Amy - Tianmu, Taiwan May 2, 2011

Qin ai de jiating,

Boy is it getting hot and sticky!!! This whole week the weather has been heating up. Its really spring!! I am so glad it is starting to warm up. But heaven help me when its summer!! A great thing though is that Mangos are in season!!! In June we will be able to buy those delicious heavenly fruit. I ate them in China and LOVED IT! Alden you will be getting here right in the thick of the great fruit season. There is also a really good dessert that is shaved ice with condensed milk on it and fruit. I dont' know who to spell it but it is amazing! In two days sister Tanner and I ate 3. hehe. We are finding ways to keep cool. Luckily our apartment has air conditioning.

This week was really slow. A lot of our appointments fell through so we did a lot of contacting. Everyday we knocked on doors for 4+ hours. It has been fun Sister Tanner and I make it interesting. Here there are a lot of 5 floor builidings. The doors are usually right by each other so its easy to go from one to the other. Sometimes just for fun Sister Tanner and I if one door doesnt' answer we will riverdance/ clog over to the next door. Usually that starts us in our usual laughting fit which is really awkward when someone answers the door. Oh well, gotta break the monotany some how!! We have seen many miracles through door contacting. We met this one Philippino women who literally is a slave. She will work here for 3 years and works from 6am to 11pm. She has no days off and no cell phone. My heart just broke for her as she started to tear up. She has so much faith. She says that prayer is the only outlet she has since she cannot leave the house. We are going back to visit her this week and will take her a Book of Mormon. In that same building one door had Celine Dion music blaring. We danced in the hallway to My heart will go on before we knocked on the door. It brought be back to our many days in the car as a kid when we would listen to her CDs. Good times.

We met this week with Vicky twice. She is amazing!!! We shared the Plan of Salvation and the Word of Wisdom. She said that she knows that it is from God and that he wants whats best for her. When we talked about the Plan of Salvation her face lit up. She talked about how her grandpa had passed away and how she prayed to know where he was. When we told her that he too would have the chance to hear the Gospel her face lit up even more. During her prayer she expressed how much she loved her grandpa and wanted peace. She also apologized for everything that she has done wrong and promised she would start doing good. Her faith is so amazing!! I realized how much my prayers need fixing. Hers are so sincere and faithfilled. It is truly like she is talking with God like a friend. I love her!

Well I hope that you all have a great week. As for mother's day I plan on calling Sunday morning around 6:30 MY TIME. That would be Saturday evening your time. I can't wait the talk to you. I guess I will talk to you more about coming home when I call. Crazy my last phone call home as a missionary!!! AHHH! I love you all!!

All my love,

Yang Jiemei

AUtumn- Budapest Hungary April 25, 2011

Hello family and Friends!!

Well this week was an exciting week! A crazy week! I feel like I lived 20 weeks in just THIS WEEK! Well I will start off with my most traumatic story this week. So I decided it was time to get a haircut. Those that know me, know that I have only ever let two people touch my hair in my life, my haircutter in Oregon and my hairlady in Salt lake city. Thats it. Im pretty particular about my hair. But i was DESPERATE this week, its long and gross and so we decided to go to this hairplace next to our grocery story. (red flag number one....grocery stores should have NOTHING to do with haircuts) so my wonderful companion translates for me. I told her I just want it a little bit shorter and thinner. So she says to her in Hungarian "a little bit shorter and not as much thickness and shorter bangs"... Seems straight forward ugy-e? (right?) ...so I sit down the haircutter lady seemed really nice but her hair looked like an edward scissor hand creation (red flag number two)...so then she washes my hair, no problem... then she proceeds to cut. she cuts a little off the bottom layer..and it looks fine. Then she starts HACKING at the rest of it, layers are coming out of NOWHERE!...all the sudden there are INChes and INCHES falling off my hair. what?! There were SOO MANY LAYERS.. and so she starts to blowdry it and she starts swooping the layers ito my face so ive got all these layers just like hanging in my face like a shaggy dog. Then she starts approaching the bangs and I forbade her!!....so she finished styling, and Im just mortified, the front looks like a layered fiesta..and in the back it felt like there was a little extra. So she turns around and unveils the final product.... yeah, the little extra in the back WAS A MULLET!!!!! I have this long EXTRA LAYER in the back. A little Euro surprise! So i was just MORTIFIED... horrified, felt like crying and running and flying home to my hairdresser. So we immediately go home and I tame the mullet down with some straightening. Now it just looks like some weird crazy european layers and I usually just tuck my little mullet into my collar.I actually just fit right in here in Hungary. but oh man.... I am never going to a grocery haircut place AGAIN..im going down to the Opera house district even if it costs me tons of money. Never again will I have a mullet! (Im just going to let my current mullet grow out.) I dont have any really good pictures of the mullet. I will tease it up a bit one day and take a picture and send it next week.

