Monday, October 24, 2011

Autumn October 24, 2011

Sziasztok!!! kedves családom és barátaim! Nagyon hiányoztok nekem! Alig varom hogy újra lássalak benneteket!

Well this week was full of surprises, and one in particular that made me decide if I ever broke an arm on my mission, I would rather be left for dead than taken to a Hungarian Hospital! We went to visit a member that was in the hospital. This member had a history of stroke, with some major left sided weakness. He tries to walk with a cane but instead just decides to RISK it on his own and ends up falling a lot. Hes an old stubborn Hungarian man. Well this week, he fell and got up and then couldnt talk at all! So he was telling us he felt like he had a stroke again and so they took him to the hospital into the Neuro floor. So first of all, this place has socalized health care... problem number one. So he told us to come to the hospital to visit him. Well of course we would, so we walk up to the hospital and it already looks like a psych ward... like a 1940s horror film. We go inside, i first saw the sign for the TRAUMA UNIT!!! THe elders had to peal me away from that, I wanted to run in and see some action! but... oh, little did I know I would be seeing PLENTY that day. We walked up the stairs to he neuro unit, the place looks like death.. the hospital was just gray colors and all dimly lit. There are people lining everyhall just waiting to get seen by a doctor. The emergency room must have had 100s of people just sitting in chairs everywhere. People were just waiting for HOURS outside of these places, hoping to get seen by a doctor that day.

So we finally found the neuro unit and just walked right in....no questions asks, just 4 random americans can strut into a hospital. So the hospital staff is all dressed in classic "white" everything.. so old school. So we start down the hall and I start looking into everyroom, and they are rooms that are maybe like 20 feet deep and 12 feet wide with 3 OLD metal beds crammed side by side. They cram 3-6 people into these rooms, with literally a knees length of room between each bed. Each patient could literally sit at the side of their bed, and their knees would be touching the next persons bed. AND to top it off, everyroom was just this ugly death gray color and the floors were old black and white tiles, that looked like from some horror show. The beds looked like they were the same ones used back in the plague era from the 1910s, there was a little thin pad of mattress. We finally found his room and I immediately see that there is not ANY kind of hand sanitation anywhere, no soup by the sink, no hand gel.. nothing. No gloves on the wall! NOTHING. there were not even curtains to seperate each of these patients. We sit own and start talking to him and he is telling us all about the ambulance bringing him in and how scary it was that he couldnt talk.. etc etc. Well then in walks the aide with Lunch for everyone. She just sits all of these trays on the windowseal for these stroke patients to just, what.. get up and feed themselves?! so. she leaves the room and Lájos the patient we were with yells to the aide "hey I need my insulin" she said " well dont you usually just do that for yourself?!" (mind you he cant even move his left arm) he said "well it would be helpful if you could do it for me" so she walks over, (no hand washing, no gloves) and opens this old container that had an old insulin syringe with an old needle on it, she draws up the amount, lifts his shirt up and just shoves it in him... no alcohol wipe, no pinch of the skin, no NOTHING! just plop, in with an old needle! and shes not even a NURSE! who knows if it was even HIS old needle because it was on the table next to the other patient and HIS old insulin needle. no labels. needless to say I was having an inner cow. But obviously, could do nothing. Then I start looking over at the other patient next to them, he is in some kind of resperatory distress and my brain got to imagining things "what if he coded right now? what would I do? Where is the crash cart? where is the oxygen masks? where is the nearest intubation kit?" (my imagination really went wild) So i started looking around the room, there was absolutely no oxygen, no alarms to call anyone, no emergency anything! no way to even lay the bed down easily to do CPR! Luckily the man did not code, he did not die... but who knows how much later he did. it was NUTS! It was like I was walking into a horror movie. So we left and I was just in shock. and SO grateful I am american citizen with american hospitals. It was quite the experience. So glad I didnt have to use my ACLS skills that day, I would have been ready to jump into action with nothing to use, because they probably didnt have emergency meds in the entire hospital! crazy.

