Amy - Jilong, Taiwan March 14, 2011

Qinai de jiating,

This week has been amazing!!! I am safe and well. Sister Howell and I were out tracking on Zhong he lu when we saw we had 5 missed calls from members. They were telling us about the earthquake and tsumnami and that we needed to get to higher ground. Zhong he lu is at the top of a huge hill so we were ok. Our members are so amazing. I feel like they are my second family. The constantly pray for the missionaries and worry about us. The mission nurse called us and said that we needed to get to higher ground and stay away from the harbor. So the rest of the night was spent on Zhong he lu. There wasn't any damage to the harbor or really anywhere around where I am so we are really blessed. Members have been telling us all week about the earthquake in Japan and the damage caused. All of us are praying for the dear members and people of Japan. That makes me worried now knowing that it was based in Sendai. I hope that everyone there is safe.

On Thursday we at a special meeting with Elder Perkins of the Seventy. It was one of the most spiritual experiences of my mission! I learned so much from him and his wife. We talked a lot about the Spirit and how that is the most important thing we can have as missionaries. He quoted Elder Bednar who asked that the word meeting be replaced with "revelatory experience" He said that all of our meetings can be revelator experiences if we go with a question and are humble. It has made me re-think a lot about the many meetings we go to. Elder Perkins also talked about the Atonement. It was incredible. I learned so much about the Atonement that I didn't think of. I wish I could tell you everything that we talked about but it would take forever and I don't have time. Sister Perkins talked about gratitude and how we should jump out of bed every morning and thank our Heavenly Father for one more day in Taiwan sharing the Gospel.

My birthday was so wonderful!! Thank you all for your birthday wishes and for the package. I love the skirt and the purfume. We had a bunch of great lessons with our investigators. One in particular Feng jiemei is really progressing. Since the first time we met with her she has made so many changes. She is a former investigator that has had a lot of problems in her life. We invited her to live the Word of Wisdom which means she needs to give up smoking. She says so smokes a pack a day. We invited her this week to only smoke half a back. She was so willing to quit. I know that the Gospel changes lives because I have seen it change her life so much. Also GREEN GOT BAPTIZED!!!!!!!! It was a great baptismal service. And to top it all of ice cream on the cake his wife Joy came!! When Sister Howell called her to see if she was coming she said there was no way she could come. But she came!!! She did miss him getting baptized but got to hear him bear his testimony. His testimony was so powerful. He was just beaming as he shared his testimony and when he saw that his wife was there. I know that soon she will get baptized too! I am so excited!! He is such an amazing member of the church. I know that he will be a great example for his family and that soon they will all be members and can enjoy the blessings of the Gospel.

I hope that you all have a great week. I know that now the world is in a lot of chaos. Many people are suffering and need the Gospel in their lives. I know that the Gospel can change lives. I love a quote from President Benson in the first chapter of Preach My Gospel. He says that only the Gospel can heal nations and families. Only the Gospel will save the world from its path of self destruction. Thats the basic jyst of it. I know that that is true. I know that as we trust in our Heavenly Father and do the small and simple things, daily individual and family scripture study and prayer, and going to church that we can will be blessed. Heavenly Father will pour his blessings upon us and protect us. He does keep his promises. I love you all so much.

All my love,

Yang Jiemei

Autumn MTC March 9, 2011

Szervusz!!!

Well it's week 11, wow I've been here FOR-EV-ER!!! ..and guess what...I'M GOING TO BE PARTYING HERE A LITTLE BIT LONGER!!! That's right, my cute little deformed mutated-nerveless-foot just bought me another 1-2 weeks in the MTC!!!!..they officially requested 2 weeks extra, but said "if needs be it can be shortened".... uh yeah "IT NEEDS BE!"... i'm only giving this thing 1 extra week to heal, and then I'm dragging it to Hungary and it will heal along the cobblestoned - vine covered houses of the hungarian country side! So my new tentative departure date is March 21.