So besides that horror, the rest of the week was amazing. We teach this man named Zsolt and his deaf mother Katalin. Zsolt is a famous Opera singer in Hungary! He lives right next door to the Opera house and His speaking voice is just this deep beautiful sounding Hungarian, I could just listen to him talk all day. Well I got the wonderful Privilige of inviting them to be baptized on wednesday and they both accepted!! Well Zsolt was thrilled, and Katalin hadnt really heard what was going on so Zsolt yelled to her " do you want to be baptized with me?!" She had this look of like "oh please" ..and then said "hát......igen"... like "wellllllll........yes" with this wink like, whatever you say. she is the CUTEST náni EVER!

On sunday we had a miracle, this women came into Church that we had never seen before. She grabbed all of the materials off of the info table and went to Sunday school. She was reading through them frantically, like she had never seen such a thing. She introduced herself in sunday school and said " I had been standing outside of one of your buildings and I saw the name of your church. So i went home and looked it up online and I just felt something, I felt like this is what I needed. So i came to church to figure our if this is really true".....WOW!!.... Not everyday someone struts into church saying that. so we definitely taught her this week, and were just SOOO happy that we had that miracle this week. She had such a pure desire to learn more.

This week we had our Easter concerts. Every missionary in the budapest area participated. We did a concert in kispest, buda, and pest...we had concerts friday, saturday and sunday. It was a busy weekend. But it was so fun to play the piano and to share the gospel through music.

For easter we went and ate at a members home. She fed us stuffed egg shells, like egg shells stuffed with Rice...i have NO CLUE how she did that. These little meat patties and some Chicken noodle broth soup. Then the grand finale was another soup, it was a spinach soup...but it really just looked liked a huge bowl of bright green thick BABY FOOD!!...yeah..so I had my first experience trying to pleasently slurping down spinach soup/baby food. I had do drink lots of juice with it to keep it down. Im grateful because the food is REALLY good here. Im lucky I havent had anything that is disgusting. We made paprikas Cirke the other day and it was divine. But it was a Hungarian recipe, uh...and were not really proficient in Hungarian culinary vocabulary..so we improved it. and it turned out great. I havent had anything too weird..I cant wait to have a good weird food story.

The weather is PHENOMINAL HERE! It has just been sunshine ever since I showed up. The trees are blooming with bright purple and white flowers and the sun is out, and it has rained a couple of times...but Im defintiely not in Oregon anymore. No more rainy springs!

Oh yeah... so we get home late at night on Saturday and the doors to our balcony are WIDE OPEN and we DEFINITELY didnt leave them open. So we start freaking out that someone is in our apartment, me freaking out a little less than sister Roderick..but still a TON for ME...and I grabbed knives and was equipped to fight this INTRUDER. So we get our district leader on the phone and he starts walking us throug his "plan" what a joke! He basically said just run in and start stabbing the air! start stabbing anything! then he started telling sister Roderick to start speaking in Hungarian, formalizing him and using lots of "maga's" telling him to leave!.... (which means just speak really fancy to him, and make it sound like fancy hungarian cause maybe that would be intimidating! bahah!) Well...I finally switched a light on and charged the room..and used my flashlight and looked EVERYWHERE there was noone there. But we sure as heck didnt open those doors. So who knows what happens...i think all of the formalization worked, he was out of there! we were TOO fancy for him!!

