Autumn- Pest, Hungary - July 2, 2011

Hello my dear family and friends!!!

Well this might be a short one cause I feel like I just barely wrote you all.

Well LÁSZLÓ got baptized!! woo hoo!!! It was a mad dash to the finish line..and we were shopping for baptismal clothes up until the last day. (buying white underwear and white undershirt for a man was a little weird)... we werent sure if he had anyway so we just got some JUST incase. but Sister Roderick saved the day and had two EXTRA LARGE suits that were PERFECT for our László, so she brought them from Duna and everything went awesome.

EXCEPT! (theres always a hitch with a baptism, something HAS to go wrong... like in my brothers letter last week. they ended up doing his baptism in Michigan lake. Luckily we didnt have to move it to the Danube). Well mine was that we started filling the font at 915 am..and it was filling just fine and baptism is at 11. I go to check on it at 955 and it was still pretty low in the font. I thought " hmm... thats weird, must fill slow." but I KNEW that i started it on time. Well I go back to check it at 1015... 45 MINUTES before the baptism..and its STILL at the same level. then I KNEW something was wrong. It wasnt filling. but there wasnt a hole in the font. so I looked and realized... uh.....i left the drain WIDE OPEN... haha. so as the font was filling, it was also EMPTYING. uh... DUH... whoops. so I plugged the drain and then just prayed that it would fill on time. and then BOOM at 1125 when he walked into the font, it was full and piping hot and perfect.

the baptism was awesome. just he was so prepared and the spirit was strong. and it was AWESOME!! Funny thing was he always teases me that I dont talk alot.. well cause I dont, I dont know a lot of hungarian, but I atleast always try to be funny. But he always just looks at me and says in his low gruffly voice "PAPRITZ..." and Im always like " yes thats my name? what?! WHAT?! ... what do you want to say?" he just laughs and says " Papritz sister...youre an angel". haha... i think its really entertaining to him that Im always begging him to speak whats on his mind when he just walks up to me and says " PAPRITZ" with his hungarian accent. Its so funny. "papritz youre an angel" or "papritz...your hair looks good today" or "papritz...you look like.... laura bush..bahaha".. thats his celebrity look a like for me. My companion got Penelope Cruize and Salma Hayek and I got... uh laura bush. I told him I prefer Sandra Bullock...but whatever. I love him. I felt really guided to Him and it just is so special to be apart of his life. Missionary work is THE BEST!!!

well I included the pictures in a seperate email for your viewing pleasure.

I love this work. I love these people and I love my family and my friends and life is just so so so good.

LOVE YOU ALL!!

sister p

Alden - MTC - June 28, 2011

hey family. so this week has been crazy.


This last week was the Mission president seminar. wich means that alot of the General authorities were her. Acualy all of the first presidency and 11 of the Twelve. that is so amazing. the sad news is that we didnt get to see alot of them. at a devotional we saw elders: Holland, Oaks, Ballerd, Nelson, Scott, Anderson, and Elder Bednar Spoke. it was amazing. As soon as they entered the spirit filled the room. it was thick you could feel it in the air. it was amazing to see them. Elder Bednar spoke about becomeing a Preach my Gospel Missionary. he gave us 5 points.

1. the missionry must know that he is serving and representing Jesus christ
2. must be worthy.and the other ones i cant remember. sorry. well those two were my favorite. anyways. i will need to find my notes. ok besides that. we have some knew missionaries in our zone. YAY!!
it is so great to have these missionaries here. they are so excited and ready to go. it is also nice to just see knew faces. besides that that is about it. Alot of Teaching and learning.

Sad knews today was our last day at the temple. it is closing for the rest of July. however we get to help clean it on the 19th yay.
well that is about it. only 28 more days in the MTC. almost to taiwan. so excited!! well Love you all.

Enjoy the good weather.
Your Missionary
Elder Alden Papritz
Yang Zhang lao.

Autumn- Pest, Hungary - June 28, 2011

HELLO ALL!!!