I went to the doctor on monday and he said it is still supper swollen, my hematoma friend is still there, but getting better. My scar is knarly and it looks like frankenstine. It is feeling better each day, but it is deifnitely not strong enough, nor small enough to be 100% ready to go. It is so swollen it only fits into One pair of shoes, I can't even get my tennis shoes on! so I'm on some steroids to get my foot shrunken and then I can wear my entire wardrobe of shoes and then GET THE HECK OUT OF DODGE!!!!!!! I have to be a walking machine between here and Go-time because I need to build up to 6 miles a day, so me and my kicsi labfaj (little foot) have pep talks everymorning "listen foot, you feeling good today? ok..well great, you have exactly 1 week to get over yourself!!"....yeah, me and my companions all talk to my foot in hungarian, so that nobody actually knows we're talking to a foot. Hungarian is the BEST secret language ever. Only like 0.1% of the world speak it.

So this week was my "Hungarian only week" and it started off rough. I just kept thinking, uh...i don't know what I'm saying or what anyone else is saying and I may have only been cycling through the only 10 words that I knew for the first 3 days "bathroom, please, corn, weird, foot, pain, i want to sleep, the gospel, come to church and will you please pray." Well today was the last day and I have been speaking english again for 1 whole hour and IT FEELS WEIRD!!!....i actually got really used to only speaking hungarian to the point where all of the sudden my first inclination is to respond in hungarian. I obviously branched out from my little circle of words and had intelligible conversation!!! It was a blessing to have such a boost in language before going to the country. I'm warning everyone right now, I will be one of those sisters that comes back and doesn't know english. I only spoke hungarian for one week and it already felt weird. I apologize 16 months in advance, but after my brain working this hard I totally deserve to have it deeply engrained in my brain.

There haven't been too many other exciting events this week, my whole district is preparing to leave on monday and I get to keep my clothes in my closet while they pack up for Hungary. But i'm so grateful for the timing of it all. I know that i'm supposed to be here another week, I know I will be blessed for being patient with the healing process. I know the Lord is looking out for me and my little foot and I will get some awesome extra language practice before I step of the plane into beautiful Hungary.

Oh yeah and I also had another nurse training this week and got a really cool NURSE KIT! it is like a full size field kit, with blood pressure cuff bandages, tons of medicine, high intensity bug spray! everything! So i'm SUPER SET!!! JUST GET ME ON THE PLANE!!!

anyways... enough of wanting to get on the plane. life is perfect, it is exactly what it's supposed to be.

I love you all!!!!

-Sister Papritz

--

Austin - Madison Wisconsin - March 10 , 2011

Get the stomach flu for 3 days!

That's right, to hit food frenzy week with a bang we decided to go to the Brazilian churrasco but we found out it was closed after we showed up and for some reason it doesn't even have the hours displayed on the door or anything. We had to actually go back to the library and look up the times and it even said it was open on Monday. We tried to call them but they don't even have an answering machine set up. So not a terribly good start to food frenzy week but we settled for Applebees and it was still good. Then on Tuesday we had the local Polish Deli. My my, it was Polska divine; we had smoked cheese, stuffed bacon and some kind of ridiculously good Polish ham. Way good. Wednesday however, we ate at this seafood Mexican restaurant and I got there and I decided that I'd probably be able to tell that the seafood wasn't going to be incredibly fresh there (being from Oregon, whereas my companion is in landlocked Utah). So I chickened out and orded the steak. The weird part is I ordered a porterhouse they gave me a t-bone and the charged me for the filet mignon (figures a little Mexican seafood shop wouldn't do steaks right). Well that night I was not feeling well at all. I commenced what would be a three day battle for my sanity. I spent the first 24 hours-straight throwing up...probably over 30 times. Couple that with a terrible fever, muscle aches, joint pain, worst runs of my life. It was miserable. I am still feeling the affects from it. I'm so low on energy and weak, it hurt to sort my laundry this morning because I had to have my arms up and moving for so long. But the whole time I was throwing up I just kept thinking, "I'm never having another steak ever. Heck, I'm never eating at another restaurant ever!" I thought for sure it was food poisening but I talked to the church doctor and he thinks it is probably what another missionary had just a day before, just like the stomach flu.

It was sooo beyond miserable. I seriously thought I was never going to see the end of it. Three days straight. I had thoughts that I was going to have to come home, I was going to need surgery on my insides from ripping them from heaving so hard. I thought I had e-coli and that I was going to die like that one kid that died in Oregon a few years ago from an e-coli breakout at a Wendy's a few years ago.