So that was the most exciting thing this week. oh man, it got my inner nurse all fired up. Then it reminded me how funny my nurse position is right now. I got two calls this week for throwing up, 1 for a twisted ankle, and one for a box lifting back injury! Oh my ICU skills! why cant someone call with a traumatic gun shot wound! But no, its just "hey sister papritz can I take tylenol on an empty stomach?" " well, i mean, try to eat something before you take it." "oh well, i dont have any groceries so I have nothing to eat" " well then I guess you cant eat anything" "i have some canned peaches" "ok, great... eat canned peaches.. whatever" ... oh the life of the mission nurse. haha.

but luckily I also get to be a regular missionary. and that is THE BEST! teaching people is so fun and finding people is even funner. and tracting is the FUNNIEST. Like this week finding ourselves infront of a STYROFOAM door. uh How do you knock on a styrofoam door?! when we knocked it made NO SOUND?! an the door bell didnt work! we figured we could have just busted in, styrofoam isnt that hard. but we resisted.

This life really is the greatest. I love what I am doing. Just pray I never have to be a patient in a Hungarian hospital, I would never make it out a live.

I love you all!

sok sok szeretettel
papritz nővér

Austin Oct 24, 2011

Dear Family,

So I'm in the war chapters in Alma right now of my reading in the Book of Mormon. During comp study we talk about what we learned during our personal study. I was amazed how many times the Lamanites fell for the chase and flank. It was like 5 times they fell for it. They always march out to meet the Nephites and the Nephites always pretended to run away so that they'd chase after them just for them to get flanked in the wilderness...every time. So I thought that was kind of tight.

After we had emailed last week a guy came up to us and asked about the church. I was hoping he was some golden investigator but it was a recent convert that had moved here from Texas. He had just gotten released from the army and so we gave him the information along with our phone. He later walked in to the clothing closet where we do service. But he just kind of looked surprised to see us and then told me that he wanted to speak to us after we were done. We gave him a call and he we found out that he really needed help. He had spent his last day in the Salvation Army and he would have nowhere to sleep. But he didn't want us to just fix the problem he wanted us to just give him whatever comfort we could give him. We met at the library on Saturday to give him a Book of Mormon and talk to him. He was explaining his situation -- a similar situation that I've seen all too often in my mission. And I had the same feeling I always do - helplessness. I just prayed that he'd find help. I just kept telling him over and over that he needed to talk to the bishop. But he kind of had no where to stay that night. I was surprised to look up and see our BISHOP wondering over towards us casually in regular clothes. I asked him, "Hey, what are you doing here?" (mind you that the guy we know doesn't recognize him, of course.) "I'm looking for something but I don't really know what." So I told him, "Well you just found it, take a seat!" I told the guy, "This is the bishop!" He eyes got suuuper wide, I'm sure he was pretty surprised. We explained the situation and bishop helped him out.

Our two baptismal dates are doing great too!

GOt ot go.
Elder Papritz

Sunday, September 4, 2011

Alden - Taiwan - September 4, 2011

Dear Family.


So this week the work has been a little slow. all week we contacted. the good news is we now have a lot more new investigators. We had about 8 Investigators before but we could never get ahold of a lot of them. Or they couldn't find time to meet with us, especially with our crazy schedules. But, all is well, we are being blessed for our efforts to find.

This week not a whole lot happened. Besides a lot of contacting. I had my first incident with a car. Don't worry it wasn't a crash or a near death experience. I just got a little love tap from some car that happened to be there when I was turning around in the road. So all is well. This next week we have transfer calls. YaY. My companion and I have been talking about it, and it is possible that we will split. Which is crazy because normally you are with your trainer for two transfers. But its OK. If I do get moved I hope it is to zhonghe near Amy. Then we could party all the time.
OK so ya I am alive and well I am feeling great. The work here in Taiwan is moving along.
well that's about it. OH... last night I left my bike lock key at the church when we had the fireside. so when we were heading home, I had to carry my bike. sounds like fun. you should try it.

OK well that's it.

Love you all sooooooooooo much.

Elder Alden Papritz.