So I get asked a lot.. what do I do as the mission nurse? hmm.... wellll.... to be honest. not a lot. Im really just a normal missionary, teaching, preaching and knocking doors, but I am a resource for the Mission President's wife, So I get calls from Elders with medical questions just during my normal days.SOOO.... that means that I get calls from 19 year old boys, far away from their mommies.... so the calls have gone a little something like this:

1. "uh sister Papritz, is it a problem if my eyeballs are REALLY REALLY COLD" (asking in the dead of summer) "Elder, why are your eyeballs cold? what did you do to them?" " uh.. well theyre just cold" " Elder, you did something....what did you do?" " well, you see I got sunburned really really bad on my face today cause we were outside all day and then I have had cold corn on my face for like 2 hours... and now my eyeballs are really really really cold!" " Are you having vision problems?" " No theyre just cold..." ".. ok well, they will warm back up, stop touching your cold eyeballs and wear sunscreen next time"

2. "Sister Papritz, I am having kidney problems" "Oh really how do you know?" " well I am having a lot of pain in my kidney region?" " oh yea.... where's that?" "Im having alot of pain in my hips like where my kidneys would be..." "Elder, Your kidneys are not in your hips..." " uh.. theyre not? are you sure?" "100%... im a nurse" " oh ... well then maybe I just ate some bad food....ok... bye"

3. "Sister Papritz, Ive been having some really bad chest pain." " Elder, well have you had this before? any previous heart problems... (Etc etc .. assessed for a little bit)" " Well, no previous, problems, except I got this pain before like a few times" " Is it preceeded by something?" "uh.. what does that mean?" "Did you do something different that you dont normally do before the pain started, like eat a REALLY big meal?" " yea actually I had a HUGE LUNCH... like the biggest lunch ever. AND i was also like bending over, kind of like standing on my head and that kind of made it hurt a lot" " Ok... Elder....dont eat big meals like that. It will stop, its just heart burn. and also, stop standing on your head."

You know things like that.... a little different than my Trauma days (which I miss A LOT... and I dream about big juicy traumas a lot) but still entertaining and a little break in the typical missionary day. So no Im not out here doing field examinations, setting up health stations in the middle of Budapest.. just answering phonecalls from Elders. But I dont mind, my nursing skills will all come back when Im home. I love what Im doing so much here.

This Week we have been CRAZILY getting ready for Lászlós baptism since HE bumped his baptism date up a month, and so that left us 2 weeks to plan/teach/organize EVERYTHING!!! So we spent a lot of this week meeting with him basically everyday so that we can teach Him everything. I love it though, because he starts off every lesson telling us what he read, all the cross references, all the indepth doctrine...etc etc. I have always wondered how he studies so well, how he can remember SOOOO much. We found out last night that he was actually a LAWYER in Romania before he came to Hungary, he had a college degree (super rare). He loves to study and learn and worked as a lawyer for a big company had "the life." But he loved money so much that he started stealing from the company and counterfitting money.. etc etc. He went to jail for 2 years for all of that, lost His license, his wife devoriced Him, he started drinking and smoking.....etc etc. But he told us, now he's Poor and he's just a "working man" and he knows the Lord prepared Him to meet us. OUR MIRACLE MAN!!! So this Saturday is THE BIG DAY, I am excited for it alot. Pray we get everything together. Its going to be nuts until then.

Other awesome events this week:

1. we had to find a new place to live cause our land lady went NUTS on us and has been coming into our apartment when we are gone. So we found a new place ACROSS THE STREET from the branch house, which means coming to our programs will only take like 0.2 seconds to get here instead of the 45 MINUTE commute we have been making on bus, metro, walking etc. and the best part....the apartment has a BIDET!!! ...i dont even know how that works (or really what its for..seems a little unnecessary), but its fancy.

2. Sister Roderick and I wrote a song together last transfer. Its called "you are special" (based off that book about the wooden man and the dots) (she wrote the lyrics and I kind of threw together a piano part) and the song made its world DEBUT in Her zone conference this week. It was really cool, I've never written a song before... much less PERFORMED a song Ive co-written. So it was a really fun experience.

3. I had my first experience with Hungarian birthday candles. Uh... theyre CRAZY. We were at a members house and she pulled out this one candle and an Elder held it while I lit the candle. Everyone was saying, you might want to move your hand.. i thought that was weird, why would I need to move my hand. Then I lit it and all the sudden a THREE FOOT flame BURST out of the candle (well REALLY a firework)...we put it on the cake and this firework candle just spewed and spewed. It was crazy and it was indoors and i was TOTALLY not expecting a three foot firework flame to come shooting out. and I thought the house was going to burn down. Hungarians are so crazy. firework birthday candles. jaj.

