Mexican men on two nice bikes." and they'd find us in no time" hahaha. We started talking to them and yeah they beer but they weren't drunk by any means. In fact, one of the two guys was quite interesting in the church. He had a loooot of regrets from past sins, he says that they haunt him at night, he can't sleep, he's not happy with life...he wants to change. It was ridiculous how God led us to those two men, it was an unforgettable moment. It was odd too because we were lost just before that as to where the less active member house was and this lady came up to us and asked us if we were lost and then told us where it was at but she admitted she was embarrassed to talk to us because of how she was dressed (in a low cut spaghetti strapped something). But she pointed us down the alley which would lead us to a street that would take us there.

Then there were a couple high black guys we ran in to which were hilarious, but that's a story for another time.

So the city is awesome and pretty much the stake is in huge need of less active work. They have like 50 that attend and 400 less actives. There are 4 Spanish missionaries in the whole city and we have way too much to do. We are hoping to get a couple more missionaries but it's probably unlikely.The Branch is lead by an American that servied a Spanish mission. He's a dentist. The ward mission leader is latino, he knows English really well. He is suuper active and cool. There are three major families in the branch and we are working on reactiviting the grandpas of those families in hopes that the rest of the family will follow. It's actually a very detailed plan that came by revelation to Elder Campbell (Elder Hulet's companion).

 

It's an exciting area.

 I'm doing so awesome, these experiences are so cool. Ones that wil last my whole life, I just know it. Also, Elder Hulett is in the other companionship here so there are 3/4 newbies serviing in Milwaukee, all we need is Elder Moore to have all four of us here.

Think aboucha all da time,

Elder papritz

ps. soo I could really use those 500 bucks back. Thanks haha.

 *Moms thought- Yeah, Austin is such a street wise kid!

Amy - MTC - Aug 16, 2010

Da jia hao!!!!

        This week has seriously gone by so fast! I dont' even remember what happened this week. It was a really good week. THANK YOU SO MUCH for the packages!! I LOVED getting my skirts and all the goodies. The pictures that the girls drew were so cute too!! Although you sent me some of Austin so I will mail those to him. It was so great to get a package. Classes were really good with our new teacher Zhang Laoshi. She is really nice. She served in Taipei which is awesome! This whole week we prepared for our TRC appointment on Saturday. We taught the second lesson on the Plan of Salvation. So hard!!! The plan of Salvation is so amazing so it was so hard to teach it simply to someone who has no Christian background. There was so much information to leave out. Our whole district stuggled with this lesson. Our contacting task this week was to pick up our investigator from their house and take them to church via the bus. We had to ask them about their family and work and also ask about commitments that had been extended the previous week. If they didnt' do it we had to recommit them and testify. I actually felt really good about this one. As a district we practiced a lot which made it easier. When we did it on Saturday the Chinese came easier than it has before granted I still messed up on some grammer but it went better!! I figured out this week that Heavenly Father indeed has a sense of humor...... its called Chinese. haha This language is so crazy!! The grammer is crazy on top of the tones and pinyin. Dont' get me started on the writing !! haha but really I love learning Chinese. There are a few missionaries from Taiwan that we have seen at the temple walks on Sunday. They are going to California. I understand very little of what they are saying but I can talk to them a little. Its all coming together slowly but surely!!!  So, our TRC appointment on Saturday went good. It definately wasn't as good as the last two weeks. Our mudaoyou Taylor didn't seem that interested in our message. I think that we didnt' ask the right questions.  He was involved when we talked about prayer and answered his questions about that but then during the middle of our lesson he was looking around and giving very short answers. But on the bright side, Sister Bready and I did a great job of sharing the time and communicating with eachother. I'm glad that we had a lesson that didnt' go as good as the others so we know what to improve. We teach that lesson one more time and then in two weeks we teach it in Chinese YIKES!!!!

