Amy - MTC - September 27, 2010

Da jia hao!!!!

I can't believe this will be the second to last time I will write you here in the MTC. Crazy!!!! I feel like I just got here!! So we got our flight plans on thursday. My flight leaves Salt Lake at 8 and we get into LA at 9:01. Then our flight doesn't leave to go to Taiwan until 1:20am. We get into Taiwan at 6:30 in the morning. Fun!!! Its really weird though because they do the flight alphabetical I am not flying with Sister Bready. There are a few people in our district who are leaving earlier in the day on Tuesday including my companion. They will get into Taiwan at 10:00pm so they will get to sleep and recover from the flight. I won't. I will just hit the ground running. I'm so excited though!!!!!!!!! So during that lengthy lay over in LA I am allowed to call home!!! I can't wait to hear all of your voices. Autumn, I need your phone number. I don't remember it so I need it so I can call you. by the way, WHERE ARE YOU GOING ON YOUR MISSION?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!? This wait has been KILLING me!!! Its so hard because I can't call you up and see what the staus is I have to wait until the next dear elder comes which is at the end of the day. Tourture?? YES! I can't wait to find out. let me know ASAP!!!

So now that I have talked about flight plans. This week was really good. Last Monday at the temple we had the wonderful opportunity to help a couple with a family sealing. They had an old family name that they have been waiting for a long time to do. They asked a few of us missionaries to help with the sealing of a daughter to a family. We can do sealings as long as they are sealing of children to parents. It was a really great experience. I got to be the proxy for this daughter. As we were doing the sealing it reminded me so much of when the girls were sealed to us and the special spirit that was there. The words were so powerful. I am so grateful that I know that my family is sealed for time and all eternity. We had our last TRC appointment on saturday. So weird!!! I can't believe that we are done with our TRC experience. Since next week is General Conference no volunteers will come on Saturday. The teaching went well. We taught three girls from Taiwan. They were really nice but spoke really fast!!! Holy moly I'm going to be in trouble when I get there!!! haha oh well!! One of the girls reminded me a lot of Autumn. She looked like her only in Taiwan form. haha It made me miss her a lot. After we were done teaching it so weird to think that the next time that I will be teaching will be a really person from Taiwan who knows nothing about the church. I am so excited but nervous at the same time. This last week will be really weird and difficult to stay focused!!

This last Wednesday my disctrict and I had the opporunity to help host the new missionaries. It was a lot of fun! I helped three sisters get setteled in their room, get their tag and other things for the MTC, their teaching materials and I also took them to their classroom. Since I have gotten here I have been so excited for this opportunity to host. This job is only given to missionaries who leave within the next two weeks. I helped one sister who was going to Arizona.. i think. Another was going to Texas Houston East spanish speaking. The last sister was from Fiji and will be serving in the Marshall Islands. She was really nice. She was suprised when I told her I have been there and when we were there. She apparently was there in Fiji. All of these sisters were really nice I am so glad that I got to help them get settled here at the MTC and calm their fears. I know that all of them will do a great job. Sister Bready and I also found out that our teacher He laoshi reccomended us to help teach the new missionaries this Wednesday. The first day a missionary enters the MTC they go to a class where they first learn about teaching and what to a not to do. I am really excited and I am glad that he reccomended us.

Well that is our week in nutshell..... I can't believe that soon I will be out in the field. This next week is going to be crazy in trying to learn as much Chinese as I can before we go. But I am REALLY REALLY REALLY EXCITED!!!! I can't wait to go and share the Gospel with the people of Taiwan. I hope that all of you have a great week. Thank you so much for all of your love and suppport as I have been here in the MTC. I love you all!! This Gospel is true. I know it is. I know that the Book of Mormon truly is another testament of Jesus Christ. I know that by reading it we can draw closer to our Heavenly Father and that we more fully apply the wonderful gift of the Atonement in our lives. I am so grateful for our Savior Jesus Christ. I know that he is our Savior and that he and our Heavenly Father knows and loves each of us so personally. They know us by name and know all of our problems, fears, and joy. Again, I love you all!!