Welp thats about it for the week. Lots of great amazing things going on here in Pest. This really is a land of miracles. I love it. I love the mission and I loved something I read today in my studies (talking about a really hard hike)

" The final exertion is more than worth the effort because once the climber is on top, the views are breathtaking. The only way to see the views is to make the climb."

Im so grateful for the climb Im making, the climb my siblings are making and the sacrifice my parents are making in all 4 of us being gone at once. But... I know the view will be breathtaking in the end and we can look back at all we've done, but first we make the climb.

I love you all!!!!!

Remember: im writing on SATURDAY this week.

Sok Sok Szeretettel,

Papritz Nővér

Autumn- Budapest Hungary June 20, 2011

Sciastok!

Well let me first say: for any Hungarian speakers that happen to read this.....uh yea, I know the word I used as my word of the day last week isnt real. I didnt realize that before I sent the email, but when I tried to spell it, the computer auto corrected it to esőnő..and I saw it and thought, hmmm..that doesnt seem right...but it must be. then I deducted my own meaning "rain woman"... then sent it and quickly left the computer lab, and realized... uh that is not the word at all. esernyő...check. got it. bingo. dont worry, im learning the language. just got confused. confused, thats all. im blaming the computer

So yet again....awesomeness. just pure awesomeness in Pest. Things are so great here. I really feel super undeserving of all the success and miracles we see here. We got dropped twice this week by people not wanting to meet with us anymore, but it was made up with people that just blow my mind with their preparation.

1. So our Motorcycle man/construction worker (he doesnt have a motorcycle, he cant even afford internet, but LOOKS like he would ride one)... well his name is Lászlo. He is the one that read the Book of Mormon twice, completely...all the way through... in just 3 weeks. Well we met with Him two days ago. We spent the first HOUR of the lesson, hearing HIS LESSON that he prepared for us about baptism. He used atleast 30 scriptures to teach us, each cross referenced between the Bible and the Book of Mormon. Then I asked him "so are you ready for your baptism on July 30th?" he said " UH...im getting baptized JUNE 30TH!".... " uh no.... we talked about JULY 30TH" ... "Well I told Sister Roderick June 30th and Im not waiting" ( yea He DEFINITELY never told her that) Then he showed me this scipture on like, If you know its true dont hesitate. So he said, "Why would I wait If i know its true. Why are you wanting me to wait?" Then he basically made me feel like I WAS the bad guy in trying to get Him to wait for his baptism (which actually was just stick to the ORIGINAL date). haha....sooo... Yea. We have a baptism in like 2 weeks, but the thing is we werent planning on it that soon, he still has A LOT OF LESSONS (we just barely taught Plan of Salvation...YEA... but to be honest, we have only meet with him 3 times total).. but he is so Solid. He is so excited.

I dont know if I told the story of how we found Him. That morning Roderick and I had prayed/joked that today we were going to find the first Temple President of Hungary that day and then 10 minutes later after we started tabling, we found Lászlo. He didnt have a phone, so we couldnt get His number. But he promised he would be at church, and he was, in his dirty overalls and huge grin on his face when he walked in. Then he dropped off the face of the earth for 3 weeks! Then one day we were walking through this Metro square, and I saw him out of the corner of my eye, yelled at Roderick that it was that Lászlo.. I had found our prodigal son! where had he gone for three weeks?.. oh dont worry, just to Germany to go to the temple and meet with the missionaries. no big deal. Well weve been meeting with Him ever sense, hes reading the Book of Mormon for the 3rd time now, and hes getting baptized in less than a month after our first REAL lesson with him.

People always said you'll never see someones conversion from start to Finish, you'll never see someone get found AND THEN baptized within a single transfer. But BOOM.... here is Lászlo. One of our miracle children. Oh and also he told us when he sits around and waits to find work he just reads the Book of Mormon to people. awesome.

2. Did some more Tai Chi this morning with our Tai Chi master Béla. Um.. it was awesome but Im AWFUL at it. All we did was take side steps across a big field in slow motion... for a really long time. and apparently my form was awful. Didnt know walking across a field...in.. uh.. like, slow motion or tai chi motion.. or whatever it was.. could be something I could so thoroughly mess up. Good thing the embarassment is worth it, our investigator loves it when we go. Tai Chi is just literally waving your hands and legs around in slow motion, anyone can do it. do it at home. just move around in slow motion, its the same thing.