Well that was my week. Like I said. CRAZY busy week! Lots of excitement. Lots of spirit. Some miracles thrown in there and some wonderful baptisms set up! Barbye gets baptized on saturday and Im soooo excited! I will send pictures next week, I finally found my camera Chord so I can charge my camera.

Love You all!!

- Papritz Nővér

Cultural Tip of the Week: hungarians have some weird easter traditions. One is the men pour perfume on the womens hair, and the other is that they dump water on girls as a surprise. So... yea our elders definitely took advantage of that tradition and dumped us last night on Gellert Hedge.

pictures: 1. Sister Roderick and I at a wheelchair benefit. The church donated a bunch of wheelchairs to an organization and sister Roderick sang in the ceremony.

2. Me infront of some cute old men playing chess in the subway. Dad and Austin would love to play!

3. This is the sign we pass everyday infront of our bus stop: "Good mornin starshine!" ...how random!

4. My beautiful city from Gellert Hedge.
--

Austin - Kenosha Wisconsin - April 25, 2011

Hey family,

So I got a call from President on Thursday, he started out all casual asking about my health. Then he started asking about how my Spanish is coming and how the area is. Then he asked if I would train next transfer. It caught me totally off guard. I had just finished training and I thought there were a couple of other people that would train before me that are older than me and haven't trained yet. I also found out that they are moving the Zone Leader area to the English Elders that are over the same city. We also share an apartment with them. So I'll be training in the same apartment as the zone leaders. It should be interesting. I also wonder what they are going to do with the car (usually the car is shared between the two companionship) since Zone Leaders usually always have a full time car but our area is bigger than theirs. I might be on bikes again, but at least it's getting a lot warmer.

This should be a lot easier to train this time, now that I know what to expect. I never anticipated that so much of the work would fall on me. You definitely feel a lot more of the weight of the work when you're training, especially in language missions since the companion can't speak the language very well. I don't know who I am going to get but from what I saw both of the new Spanish missionaries are from Utah so it's unlikely they will know Spanish.

I hurt my back while working out one morning so I'm back on the muscle relaxants that I used when I got in a bike crash in Milwaukee. I hope I can get it healed before my boy comes so that I can be an example to him and workout in the morning. Oh, I went to a doctor because I've had a cold for 28 days straight and he told me something genius -- I probably just have allergies. So I started taking Claritin and it was fixed in two days haha. Gosh I wish I would have thought of that earlier. I've never had allergies before too so that was weird and everyone else in my family gets itchy eyes and stuffy noses when they get allergies but I didn't really have any of that.

We have interviews with the Presient next week, I'll be looking for to that. For Easter we ate at our Branch Presient's house and we got to do an Easter Egg hunt with their family. It involved finding clues in specific scriptures and then trying to find it based on the scripture. Elder Kelly this morning went golfing with the Branch President. They had plenty of time to talk and he counseled him a bit on life after the mission (I just went on exchanges with the English elders while he did that). Elder Kelly leaves this Thursday for home. He tells me it's bitter-sweet. He's going to miss alot of people here but he is excited for this next part of his life.

Sorry I don't have any way cool stories or anything. It was a pretty normal week. We made Easter cards for some of the members, I felt like Martha Stewart making them. I printed out a scripture and then glued it on this fancy paper background. It was pretty decent.