All my love,

Yang Jiemei

Sister Amy Papritz

Austin - Madison Wisconsin - September 27, 2010

Hermosa Familia,

My oh my, what a spectacular week it was, made as such by the receival of Autumn's mission call. I got it all on film (my reaction that is from reading it and even more), probably more than I needed to record but oh well. Pretty much all you need to know is that the videos didn't play on my camera and so we went on a gooose chase to find a camera that would play the videos. I figured I was going to follow along on the video and read your mission call as you were reading it but then realized that would be too tricky to do and so I after waiting half a day after having the call in my hands I finally got to open it.

And holy chupacabra it craazy, I was freaking out when I saw Hungary Budapest. And then I was really freaking out when I read that your "primary responsiblity" was to be a Mission Nurse Specialist like wth is that?? That's sounds so cool. I want a mission nurse specialist in our mission!! I hope you get a sexy Mission Doctor Specialist companion too and you two can take Hungaries slums and fancy touristy castle sites by storm. Also, I can't figure out if you are going to be a nurse of the people or of the missionaries. As in, Hungary doesn't have good health care, so you are going to be kind of like an "office missionary" and kind of be a first healthcare for them . Which reminds me, both Elder Campbell and Elder Cook are calling that you are going to meet your future husband on your mission. I don't know. But keep your eye out for any potentially mortally wounded, tall and handsome missionaries that you may or may not need to perform mouth-to-mouth resuscitation on.

Also, about Hungarian. Yes, Finnish is widely agreed to be the hardest language to learn in the world. I'm not sure why either but from what I heard from a guy from my zone in the MTC that was from the Netherlands (and could speak Finnish too along with Dutch, obviously, and spoke English dang good too) and he said that Finnish is just a dirty language. Hard to pronounce, hard grammatical rules and mostly just reallly, really hard to pronounce. All the vowells are way back in the throat and sound weird, it sure sounded like dirty garbage when he spoke it. Sooooooo, yeeeah, you might have a pretty fun time learning Hungarian which sounds like (from what you told me) is related to Finnish. Oh, and I have to tell you that after I opened it I got Hungarian mixed up with Romanian (which, oddly enough, the countries are neighbors) but I was saying on the video how you will be able to understand me because Romanian is the oldest root Latin-based language and I fluent speaker can understand most all of the other latin-based languages. In fact, in the MTC we talked to some missionaries going to Romania and we could pretty much understand each other. Buuuuut that's not you. We probably will have a very hard time, in fact, understanding each other. But at least Spanish will be a peice of cake for you to learn when you get back after tackling something like Hungarian! Uuugh, but you are soooo close to Romania, I wonder how much of an influence it has on Hungarian, also from what I looked up there are a lot of Hungarian speakers in Romania. Maybe we could tour over there and I could speak Spanish to the Romanians and you could cover the 2 million Hungarian speakers there. Tight. Also, I better be home from my mission before you, I for sure want to visit Hungary to see you there. That would be sooo tiiight.

So we have transfers today, the only news I have is that Elder Hulet is out of here and we are most likely going to get an Elder Hirschi who is one transfer older than me and is mighty fine good at Spanish (he took five years before coming out) aaand was the only other person trained by my trainer, Elder Kelly. So that'll be tight, we can share old stories about our Pops. But Elder Cook and I are gearing up for another 6 weeks together. We going to do some good transfer goals and try to get some work done. We'll see how it goes.

I'm glad ya'll enjoyed the package I sent. I personally think that chile candy is nasty. But I tried to buy the best, easily to stand kind. I'm off the pain meds for my back, and I still have plenty left in case I have another accident so that's really nice. Also, I think the Crohn's medicine is workiiiing!! I haven't had almost any pain and I'm feeling really good. So that's kind of a relief. We'll see how it keeps helping me.

Well, I go to go. Love ya all.

Elder Papritz





Amy - MTC - September 20, 2010

Zao an!!!