3. So craziest event of the week. Sister Jordan and I were walking to the bus stop at Keleti, the big station near our house, and were walking up to the front of the station and we notice a crowd gathered all looking at one person. We glance over and see there is a BUCK NAKED woman in the middle of Keleti. BUCK NAKED... like this girl just standing there, there were cameras filming and she had a camera in her mouth (im assuming to catch peoples reactions or something) and she was as naked as the day she was born. WELCOME TO EUROPE! I just kept thinking like, Im pretty sure this is illegal. But then, well, must not be cause the cops decided to just stand and watch instead of do something about it. good ol Budapest.

Well thats about it. Good week, minus the naked lady. Love the letters I get from people, and so proud of my siblings and all the awesomeness they do. So happy to be apart of the Papritz Army right now.

Love,

The 5 Star General of the Army (Sister Papritz).. obviously, Im the oldest.

Cultural Tip: I was told last week that Children are given 2 birthday cakes on their birthday. One to COMPLETELY destroy and the other for the family to eat. good idea.

Word of the Day: Not trying this again, for fear of embarassment for putting a made up word and an incorrect meaning.

Food finomság: Fast food restaurants, like in a mall food court, have all their food sitting out, and then they just microwave it when you want to order it. So today Sister Jordan and I thought we were getting good like beef and rice asianness.... but oh, no... the meat smelled like .. uh... well....poop. dont know how that happened. but dont eat from microwave places.

Amy - Tianmu, Taiwan June 19, 2011

Dear Fam,

Well another week has gone. Weird how fast the weeks are going. Its already near the end of June. First things first, transfer news. I am staying here in Shuanghe and my new companion is Sister Jensen. She is from the states but I dont' remember which one. I will tell you more about her next week. As for Sister Liu, she is moving to Neihu, which is really close to Jilong my old area. She is so excited to move. She has been talking about moving since the fourth week so I'm glad we know now who is leaving. I will miss her. She has been a good companion.

This week nothing special has happened. Just the normal work. On Tuesday we went to Taipei with one of our new members to a music performance. It was an old Taiwan Taipei mission president and his whole family all 20 of them including a bunch of little kids. The story is that their great great grandmother is from Taiwan and a lot of the children have served in Taiwan so they have a lot of clost ties with Taiwan. They are from Hawaii so they performed a lot of Hawaiian dances and music. It was really cool. They focused a lot on familes and the importance of families.They performed in a concert hall right by Taipei 101. The really ironic thing is that right after their performance there was a gay rights rally. So we left right after the performance. haha Its interesting how Satan works at underminding the family. So that was really fun.

I really dont' know what else to write. This week has been pretty normal. All of our investigators are doing pretty good. We have one named Chen shi yi who is 11. She has the worst ADHD that I have ever seen. She has a hard time focusing. Some weeks are beter than others but this week has hard. I think that if she continues to not focus we might have to stop meeting with her. We can't teach anything she is so up and down. Yang shu ping is a lady who is Catholic. She has been struggling a lot with the Book of Mormon but has continued to read it. Yesterday she talked to Sister Liu and said that she has gotten her answer about the Book of Mormon and likes to read it but she really likes Catholic church better. But she siad she will keep on meeting with us and reading the Book of Mormon. So keep her in your prayers. Also Penny our amazing investigator is taking the big college entry test at the beginning of July and its a big deal so keep her in mind too.

I'm sorry this e-mail is so short and borning. I dont' really have much to write about this week except transfers. I love you all. Have a great week!!