Tuesday and Wednesday went alright, I guess. I don't really remember much from the week to be honest but we literally just did nothing this week because I was just sick like a dog. I didn't even eat food until Sunday minus two packs of apple sauce and some jelly that I ended up throwing up.

Well, I thank God that it is over now. I remember thinking during the whole thing, "Man I'm really going to appreciate the feeling of being better again."

I sure do.

Much love,

Elder Papritz

Amy - Jilong, Taiwan March 6, 2011

Qin ai de jiating,

March is here!!! crazy!! I can't believe we are already hitting March! Not much happened this week. The same old investigators with the same problems. We did see a miracle yesterday though. One of our investigators Jiang shu hua has been struggling for weeks. She keeps tell us that she isn't happy and we tell her that she needs to come to church. She hasn't come yet expect yesterday she finally came!!! One of our amazing new converts Chen si yu talked to her on the phone for a while and worked some kind of magic because she came to church!! Jiang shu hua said afterward that she felt really really happy. I am so grateful for the members in our ward who are so willing to help us. On a sad note Huang Jiemei didn't come to church even though she said she would. With Hao yi nothing has changed, he still hasn't come to sacrament meeting. So he won't be able to get baptized on his 3rd baptismal goal of the 26th. Blast! If ya'll have any tips on how to wake up a 10 year old and get him to church it would be much appreciated. On a super happy note, GREEN IS GETTING BAPTIZED ON SAUTRDAY!!! I am so excited!!! I couldn't ask for a better birthday gift. He is amazing! I am so excited for him to get baptized so that he can bless his family. His mother in law said that if when he joins the church and he makes big changes she will accept the church and get baptized.

On Wednesday we had the wonderful oppourtunity to attend the temple. I love the temple! Sister Howell and I woke up early to e-mail and we headed to Taipei early. When we got to the temple all of the stress about our investigators and other things melted away. I felt so much peace. It was so wonderful to serve in the temple. Afterward we hung out with the Sisters in our zone. I don't know if I told ya'll but Sister Bready is in my district this transfer!! She is in Neihu which is 20 minutes away by bus. I get to see her twice a week which is amazing!! And Sister Tanner who was in my district last transfer moved to Shilin which is still in our zone so I get to see her too!! Its just like old times in the MTC. I love those two sisters. They are amazing missionaries and great examples to me. Anways, we went shopping at the MRT mall.

This week Elder Perkins of the Seventy is coming to take a tour of our mission! On Thursday we are having a meeting with him and his wife. Our zone will sing a special musical number. We also will have the opportunity to teach him a 10 minute lesson on any Gospel topic. yikes! It will be so much fun. I am so excited for him to come and to learn so much from him. He used to be the mission president of the Taipei mission and lived in Beijing for a while. I will write you next week about it.

Well I hope that you all have a great week. I miss you and pray for you everyday.

All my love,

Yang Jiemei

Autumn MTC March 1 , 2011

Csodalatos nap ma baratak es csaladot! Szeretem elet! (wonderful day today friends and family, I love life!)

hello!

Well, this week was my first full week in the MTC as the gimp. I said all week while limping around "bocsi nani vagyok!" (sorry, I'm a grandma) and "Turtle vagyok, bocsi en nagyon lassu" (I'm a turtle, sorry I'm very slow). haha... this week everything was feeling pretty good. I wasn't like running or anything, but I was definitely getting around...and then all the sudden on monday BOOM. nagyon fajdalom! (lots of pain!) ... it hurt worse than BEFORE surgery! so i was kind of out of commision the rest of monday, and went to the doctor on tuesday and there is a HUGE hematoma on the bottom of my foot, a bruise the size of a plum that is draining and nasty...and well... it definitely wasn't the "progress" I was hoping for. The doctor doesn't know how it got there, but it stinkin hurts. So it looks like my little foot bought me an extra week in the MTC! all of the doctors are thinking its best I wait it out a little longer, cause I'm not even back into normal shoes...so who knows how that will go.

but I feel really good about that decision. I mean in the ICU we always said you'd WAAAAAAY rather spend an extra day in the ICU then get transfered out too early... so I think it's the same thing, I don't want to get transfered out of the MTC too early. I especially don't want to get to Hungary and have my trainer see me limping off the plane and think "Great, I get the Gimpy sister. oh, AND her hungarian sounds like a 5 year old"...haha... so... I would way rather have my trainer never even realize I had foot surgery. I want to get off the plane and hit the ground running and not have to say "hey can we take it easier this first week, my foot hurts" blah... no thanks. I'm gonna get there 100%....and still speak like a 5 year old!! it will be awesome! So all in all i think it's a good decision. I'm ok with it, I know the Lord has got my back (And my foot) and it's the best.