Suprise!! I am writing this e-mail a little earlier than usual. ok a lot earlier. We realized today that we have a lot of time before we go to the temple at 9:30 so we are going to write our e-mails now so you get a great treat when you wake up this morning. This week was really good. Nothing really in particular happened. Its getting down to the wire though. 2 more weeks!! Its so crazy that we started our 10th week today. We should hopefully be getting our travel plans this week or next week. CRAZY!!! I'm so excited! I can't wait to get to Taiwan and hit the ground running. Our teacher He laoshi told us that the first month in Taiwan our heads will explode. haha He said its because we are trying to listen so hard and say what we learned. That will be fun. Our TRC appointment went really well. We taught a women who was from Taichung, Taiwan. She has been a member for a few months I think. We taught her as if she was a recent convert and we were re-teaching her the second lesson on the Plan of Salvation. It was kind of hard to understand her because of her thick Taiwan accent but the lesson still went really good. Heaven up me when I get to Taiwan and try to understand that accent!! Anywhoo, we discussed the Atonement more indepth since she has a few questions. We didn't know how to answer it and Sister Bready was looking in the scriptures and suddenly turned to Alma 7:11-13. It answered all of her questions!! I love how the Spirit works!! It was the best lesson we have had in regards to making it more of a disscussion rather than us just teacher her.

ummm what else can I tell you about this week. Its starting to get cold here but only in the mornings. Then it is really hot. haha silly Utah weather! The mountains are starting to change colors and it is beautiful. I love it. It reminds me of the fall in Oregon and I miss it. I LOVED the pictures that you sent me and the package. I look at those pictures often and I wish I could be there but I know I am needed here. The sweater is so great thanks!! It is just the right size and length. I lot of people have complemented me on it. Oh i rememberd something. So He laoshi was telling us about the importance of member referrals. He said that about 60- 70 percent of the baptisms that he had on his mission were from member referrals. He said because they had someone to take the lessons with that they knew and were friends with and that once they are baptized and the missionaries leave they have a support system in the ward. He told this great story how he in one area baptized 4 people at once and all from member referrals and the investigator bringing a friend. So I invite all of you to give referrals to the missionaries and to talk to your friends more about the Gospel. There are so many people how need it. He also advised us to be the best missionaries that we can be the kind that I would want a good friend to have teach me.

I am so grateful to be on a mission. I love it here!! I can't wait to get to Taiwan. I dont' know what else to tell you that happend this week. Sorry this e-mail is a little short. This week wasn't as eventful. Please keep me posted on Autumns call. As soon as you find out LET ME KNOW!! I was dying this week when I didnt' find out until FRIDAY!

I love you all!!

All my love,

Yang Jiemei

Sister Amy Papritz

P.S Mom I forgot to tell you before I left but can you go to OSU Federal and tell them that I will be out of the country in Taiwan. I tried to take care of that before I left but they wouldn't let me because it was too far in advanced. silly bank Xiexie!! Oh also if you could send a copy of my mission call that would be great too. I think it is up in my room on the window seat. Love you all!!!

Austin - Madison Wisconsin - September 20, 2010

Hey family,

So on Tuesday we had district meeting like every week. And like every week we go eat out as a district after the meeting. Elder Cook and I had our bikes so we dropped by our apartment first to drop off some stuff before going to the restaurant. After dropping off our stuff and heading to the restaurant while we saw the rest of the six Elders on the sidewalk. I rode up behind them at an angle but when I tried jumping on to the curb I didn't make it all the way and my tire slid out from under me sideways and I was thrown off my bike. I was so embarrassed that I started to wail in pain, grabbing my heart, to pretend like I had just been playing along the whole time. Even more embarrassing, there were two real people behind them that watched the whole thing. Everyone was just kind of thinking, "What are you doing Elder Papritz?" And all I could say was just, "Yeah you're right, I should probably stop practicing my falls, I'm getting to good at them." Well the real funny part is that I really was hurt. When I stood up my back hurt so bad, like someone was digging a knife in to my muscle. The next day, after I only got 4 hours of sleep from the pain, I went to a clinic and I strained a muscle. He prescribed a pain killer and a muscle relaxant and man-oh-man that stuff works. Now I'm as high as a kite day and night, the pain killer makes me all lightheaded and makes my body tingle, and the muscle relaxant, which I only take at night, just knocks me out. Oh and I just used our insurance for it all. The church insurance is really crummy, and it uses tithes/offerings to pay for it so I figured you would just want to pay for it.