All my love,

Sister Amy Papritz

Alden MTC June 14, 2010

So this week in the MTC was very emotional. the older generation of Mandarin Missionaries are gone and now we are the "oldest". it was very sad to see them go. even though we only knew them for 6 weeks, and barely see them through out the day we will all miss them. most of the older generation are going to Taizhang so we wont see them, very sad.

well as for the rest of the week. there has been a lot of teaching and learning. this week as we taught yan hai lan, she expressed that she feels peace when she prays but does not know what to do with it. she is very frustrated with that. it hard to teach. she expresses a lot of worry for her family in china and her son. she does not mention her husband that much, and we are fairly sure there is something going on, but we cant just come out and ask her to reveal everything. but besides that it is going well.

this Week at the MTC we were warned about a virus that has been going around in the outlining community, it the nurro virus. it includes stomach pains and throwing up. this Saturday after dinner i felt sick and everyone thought i had it. i didn't it was just some chicken that didn't settle right. my stomach hurt but that was it. it lasted for a few hours and was gone. but man people shun you when they think you have some virus.

also this last week we heard from Elder Kokuchi. he bore a great testimony of the gospel as he told us about his conversion story. he also stressed the importance to show are willingness to the Lord through our actions. it was a very nice talk. you can read his story online.

this week i was also told that i will be singing this week for the incoming missionaries. i will be singing for about 400 people. i cant wait. i am so happy to have the opportunity to sing.

and finlay, the last part of news is that i am now the music coordinator for the branch yay. since the older generation is gone, all of the calling got rearranged. i am so excited. i am just glad i get to do something.

well that's about it.

Oh and i heard from a good source (the custodial people) that President Monson will be coming at the end of this week, for Mission Presidents week. we'll see if it really happens.

Well that's about it. Working hard and doing well

halfway through the MTC. 6 weeks to go.

Love you all.

Elder Alden Papritz

Yang Zhanglao. (officially)

Austin - Kenosha Wisconsin - June 13, 2011

My Beloved Family,

So I'm a day late on my email because we had a pretty crazy pday. The other Elders took the car to go do service (which they said would take 1 hour but it took FIVE hours, they said the garage was just CHUCK full of stuff) then when they came back we were going to go together to email and I had the keys to the car but then they remembered they had an appointment so we had to bike to the library and then we get a call when we are almost to the library because I had left with the keys accidentally. So we had to bike another 15 minutes back and then by that time it was just too late.

This week is going to be very rad. There are five general authorities coming to speak to all the missionaries. We are encouraged to pray, fast and study on the recent talks of them so that we can be completely ready. Elder Cook is going to be the presiding apostle. Also, we have a small 16 person choir that I'm in so that'll be cool too because it guarantees we get to be seated in the first 3 rows.

I don't know if you remember Silvia and her daughers Aimee and Brianna and how Silvia told us at first that she was never going to speak to missionaries again but then started to open up to us after I kind of showed my family photos. Well we have been working with her and doing service for her and helping her find work and the other day they invited us over to give us thanks for everything we've done by feeding us delicious Guatemanteca Enchiladas. We told them we have no other way to thank them than by teaching them from the scriptures (note that in her frustration with life here in America, Silvia has pretty much denounced God and has done so in front of her daughter). She has had a hard life with much abuse from many different people in her life. But Silvia and her 16 daughter Aimee were both in tears when we promised them a way out of the hole they are in. It felt so good when she told me, This is really what I've been waiting for. I'm ready to take out the trash and get on with my life.

We have a baptism next Saturday! It's so cool, Lorenza is such a cool lady and I'm very very happy to see her joining her son. In fact, the other day we went to the gym with her son and worked out at 4:30 in the morning. Now that's dedication. I get along with all of the young men in this branch, they are all so cool and talented and invested in life. I love getting involved in their interests, it has made for really good friendships.

The branch is getting ready for Girls' Camp here and we helped the branch in doing a desert auction and chili cookoff. At first the branch president's wife asked the English elders to make a desert and for us to make a chili. I thought back to going to a dinner appointment in Milwaukee with the branch president's family and they made this INCREDIBLE sweet chili so I called them up and got the recipe and it was super easy. I made it and gave it the name, "wasn't aware that any other chili's were invited." And every loved it and voted for my but it lost by ONE point and I'm convinced the lady that won only won because her kids sat at the voting box and put in a bunch of votes for her. But their family needed the $25 gift card to Pick N Save more than I did sooo it's all good. Then the English elders were going to make these incredibly good home made cinnamin rolls but somehow messed up on the amount of yeast or something and after 3 hours they just decided to run to Kmart and make these mud pie cookie sandwhiches. They ended up selling for 25 bucks which was one of the most expensive items because these two guys got in a pride war and just wanted to see who would pay more for them haha. But those cinnamon rolls would have gone for like 40 bucks for sure.

Mucho amor,

Elder Papritz