So this week I had an awesome dream. Well I love dreams, and so this week in the midst of the foot stuff, I dreamed that I got a new mission call, I was getting reassigned to a new mission cause I couldn't walk. So in my dream I opened my new call and it said (well my real call says: your primary assignment is the mission nurse)...so my dream call said: "you have been called to the california spanish speaking mission. Your primary assignment is: The mission Birthday Party Clown!"....bahahaha...what?!?! ... so then in my dream, I was at the MTC dressed as a clown, in clown training, speaking spanish. The thing is I wasn't even disheartened I was a birthday party clown, I was just mad in my dream that I was having to spend 8 more weeks in the MTC. (i think i was secretly pumped to be a birthday party clown)......so maybe my dream will partly come true, maybe in Hungary they will be in desperate need of some party entertainment. I'll tell them "Don't worry, I got this"..the kids will love me.

OH I don't know if I mentioned last week. But when I was coming out of anesthesia from surgery, waking up from surgery, the anesthesiologist said I WAS SPEAKING HUNGARIAN!!!!!!!!... he said "i couldn't understand her, but it was definitely hungarian".... booyah!!! That means it must be sticking right? I meant if i wake up from a deeply sedated state and the first thing I do is speak Hungarian, that's a good sign! so... I might be able to survive this language after all.

Well this week in the MTC for us is what we call "consecration week". It's where we dedicate the whole week to being the best missionary ever, and we also give up english for a week. So this entire week I will ONLY speak hungarian. ONLY...HUNGARIAN... so I am no longer an english speaker, I am hungarian. It's a tidge bit intimidating, but luckily sacrifice brings forth the blessings of heaven. So i'm really excited to see how this week goes, feel the blessings of sacrifice and consecration and really get in gear for Hungary. Even if I'm getting delayed a week... it is coming soon. pray that I don't get delayed, but life is life..and if it happens it will be awesome.

Well I love you all!!

I got lots of letters and emails this week, i'm gonna work my little heart out to reply to them all. Love you all!!!

Love,

Papritz Nover

Amy - Jilong, Taiwan March 1, 2011

Qinai de jiating,

Zao an! Sister Howell and I decided to get up really early today since we are going to the temple today at 10am. We woke up at 5 and ran to the e-mail shop that is open 24 hours. I am so excited to go to the temple today! So this week we had a good week. We had quite a few appointments fall through so we had a lot of opportunities to go tracting. One evening we tracted up by our house and found a truly golden family. Her name is Huang and she said that she has been looking to join a church but doesn't know which to join. We shared about the Restoration and invited her to pray about it. The next time we met with her we talked about the Book of Mormon a little more in depth. She said that she already knew it was true because 1. of Joseph Smith and 2. Because it talked about Jesus. WOW!! She has one absolutely adorable daughter who has the most hair I have ever seen on a baby. The baby was sick this last week so she wasn't able to go to church. But next week she said she would. She is set to get baptized on March 26.

The rest of our investigators are doing good. Our problem is still getting them to church. On Sunday we were suppose to have 7 investigators to church and Sister Howell and I were so excited. We only had 3 come. 3 of them slept in and said that church is too early and the other ended up having some family thing come up. Its so frustrating!!! Church is at 9 which is not that early! Whats hard too is that they say that they will come and then they don't. Its ok though we will just have to bike to their houses and wake them up and get them to church!!! I don't mind knocking on their doors and waking them up.