But anyways, at church we had Sister Zavala attend! She had been less active for a while and her family is a focus family for us. She has a lot of children that are less-active and a lot of nonmember in-laws. It was so cool to see her at church. Also, I absolutely got rocked by member meals this week. On two different occasions we had a lunch and dinner appointment and one of those was a breakfast/lunch/dinner combo. I literally have never eaten so much....in....my....life. Holy cow, and you feel so bad for not eating, so I just stuffed myself past the point that any human being should have to eat. One day I ate 3 big pancakes, 6 french toast, 6 sausages, 2 breakfast rolls, 3 eggs, bacon, hashbrown and two cups of orange juice, and then one hour and half later we had another lunch appointment with a Dominican guy who made us Sancocho which is like a stew with pork and this potatoe-like plant. I had two bowls of that and then that night I had three homemade tacos and a couple glasses of grape soda...oh my gosh I wanted to die. It was so much food that by the next day we had a dinner appointment and I still wasn't hungry. I literally cannot describe the feeling of it. And then to top it off you have to leave the appointment on a bike.

Anyways, the transfer is almost over. Crazy! Time just flies, Elder Cook and I are hoping to stay together but we won't know until this Saturday. Elder Cook feels like he could be going but there really is no way to be sure. I still excited for Autumn's mission call, I'm hoping it will come this week. It'll be Chile, just you wait.

Zone conference next transfer is going to feature one of the brethren from the quorum of the seventy so I'm excited to hear from him. Other than that I'm doing fine. Except, I'd like the cord to my camera that allows me to plug it in to the computer, that way I could send you pictures over email, my best guess is that it is in my room. I'll be sending a package this week, included are the pants from my fall, you'll need to mail those to Missionary Mall and have them send me a new pair of pants. Thanks a ton for the package. Elder Cook and I laughed at the yo-yo's. He had never had a yo-yo! What a deprived child, for companionship study I taught him how to make a yo-yo sleep and walk the dog. He's learning. The oreos are always so good, I pound through those in two days easy. Also, I'm now easily above two hundred pounds consistently, although it might just be the weight from the actual food in my body, I have yet to go a day this week without a large, prepared dinner so we'll see after a few days if it's just food weight or if I've gained fat. And please send a picture of you and Dad at the temple. I have a question: Of the people on the family tree I have, how many of them do you think you could find pictures for? My idea is to have a piece of paper with my family tree and pictures of all the people on it. I think that'd be cool.

How is Sarah's Mom doing? Is she doing well? I think about that family all the time because it's kind of getting towards fall/winter and some of the families we visit are already talking about their family's posada fiesta.

I hope you all are doing well. Love ya,

Elder Papritz

Amy - MTC - September 13, 2010

Da jia hao!!!

      This week has been crazy but so good!!! First SYLing went good. Our teacher really challenged us to speak Chinese all the time. A lot of Elders and Sisters do English fasts were they choose one day where they do not speak English. He said that it would be better for us to speak Chinese all the time instead. So its been great but hard. Our lesson on Saturday went really well. We taught a girl named Brittany who we had taught a few times before and a sister who had joined the church a few years ago from China. It was really good. There was one point in the lesson where I could understand what they were talking about but I didnt' know how to communicate my thoughts. haha oh well. At least I understood right? Our lesson this week was tricky. We taught the Plan of Salvation and the Word of Wisdom. The sinario was that her husband just died and she took up drinking to ease the pain. So not only did we have to teach those two things but also to her needs. It was crazy but so much fun to teach. The Spirit was really strong. I love teaching at the TRC. I can't wait Autumn for you to experience it for yourself.