Sunday, August 28, 2011

Alden - Taiwan - August 29, 2011

Hey Fam!


so for the big event this week. we had a baptism!!!!!!!! Yay!!!. But of course my first baptism had to have some crazy thing happen.

about 30 before the baptism we went to go fill up the font. I went in and plugged up the drain and began to fill it up. all was well. my companion told me to go and check to see if the water was warm so I went and saw that it was not too warm, but wasnt too bad. but i did see that there was some stuff in the water just a few little pebbles not really anything to worry about. as we were thinking about if we should clean the little pebbles out before we filled it my companion turned off the water. we decided that we didnt need to worry about it. we began filling it up again. however there was no water coming out. yep none. no hot water or cold. none. at all. we had a baptism in 25 minutes and there was no water for the baptism. we left the pipe open so it could fill up if water decided to come out, and some did, but then it stopped. for about 40 or so minutes we sat there thinking of what we could do to fill it up. while every few minutes a little more water came out. but still not enough. finaly we decided we might have enough to baptize him if he sat in the water and then just layed down. right before we started the bishop and brother cai praticed. it would work. but before the meeting there still was not enough water for even that. however we needed to start. so we went up to the chapel to begin the meeting. remarks were said and the talks given. I think everyone was stalling. finaly we went down to baptize brother cai and guess what there was barely enough for him to lay down in the water. so it worked. we had a baptism and it was very nice.

so that was the event for the week.
 Love you all.

Elder Alden Papritz.

Sunday, August 21, 2011

Alden - Taiwan - August 21, 2011

my dearest Family.


This week has been great. Last wed I got to go to the temple with AMY!!!! It was so cool. I loved being there and feeling such a strong spirit. Amy and I sat in the Celestial room for a long time. just sitting there and talking. we were the second to last people to leave, so we were there a while. afterward we went to Taipei main station where we ate. then we went our separate ways. It is so amazing having her so close.

after our Preparation day on wed we then had English class. OH JOY!!! it is great. It really is. I teach the Advanced class all by my self. This class is the one that have learned a lot of english and are able to speak it very well. so i dont need to speak chinese. it is great. But as always there are those weird people that come that... are just.... they are weird. this one lady always askes about random things. last week she asked me if i could tell her the lyrics to Transformers. she told me that all she remembers was "transformers robots in desguise" and that was it. I told her that that was all i remembered. she asked if there was some way to find it. of couse you can use the internet. she was very supprised that you could find it online. so i told her that if she really wanted she could just look it up. she then just told me in her fairly rough english "well, isnt that a little idiotic" yes, yes it is. She is the one lady that always askes about random things that i dont know. and it has nothing to do with english. just other things. and most the time i dont understand her. well that was one of the crazy english class things for the week. most the time I just answer quetions mostly about myself and America.

now for some amazing news. we are having a baptism this saturday. YAY!!!!!! brother Cai is getting baptised. it is so amazing. his wife is a member, she was baptized about 6 or so weeks ago. we have been teaching her husband since i got here. He is so amazing. he and his wife are always looking out for us. mainly giving us food. also last night we went to a ward family home evning at a family's house. they had a lot of food. and sister Huang, bothers Cai's wife, kept giving me more and more food. I used my eating tactics and ate slowly so that hopfully she wouldnt give me any more. but that did not stop her. she just kept pilling it on. the members where also being very nice and inviting me to eat more and more and more. I thought I was going to die. I don't think I will die here from starvation but possibly from choking or from overeating. I dont know what to do.

so ya Baptism, YAY!!!.

ok also this week we went on exchanges again. so far I have gone on an exchange every week, because my comp. is the district leader. anyways this week i was with Elder Zhou (Elder joe) he is the Zone leader. he is just plain crazy. I thought I was going to die. but I didn't. We went contacting almost the whole day. I was so tired by the end of it. just so mentally tired. but I survied.

well that is about it for this week. Love you all. write you all next week.
Love
Elder Alden Papritz.

Tuesday, August 16, 2011

Alden - Taiwan - August 16, 2011

Hey Family. how is it going.


so this week has been a lot of work and a lot of trials. honestly it hasn't been that different from other weeks but the work can get fairly hard out here. I love it here in Taiwan, but it can get very discouraging very fast if you dont keep yourself up. once again, we are contacting a lot. we have a good amount of lessons each day but we are always contacting. everywhere we go we are talking to people, or at least i am trying to. It is very sad when i start talking to someone I think is interested and then they need to leave. it Sucks. but besides that I am loving it here.