On Monday our ward had a ward activity. We went up to this waterfall and had a kaorou (BBQ) It was great! The area was so beautiful and the weather was gorgeous! We had about 4 days of sunny warm weather. Right now its raining though. haha Anyways, so we had 5 of our investigators come. It was a wonderful time to get to know the ward. Even Green came with his son. He ended up not getting baptized last Saturday. During his baptismal interview he said something that will make him have to delay it for a week. Its not a big deal though because he is still getting baptized. His new date is March 12 my birthday!!! I couldn't ask for a better birthday gift! Anywhoo, he was there just having a great time with the ward. He was talking with all the ward members and even helped cook some of the food. It made me so excited to see him as part of the ward. He totally fits in! I will have to send you pictures next week of the kaorou.

I hope that you all have a great week. I am so grateful for this opportunity to serve. I know that this Gospel is true. I am so grateful for this opportunity to serve the Lord here in Jilong and to share his Gospel with so many of His children here. I know that God is mindful of his children here and knows each of our needs. Wo ai nimen!!

All my love,

Yang jiemei

Austin - Madison Wisconsin - February 28, 2011

Dear family y amigos,

This was another solid week, although we got more snow dumped on us. If I learned anything on my mission it's that I'm going to live somewhere warm and where the sun never goes away. There's some pretty crazy stuff happening in the zone. Our zone leaders do something pretty cool which is that if we have a "Milwaukee Miracle" then we text in to our zone leaders then they forward it to the rest of us so that every else in the zone can be up-to-date with what is going on in the zone. This week we had a few investigators move up their baptismal date. Elder Partis and I found a couple new investigators and added another baptism seeker named Joaquin. We set a date with him as well and we're pretty excited with all the work we have had the last few weeks.

Every Wednesday we do two hours of service at a food pantry. It's at a Catholic church and we always get plenty of attention every week from all of the volunteers there who are all Catholic. We are pretty hot commodities there because probably a third of the people that go there for food are Spanish speakers. We translate all over the place there and help serve the Spanish speakers. Having been in Milwaukee for seven and a half months I know everyone there really well and I've made some pretty good relationships there. Particularly, with one of the managers of the pantry, Fred, I've developed a pretty good relationship. Last week he invited Elder Partis and I to go eat at his house after service. It was a way cool experience. Fred is such a cool guy and has a pretty sad story - he has taken a dang big hit from the economy because he works in real estate. Nonetheless, his home is huge and beautiful and his family was way cool. I asked me the day before what we wanted to eat and I told him, "I don't care. But something American!" I heard him over the fun say to his wife, "Honey, they want Mexican. Tacos, enchiladas, burritos --- the works." haha. But they made a delicious Shepherd's pie type thing with apple pie, gosh dang it, it was so good. We had a way good lesson with them, as well, after the dinner. I'm not going to say they have any plans on being baptized any time soon but I definitely learned a lot of stuff about the Catholic church that I'm glad he cleared up and I'm positive they better understand the restored gospel. Fred at one point even admitted that possibly both of the churches are true, that the Catholic church is derived from the priesthood line of the east and the mormon church from the priesthood in the west. I'm definitely hoping to get another good meal out of them later ha.

Other than that our investigators are doing decent. A lot of them had hard weeks with the snow and are seeing more and more temptations from the devil, but we're going to keep working with 'em.

Elder Partis and I have a way cool week planned out with delicious lunches at various places and a dinner appointment every day this week. We're calling it food frenzy week. Because I think I'm getting transferred at the next transfer and I've always wanted to eat at some of the restaurants around here including a couple Mexican places, a secret Peruvian restaurant (you have to be Peruvian or know a Peruvian to get in), a Polish Deli and a Brazilian churrasco. Soooo it's going to be a food frenzy. I didn't even realize we had a Polish deli half a block away! We went there one time for a lunch and it was way good. Also, apparently the southside of Milwaukee used to be FILLED with Polish people in the seventies and eighties but they've pretty much been ran over by the Mexicans coming in. I've managed to not meet a single Polish person since I've been here but last week I met my first one on the street (incidentally I thought he was Mexican when I contacted him in Spanish and he told me in broken English, "Sorry, I don't speak English" haha) and then we ran in to a bunch of them at the Polish deli. I'm pretty sure the old ladies there were talking about us being our backs. I saw them whispering and pointing at us. I think they were trying to arrange marriages for their Polish daughters. Not sure.

Much love,

Elder Papritz