     This Sunday was Awesome!!!! Sister Eliane Dalton of the Young Women's General Presidency spoke. It was great. She is such an amazing women. The whole time during her talk I thought of our Young Women in Turner ward and how I wish they could have been here to hear her powerful words. So mom, I hope you will read this part to your Young Women, She taught that each of us as young women are such a powerful force for good. She said, "The power of one young women who knows who she is  and will literally stand as a witness of God at all times, all things and all places, who is lead by the Spirit WILL change the world." I know that at times it is easy to forget our Divine worth and potential but I know that every young women has the power to change the world. I know that each of us has a Divine Worth and that our Heavenly Father loves us and knows us personally. She also said that the steps we take now will prepare us for the rest of our lives. They are our foundational steps. She also said that " You might feel that you are not up for the job, YOU ARE!! Go forward with faith in Christ." I know that our Heavenly Father will help us stand for what is right and will help us and sustain us. All we need to do is have faith in Him and keep His commandments. She also gave 3 things that we should do 100% all the time. Those 3 things are 1. Pray every morning and night 100% 2. Read the Book of Mormon daily (even for 10 mintues) 100% 3. Smile! This is the Gospel of Jesus Christ. It is joyful!! I loved her whole talk. It was so powerful. At one point she was talking about the Young Women's theme and it has helped us as Sister missionaries develop our testiomonies. She started to say it and then we as Sister missionaries all stood up and finished it. It was so powerful! over 100 sisters all standing and saying the theme. The last thing she said was to have confidence in the Lord. She read a scripture in Moses 6: 31-34 which has become my favorite. She said that having confidence is having faith in God. Sister Dalton shared that the word "con" means with and "fedes" means faith. Her whole talk was great! I wish you all could have been here. I hope that this will help your Young Women. It was really helpful to me and made me want to be a better missionary and sister.

     Lets see..... Classes are going well. Chinese is coming slowly but surely. There are a few of the newer missionaries that were moved up in the class because they already know a lot of Chinese.  A few leave in a few weeks! Crazy!! I leave in  3!!!! AHHHH!! I can't believe it!!! I love it here but I am so excited to go to Taiwan. Mom, dont' worry about the skirts I will just wait and get some in Taiwan. I don't want you to have to stress over it. Please send me Alden's address so that I can write him. Or he can just dear elder me it. Also, I haven't been getting Austin's e-mails. Is he still alive?!?! haha tell him that he is a stinker and need to write me. Speaking of stinkers, dad, Thanks for the tease about telling me about Mockingjay. Also, thanks for the Gettesburg quote a few letters ago. It made me laugh a lot. Please keep sending me stories of Abby's adventures and about Alaina in school. I LOVE hearing them. If you could send pictures too that would be great!! Their stories brighten my day. Well I dont' know what else to write about. I wrote a list of things to tell you and I think I said them all. I love you all so much. As much as a love you I even more love this Gospel. I am so grateful that I get to share it with the people of Taiwan. Wo ai ni!!

All my love,

Yang Jiemei

Sister Papritz

Austin - Milwaukee Wisconsin - September 13, 2010

Oh, how is it going family??

 

I'm doing just chipper today. Cool story: We were doing our laundry today and we put our stuff in the washer and then went back to the apartment to study and then we went back to switch them to the dryers. Before I could put a quarter in to the dyer the power went out. Elder Cook hadn't put any money in either but I felt bad for the lady that had 3 loads full that were still wet. So I noticed a phone number on the "employees only" door and so I called it. It was one of the workers and I told them the situation. They came in, they were a couple of ghetto old white folks, the lady came in on fire. She was complaining about the mail man and the electrician and this and that, while Elder Cook and I were just sitting around waiting for them to figure it out. She then came up to the lady with the four loads of clothes and started talking to her about how long she had been waiting, how much clothes she had and how much money she was going to need as compensation. I looked over and noticed the lady just looked scared and confused. I was on the other side of the laundry room but I yelled over at her, "Habla espanol??" She looked over at me soooo relieved, I started translating for her and the lady gave her the money for her clothes and told her that she'll have to find another landromat. It was tiiight!! I totally used my skills and saved that girl's behind. I'm sure she thought that the old lady was like yelling at her or something, I definitely felt very cool after that. Also we were talking afterwards and she was asking me what the situaton was or why the lights went out, I noticed she had an accent and I asked if she was from Puerto Rico and she said yeah, and said that she has only been in America for a month! She said it's been crazy being here, trying to find her way around. Also, Puerto Ricans and Dominicans can sometimes look like they're African American so that's why I even had to ask if she spoke Spanish, it wasn't completely obvious that she was latina.