 

     All of the older missionaries in our Zone leave this week and next week. Its so sad!!! We have all become so attached to them. They are all such amazing missionaries! Its also weird to think that soon we will be the older missionaries. I dont' feel ready for that. I feel like my Chinese has a long way to go. But I know that who the Lord calls He qualifies so I'll be ok. On Sunday the older missionaries sang a musical number which was beautiful. The Spirit was so strong. Relief Society was AMAZING this week!! Sister Virgina H. Pearce, daughter of President Hinckley, spoke to us. She spoke on the Spirit of Navuoo and how we need to take that with us out in the field. I wish I had time to write all of my thoughts about this talk but time is short. The one part I really love is that she said that we need to "sell" or share that the Gospel will bring joy and happiness into our investigator's lives. Many people are seeking that now. She also quotes Brigham Young and I just loved this quote. It says," Let the fruit of bad thoughts, complaining, and negative fellings drop off the tree unnoticed and left their to rott. When there are fruits of virture, love, wholesome thoughts, and happiness pluck it off and share it with all our neighbors and those around us." I love this quote because I feel that it is so easy to notice the bad things that happen when there are so much better things happening. We need to just let those bad things "fall of the tree unnoticed and left to rott." I have been trying to do that since I have heard that talk and it has been very helpful. I hope that each of you can do that. At the devotional on Tuesday Brother Evans spoke about the Book of Mormon. He said that the Book of Mormon is our most powerful tool in sharing the Gospel to those around us. He said that we need to engage our investigators from the beginning and get them to read the Book of Mormon from beginning to end. Again, I wish I had time to share everything about this talk but time is short. Blasted 30 minute computer time. haha oh well.

 

    I dont' really know what else to tell you. This week went by so fast. Time flies when you are serving the Lord!! I love you all so much. I think about you all the time and pray even more for you! I know that this Gospel is true. I know that Jesus is the Christ and he is our Savior. I know that by repentance we can repent of our sins and become like our Heavenly Father. I know that the Plan of Salvation is God's plan for us. I am so grateful for the knowledge I have of that plan. I know that the Book of Mormon is true and that it is the word of God. Joseph Smith really did see Heavenly Father and is Son Jesus Christ in the Sacred Grove in answer to his prayer. I know that through him God restored the fullness of the Gospel in the earth. I know that Thomas S. Monson is a prophet of God and that he is the mouthpiece of the Lord in these Latter-days. I am so grateful for this opportunity that I have to serve the Lord and share the Gospel with the people in Taiwan, Taipei. I love you all!!!!

 

All my love,

Yang Jiemei

Sister Amy Papritz

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Austin - Madison Wisconsin - Aug 16, 2010

How do I even begin? It seems like forever since I last emailed. And even last weeks email, I'll admit, was pretty lame. We had finished playing golf late and didn't have much time to email so I just tried to send a quick one.

I'm just going to start typing, it might be out of order and stuff but whatever.

Yesterday Elder Kelly and I got a late call from our Branch President saying that he got an odd phonecall from a guy in San Diego telling him to send the missionaries to a person in the hospital. He told us it was a brief phonecall and he only knew the name but didn't know how to spell it and what hospital and instructions for us to go visit this lady who is supposedly going through liver failure and may or may not be a member or related to a member. We made some phone calls and figured out she was in the ICU at the University of Wisconsin hospital. It was 9:05 at night and we walked in to her room and we saw an incredibly sick, jaundice affected middle-aged latina with an older lady sitting by her side, that was her mother. We explained who we were and the Mom told her daughter, "it's the missionaries from your Uncle's church. They are here to help." They lady just looked in to our eyes and started to cry. She was in so much pain. As we tried to talk to her and comfort her (she had a very hard time speaking back) the memory of her dark pupils floating in a sea of yellow catching my eye, we didn't stop looking at each other for a good couple minutes as it seemed our spirits were talking. She was begging for help. It was a remarkable feeling but I felt a Christ like love for that woman and I had just met her. We gave her a blessing and she appreciated it so much. I think she thought that we were angels or something she asked Elder Kelly, "can you see yourself in the mirror?" Elder Kelly played along and looked in to the mirror and told her, "Yup, I can see myself. Can you see yourself?" She replied, "No.....no I can't. I'm trying." It defintely had a little more weight than her simply saying that she couldn't sit up enough to see herself in the mirror. We just stood by her side for a good 20 minutes comforting and encouraging her. At the end of it we got a good smile out of her which her Mom said she hadn't seen from her for a couple weeks. It was hard. Elder Kelly and I were both so drained after that. It was hard to see. And the reason she had liver failure was because she started drinking because of marriage problems. Her husband is sick too from drinking as far as I could tell from what the mother said. Thank heaven she didn't have any kids though.