Much love,

Elder Papritz

Amy - Tianmu, Taiwan April 24, 2011

Qin ai de jiating,

I hope that you had a great week. I am so grateful that we had that meeting last week with the historians. I felt suffeciently humbled when they talked about keeping a journal. It is something I have been trying to catch up on this week. I realized just how important it is to keep a journal and how we are expected to. I'm not quite caught up yet but I'm getting close. I hope that you all are keeping journals. It doesn't have to be a long entry but a short paragraph will do.
This week we met again with Vicky Lin. She is amazing!! We met with her twice this week. On Friday we taught her about the Restoration. She said that she believes Joseph Smith's First Vision is true! She has been praying and reading the Book of Mormon. On Sunday she came to a baptism and then to church. We also met with her afterward. She said she loved church and had a great questions. She asked a lot about Adam and Eve which was our Sunday school topic. We are planning on meeting with her on friday and teaching the Plan of Salvation. She is going wonderfully. Her prayers are so sincere and heartfelt. We planned on her getting baptized on May 14 but we might need to move her date back a little bit because we won't be able to finish the lessons then.

We had a lot of lessons this week cancel so we went contacting A LOT. There are a lot of neighborhoods we still haven't contacted. So this week wasn't really eventful. I don't really know what to write about. For Easter the ward didn't do anything special. When Sister Tanner and I would tell the ward Happy Easter many didn't know it was Easter! haha When we got home from church the Shilin sistes hid a bunch of candy around our apartment so we had a little Easter egg hunt. It was a lot of fun.
Well I hope that you all have a great week. I am so grateful for this Easter season and the opportunity it gives us to remember the Savior. I know that he did Resurrect on the third day and that He lives. I am so grateful for his Atonement and the hope that it gives me that everyday I can change. I love you all!!

All my love,

Yang Jiemei

Austin - Kenosha Wisconsin - April 18, 2011

Hello,

Thinking back, nothing too out of the ordinary happened this week. There is this young man in the branch that was baptized recently and he is the only member of his family. We are trying to work with his Mom but she is very indepent thinker. This week her younger son had a birthday party and we were over there and they had a bunch of friends over there and they were all so surprised to see us there. Some of them would walk in and see us and say, "Oh boy, I didn't know I was going to church today." And another lady (who we found out was dating another lady at the party teehee) abruptly told us, "I'm athiest." When she walked in. They all assumed we were these stiff Jesus preachers. As the party went on and they saw how genuine we were I saw every single one of their hearts open up with time. One of the ladies, a Puerto Rican (who are usually very outspoken), even admitted that she had judged us but that she wanted to actually come to our church. She felt like we were different than other religious people. And the athiest (also lesbian) admitted that she was religious at one time but lost her faith when she grew up and kind of learned to hate the world and God. She even admitted that she woudln't mind spending more time trying to get to know God more. So it was way cool.

So Kelly is going home soon and all the members are gearing up and putting meal appointments together. Last Sunday we had more meal appointments than the entire transfer combined. We went to this Brazilian family's house and had some delicious Brazilian food and talked about Brazil forever. And that night we got an unexpected phone call from the Branch President's wife and she invited us over for a dinner (after we were already stuffed) but we didn't put down the offer. The branch Presidents Mom was in town and she is from Uruguay but she also lived in Brazil and spoke Portuguese, French Spanish and English. It was cool, so in the last week I have had 3 Portuguese conversations in the middle of my Spanish speaking mission in Wisconsin. My Portuguese is getting pretty decent.

I'll tell you, our members are dang bold. There was this random white guy that was at church because one of the Hispanic ladies works with him (note that he doesn't speak Spanish and she hardly speaks English) but he had expressed to her in some way that he had a bad experience at his old church and so she simply invited him to church. He was a way cool guy, real humble guy. A recovering drug and alcohol addict just trying to survive in this economy. I got to know him well because I interpreted the entire sacrament meeting for him while just sitting next to him.