 

So that was just this morning so I'm feeling pretty good right now. Also, on Friday we were riding back from a siick dinner appointment where this Mexican straight up made us the siiiiickest chinest food ever. It was seriously PF Chang status. We were all joking around with her so much saying she cooked better than the Chinese people themselves. For the lesson after that dinner appointment we literally gave it laying down because we were so UNBELIEVEABLY stuffed. I dont' think I've ever eaten so much in my life, I could barely ride home. But on the way home I got a phone call from a member of an English branch more north, and he told us how his neighbor died and that the burial was going to be tomorrow (Saturday) he had already spoken at the viewing and talked about the Plan of Salvation and other good stuff but told them he couldn't be there for the burial but that he'd send missionaries to be there and dedicate the grave. We got to the chapel (it wasn't a chapel from our church, and the family weren't members) but we were just waiting for the family to arrive and I was walking around and I walked in to one of the chapel rooms and the casket was straight up in there, opened. I looked around like I had walked in to a room I shouldn't have been in. But I walked to the front, toward the casket, and just kind of looked at the body for a while. It was pretty weird. That was only the fourth dead person I've ever seen. But the dedication went so well, and the family was so sweet. We also sang Be Still My Soul and it was definitely a tear jerker for them. They tried to even give us money afterwards but we declined, but the sister of the deceased offered us dinner this week out of gratitude and we accepted that. She said she's going to make us Puerto Rican shoulder roast or something like that. I'm excited.

 

So I'm planning on playing volleyball today, that is going to be the tester to see if the medicine is working well. I'll admit when the Chinese food passed by the sore part it definitely hurt. I think I feel better in general, I definitely feel better in the mornings but I sometimes still get some sharp pain, but not as frequently. Also, I've doing hard work trying battle of a cold, I think. I drink herbal tea (from Chile! I got it from a member in Madison) every morning and take a nap every day and take ibuprofen. I'm super worried about getting sick since the new medicine should be lowing my blood count. Hasn't stopped me yet.

 

La obra misional (the mission work) is going so well. We are meeting so many people, this next week is going to be way excited to follow up on them all. The whole branch is getting excited too about missionary work, by feeding us and telling us about their friends. It's really been a change from a few transfers ago, the older missionary here tells me.

 

Oh yeah! Pentecostals! So we run in to a lot of Pentecostals here and ..they don't like us very much. They always give us a hard time and preach fire and brimstone to us and try to belittle us. They always seem to have their brows furrowed and have a finger pointed at us when the talk to us haha. But we were waiting for a bus and this lady that didn't have any front teeth and very thin hair was teaching us the Pentecostal way, she asked me if I'd been saved and I told her it's been 2 years since I've been saved and I told her I love my savior and that Jesus is everything to me (ya know, talk to a Pentecostal in a way she'll understand) she was surprised but quickly moved on she was talking and talking about how we're Mormon and then she kind of paused and then pointed at me and said, "I think you know deep down inside that Jesus wasn't Mormon." I let that sit for a while, thought about my answer carefully and replied "...you're right. Jesus wasn't Mormon. Mormon was a second century prophet in the Central Americas." Haha, Elder Cook told me later that he had a hard time holding it together after that.

 

The Dominican army is going well. We got fed some delicious Dominican chicken, rice and potatoes, from Hermana Mercedez, it was a weird mixture of Island and Cajun, but super good. We hoping to start teaching their neighbors who are also Dominican, my army will continue to grow. I saw Hermano Santana pay tithing at church yesterday and he should be getting a calling. I'd consider that a successful reactivation.

 

Send those packages!

 

I don't think I have anything else. Take care this week.

Elder Papritz

 

Amy - MTC - September 07, 2010

Ni hao wo de jiating he pengyou!!