Elder Kelly and I played golf this morning at a real golf course. It was so cool, golfing is such a cool environment. I did so well the first 9 holes but I was getting worn out the last 9 holes. It's tough. On the 6th hole I got on  the green in one shot! I couldn't sink the put though, that would have been cool to get a birdie on my first time golfing at a real course (before we had just been golfing at a little free course). Anyways, it was suuuper fun, we had a cart and everything and the weather was phenomenal! Oh, and there were Hispanics on lawn mowers while we were playing and we started talking to them and they just loooved us. They were so funny making fun of my shot and stuff, and one of them was giving me advice like what iron to use. I came out with a seven one time and he was like, "no no, you're doing it wrong, that's definitely a six." hahha And then another guy looked around in the tall grass and found five lost balls and gave them to us. They were cool.

So tranfers are coming this Thursday, I already know I'm going to Milwaukee, I don't know who is going to be my companion yet but we have a pretty good idea who it is going to be. Elder Kelly is also moving too, he is going to be a Zone Leader over the Madison Zone but he's going to be in a different area, Janesville. So poor Madison Spanish is going to have two new missionaries. Elder Kelly and I have a lot of work to do before Thursday to clean up the place and make sure the area book is thorough and we make the transition as easy as possible for the new missionaries. But it's going to be weird, my 20 month streak in Milwaukee begins this Thursday. I'm excited and unsure at the same time. Elder Kelly tells me that it will be hard to never be surprised at tranfers sicne I know I'm going to be staying in Milwaukee for the rest of my mission. And I was thinking about it the other day, I have to be so careful to never get on the bad side of any members in Milwaukee. I plan on doing lots of service for the members. Instead of running in there on fire and expecting everyone to start doing member missionary work. I recently read through the Ammon story to see how he did it since he served a long mission in the same area too. And it struck me that it said the Lord told him to be patient to be an example to the people. So I'll have to definitely practice that when I don't see immediate success coming out of Milwaukee. It's going to be like a game of golf. I'll need mental toughness and precision for all 18 holes. hahha

Sonya fell off the face of the earth. She is suppose to get baptized this Saturday along with her daughter buuuut there hasn't been anyone in her apartment for 7 days and her phone is disconnected. Apparently she has family in Dodgeville so Elder Kelly thinks she might have moved but he isn't sure why she wouldn't call us. So we're really not sure what to do with that. She wasn't at church either sooooo quien sabe??

Oh, I got to do service at a food pantry last week and it was so cool. It's this really cool service where poor people can come in a literally receive free food and they are giving a certain amount of "points" to spend in the store depending on how many people they are trying to provide for and their income. I got to help a couple of Latinos and they just appreciated it so much that I spoke Spanish, usually the volunteers there are just older white people or students from the local high school. But it was a cool experience, I'll definitely try to find a food pantry in Milwaukee.

So now that Elder Kelly and I are leaving we have like 8 lunch/dinner appointments that are going to happen before we leave in 4 days. Sheesh why didn't we get this many before? I'm thining we should have announced every week that we were going to leave and then when it didn't happen just tell them, "oh it got pushed back another week, for sure we're leaving next week." I bet we could keep that up for a couple months.

I'm really starting to hit a good stride lately. I'm starting to find the balance between helping people feel comfortable and the urgency of conveying the gospel message. It's a hard mix, most people are very uncomfortable to talk to missionaries and so you need to take some time to just talk about anything and help them feel uncomfortable but then when it comes to gospel topics to be able to draw from that comfortability during the free talk and bring that in to the gospel topic is tough. A lot of the people tense up when we start talking about it and make less eye contact or start fidgetting. And sometimes if they obviously feel super uncomfortable we don't even bring up the gospel. We figure that it's better for them to think, "Oh hey, it's not so bad to talk to those gringos in white shirts." And then have future missionaries already have a good step on the conversation when they run in to them again.

I've thought of you all a whole lot this week. I'm not sure why but it seems like a lot of stuff happened this week that reminded me of ya'll. Also, Cecillia and Abinadi are getting married soon, they got the paperwork and they just need to fill it out (they are the ones with the daughter that reminds me of Alaina.) I promise I'll send the memory card this week. Sorry I've been terrible about letters and stuff, p-days are sooo busy and I can't write any other day of the week. No excuses. I'll be better.

Much love,

Elder Papritz