It's pretty weird to think I'll be at a year soon. It just does NOT feel l ike I walked in to those MTC halls almost a year ago. I hear the second year goes even faster. What a shame. I pray for you all at home. And from what I hear about Brazil I'm sort of glad to be here. The father of that family was telling us how he was shot at and saw robberies and violence and all sorts of stuff. The favelas (ghettos) of Brazil are pretty bad, way worse than anything we have here in the US. I count my blessings every night, for such a tight family with all active members. Just about every companion I have had has one less active family member and half have had an immediate family member die. Gosh I'm so lucky.

With much love from Kenizzle Wiscizzle,

-Elder Papritz

Autumn- Budapest Hungary April 18, 2011

Hello Everyone!!!

Im writing this in an internet cafe, next to a crazy Hungarian whose ring tone is the sound of a fly buzzing. its super weird.

Well it was another LOVELY week in Pest. Im loving all of this more and more. and Me and Sister Roderick are just having the times of our lives together. We got to travel to this amazingly cute and prefect city called Gyűr, because she was performing in her one woman show concert there. (well p.s. did I mention she is an INCREDIBLE singer... which is so fun for me) and I got to go to the concert then we spent time in the city and ate some amazing Hungarian food...stayed at the Gyűr sisters apartment, which is like a penthouse. Seriously it makes our apartment seem like a dog house. There apartment is huge so we all crashed there for the night and caught the 530 am train back to Pest to be on time for church. It was a fun little adventure and I was glad to go because the night before she also had a concert and she traveled with another sister and left me in Budapest to fend for myself! I went on splits with Sister Johnson and we had a blast... but we are both SUPER NEW..and super...uh...lacking in the language department. So it was a hilarious night us trying to survive with the language. But we taught my super spunky amazing investigator Barbye and it was so funny cause we kept getting things confused. At one point Barbye was talking about something about a building... I thought she was talking about the Temple... sister johnson thought she was talking about the Great and Spacious building...and come to find out she had been talking about the Tower of Babel all a long!! haha.... well I was definitely WAY off. Then another part of the lesson she kept asking us about a jossznő (i dont know how to spell it) well neither of us knew what that was. So she showed us in the dictionary.. and it said "prophetess" and we said no ... President Monson is the Prophet. Well she just got more confused with our answer..and well, again...we were a BIT confused. she had actually been asking if "she should still go to a FORTUNE TELLER!".....haha.... well that was A LOT easier to explain than prophetesses. oh man.. this language is so confusing! but hilarious!!

So on tuesday we went streeting at this busy intersection/Metro station area and we set up tables and stuff to talk to people. and We had a lot of success! We found these 3 really rough looking construction workers who were totally interested. One of them is named Laszlo and he is built like as if he works with a jackhammer everyday... he is like a mix between a Hell's Angel and a body builder... Hes bald and has this awesome mustache. anyways he was super interested in what we were saying and said he wanted a Book of Mormon and that he would come to church. but didnt have a phone number supposedly. So all week we thought I bet he's going to dog us and not show up because he probably really has a phone but didnt want us to have his number... and so then I prayed super hard all week that somehow he'd make it to church. I was in the middle of playing my prelude in sacrament meeting and in walks in Laszlo my Hells Angel-Body Builder!!! and the best part is afterwards when I asked him if he had read much in the book of mormon he pulled it out and said "yeah tons! I read all the way till Alma 3!" .... what ?!?! alma 3! that was like Music to our ears! and the best part is he had the book all high lighted and he took furious notes all through sunday school and asked all sorts of questions. yeah.. im super excited about him. it was so awesome that he came to church.

Also funny at that streeting experience, we got flashed.... By a man. This man just walked into the middle of the square and dropped his pants. and Im sitting there talking to our construction worker friends and I just hear Sister Roderick yell out " SISTER PAPRITZ WHATEVER YOU DO...DO NOT LOOK TO YOUR LEFT!!!"... yeah.. unfortunately I had been looking to the left. prior to the warning...and boom....got an eyeful. WELCOME TO HUNGARY!!