      Well another great week has gone by here at the MTC. The temple is closed today for Labor day hence why my e-mail is a little earlier in the day. I love the MTC!!! Its great!! This week we recieved 27 xin de chuanjiaoshimen (new missionaries). They are awesome!! A lot of them speak Chinese which is amazing! 4 of them are international two from Hong Kong, One from New Zealand, and the other from France. The one from France is 25 years old and his English is very good but he has a thick accent. He is trying very hard. He bore his testimony yesterday in Sacrament meeting and it was powerful. He has such faith. It made me realize that the struggles I am having with Chinese are so minor compared to someone who's native language isn't English. I am so grateful for the gift of tounges! I KNOW it is real and that it has helped me so much. I look back on the last 7 weeks and marvel at how much I have learned and grown. I can't believe it! Even though I have made a lot of progess I still have a long way to go. So, this week wo de tongban he wo (my companion and I) made the commitment to not speak English ALL week. Its going to be hard but so helpful. The subject for this letter is "Wo bu hui shuo Yingwen" I can't speak English. haha we will see how it will go.

     This week we taught our second lesson in Chinese. It went really good. I think I am getting a hang of this....sort of. I understood a lot of what our mudaoyou said and I was able to give simple answers. We taught the first lesson again. Next week we teach the Plan of Salvation and the Word of Wisdom. I have a lot to work on this week. Our teachers Liu and He advised us to SYL or speak our language as much as we can. I dont' know if I told you but we have two new teachers. Liu laoshi, he served in Melbourn Australia, and He laoshi who served in Taiwan, Taichung. Both are great teachers and thankfully we will have them for the rest of our time here at the MTC. They push us really hard which is really nice. I'm excited to learn more and to push myself even harder. I realized this week too that I need to change the way that I am studying because it is not as effective as it should be. I memorize a bunch of words everyday but not as many as I feel I should and I'm not retaining them. Darn! So that will be my challenge this week. It will all work out though. It always does!

   I wanted to tell ya'll what I have been doing for ziji de yandu (personal study). I love personal study time!! It is a great opportunity to really strengthen my testimony of the scriptures and the Gospel. I HIGHLY recommend studying Preach My Gospel! Even though you are not a missionary (which everyone should be according to President Benson) It is a great tool to help strengthen your testimony of the Gospel and to become more like our Savior. I have also been studying the Book of Mormon. There is an activity in Chapter 5 of Preach my Gospel on the Book of Mormon. It says that everytime you see a reference to Christ to highlight it. It has been amazing!! I know that the Book of Mormon is another testament of Jesus Christ. His name is everywhere in the Book of Mormon! Just in Moroni 7, I think, alone there are 100 references to the Savior! Amazing!! The Book of Mormon is true! I know it is. And that anybody studies it and sincerely prays about it they will know it is true. I have done that myself and come to know of its truthfullness. It has been wonderful to study that. I also have been working on the Chirstlike Attributes listed in Chapter 6. I love these attributes!! I hope that I can obtain all of them. Study these sections and the rest of Preach My Gospel. Its great!!

   I love this Gospel! I know that going on a mission is the best thing that I can do. There is NO place I would rather be than here. Yes it is hard. Probably one of the hardest things I have ever done but I have grown so much from my trials. There are times when I get discouraged and I want to cry, or in case of this week I did.(dont' worry mom I'm ok now I have a fantastic companion and the Lord to help me) Dispite those days I know that there are people in Taiwan that I need to teach and that need to hear the Gospel. When times are tough I know Heavenly Father called me to this mission because I have something that the people of Taiwan need. So I trust in Him and go on. I know this Gospel is true and that Jesus is the Christ. He knows each of us personally and wants to help us so much that if we will but turn to him he will help us. I know that God is our Heavenly Father and that He and Jesus Christ appeared to Joseph Smith in answer to his prayer. I know that Joseph Smith is a prophet of God. And that through him the Lord restored the truthfullness of the Gospel of Jesus Chirst once again upon the earth.  I know that today we havea  living prophet upon the earth Thomas S. Monson. I know that he is the mouthpiece of the Lord and that by obeying his councel we can find peace and joy in a world that is spiritually starving. The Book of Mormon is the word of God! I am so grateful I can share this message with everyone. I know that God hears and answers our prayers. He has certainlly answered mine. I love you all so much. Thank you for your awesome examples and testimonies.

All my love,

Yang Jiemei

Sister Papritz