Also it was crazy this week we visited a family who lives in the 8th district... or as I like to call it the Holocaust district.. cause it looks like your walking into a concentration camp. The people that live there are soooo poor and sooo lacking in just basic needs. Hardly anyone there has power or food. and the family we visited lived in just filth. It was soooo sad. But so humbling. My life is so blessed, not only with material things but just with the gospel and an eternal perspective. The mission is an amazing culture experience and big life lesson teacher. I definitely wont take things for granted after all of this.

Also this week I accidently told the mission presidents wife I felt like I was on vacation.... uh whoops! she gave me a look of like "vacation huh? thats what this is?!".... "UH NO THATS NOT WHAT I MEANT...i meant you know the joy you feel when youre ON VACATION... its like that with LOTS AND LOTS of missionary work. emphasis on Lots of work.".. yeah had to back peddle out of that one.


well I love you all so much! and I love the work! and I love Hungary!!!

Love
Papritz Nővér
--

Amy - Tianmu, Taiwan April 18, 2011

Qin ai de jiating,

This week has been great. We continue to see miracles here. Sister Tanner are doing great here in Tianmu. Heavenly Father has continued to bless us. We has quite a few investivators that we had to let go because they were not progressing. But on Sunday we met a amazing women. Her name is Lin Vicky. We were on the phone trying to get a hold of an investigator but she didn't answer. When we turned around she walked up to us. She said she wants to go to church but has a problem with drinking coffee. we taught her about Heavenly Father and prayer. She really opened up. When I invited her to be baptized on May 28 she asked if she could get baptized earlier!!!! Her goal is to be baptized on May 14. She even said that she will try to rearrange her work schedule so that she can come to church. When she prayed at the end of our lesson she thanked Heavenly Father for leading her to us. She said she was, "longing for the truth." Tears rolled down her cheeks as she thanked us and left. She is wonderful!! We are both so excited to meet with her again. Afterward Sister Tanner and I said a huge prayer of thanks and just kept shaking our heads and marveling at the miracles the Lord puts into our lives.

We has Zone Conference this week which was wonderful. We talked a lot about sactification. I realized I have a lot to repent of and change. We talked a lot about how we can personal sanctify ourselves to become more like Christ. I loved this scripture that the Assistants shared in Joshua 3:5. I like how it says that as we are sanctified we will see miracles. I know that that is true since we have seen so many.

So last P-day I wrote really early because we went and hung out with the Neihu Sisters and a recent convert. We went to the beach in Danshui and watched these really cool parasailors. It was really fun. I felt a little bit closer to home as we stood on the beach. We also ate at this really good Texas Steakhouse...yup it was legit. The member we went with bought us these huge steaks along with a bunch of other food. It was soo good!! The steakhouse has a bunch of pictures of John Wayne and other Western movies and a big Texas flag! Our table was in this one part of the resturant that had a door like a jail cell. Afterward we also went to Yangmingshan (a big mountain) and saw the Cala lilly festival. The lillies were gorgeous! It was really foggy though so it was difficult to see. Wang Jiemei bought each of us some lillies which now beautify our apartment. It was a lot of fun.

Today for P-day we woke up early to buy groceries and then went to Taipei. Two church historians came and talked to us. It was a great meeting. They talked a lot about record keeping. It definately reminded me that i need to be better about keeping a record. It was also opened up to question and anwer time. It was so much fun to learn from them. Afterward, the Neihu, Shilin, and us Tianmu Sisters ate at an all you can eat hot pot place. Oh man! It was sooo good. for about 10 American bucks we ate tons of hot pot of our choice and ice cream and all sorts of other goodies. It was delicous. We also are going to the Shilin night market to buy some skirts. yahoo!!

Well i love you all. I hope that you all have a great week.

Love,

Sister Amy Papritz

Yang Jiemei