Ok so just so you all know, I Will not starve her in taiwan. not only is the food very good and very cheap but we have great members who want to qing us chi. wich is to take us out to eat. or they bring us food. all of the time. there is one sister who brings us food every time we teach her husband. it is amazing. I love it. But sadly Im not so sure if all of this running and biking can make up for all of it. so maybe I will lose weight or maybe not. I dont know.
Oh next week I have a baptism, YAY. for Brother Cai, his wife is the one who brings us all of the food. they are amazing. I love them so much. Brother Cai is doing very well. he is very accepting of the teacings and really tries to understand them. He is always great to see. I am very excited to see him get baptized.

ok just a quick side note. sitting here in the internet caffe, in the background we can hear the tv or some video. and it is full of just crying. first a baby then a man then some lady. all just crying. very loud and very very very long. it is crazy I didnt know there was such a channel as the crying channel.

ok well All is well. It is great. I am loving it here.

well I love you all. gongxi gongxi to katelyn and kyle. love you all.

Elder Alden Papritz.

Monday, August 8, 2011

Austin August 9, 2011 Kenosha, Wisconsin

Dear Family,
We are on fire here in Kenosha, Wisconsin. We just tore through another week getting 20 lessons and plenty of new investigators and referrals from members and non-members alike. It was almost just a hilariously weird week. It's almost guaranteed that the more you are out the more likely that just crazy stuff will happen. While we were teaching this one guy in his front yard I heard the engine of a bus driving down the road in front of his house. We kept on teaching the guy and it was going really well, he really understood the restoration and committed to read the Book of Mormon. Then I noticed this African American man and Hispanic-looking teenager walking up to us. The guy interrupted our lesson and handed us a pamphlet. He told us they were just talking to people on the street and encouraged us to read it and told us he wasn't trying to pull anyone away from their church or anything. So I thought, okay, fair-enough; we do the same thing so I can't be too annoyed. And then I thought he was done and then he started probing asking, "So are you guys saved?" I looked over at our investigator expecting him to answer because at that point it hadn't occurred to me that he was really just talking to us and I forgot our investigator didn't speak any English. And so I answer, Yes. And then he asked, "Well how do you know you're saved." "Because grace in Jesus' atonement saves me and through faith, repentance, baptism and receiving the gift of the Holy Ghost." I replied, hoping to be able to shake him off fast and get back to the lesson. But no no, he wasn't satisfied with my answer, "Well sir, the baptism isn't what saves us. That is merely a demonstration, it symbolizes His death, burial and resurrection. It is merely how we show to God that we are truly saved through Jesus." To which I possibly too boredly replied, "Which is why I said that I am saved through Jesus' grace and atonement." So I asked him, "Do you know what we do?"
-"No, I'm not sure I'm familiar with what you do."
-"Where are missionaries for our -"
-"Oh that's great, we have missionaries in Brazil and Peru. We support them as they spread the word of God"
I realized he was really just there are fight with us on no matter what we said. So I just stopped paying attention to him. He eventually tapered off and walked away. The whole conversation his co-hort shaking his head in agreeance to everything the Baptist pastor said. I looked over and saw them hop on the bus that I had heard earlier, like a SCHOOL bus with like 12 teenagers in it. I looked around and realized there was no one else on the entire block. He literally stopped that giant bus and got out to stop our lesson and argue with us. It was way lame.
Then another day we were riding to our last appointment for the day and I noticed a tiny, tiny rabbit in the road near the curb. I decided to stop to try to scare it in to the grass. When I approached him he tried and tried to jump above the curb but he couldn't even jump high enough. So I told Elder Woodward we should try to catch him. It was pretty funny with us running around the street, bent over trying to catch him. He'd only run from one side of the street to the other and when he'd get to the curb I was sure he would just run and jump over it and head off in to the grass but instead would just jump straight forward and slam his head in to the side of the curb. It was so cute and sad. He did it like 4 times and finally got so disoriented that we were able to grab him. He was no bigger than one of my palms. We took the spur of the moment and decided to keep him (against our best judgement). So we went to a nearby member's house to get a cage for him (after we figured out that the investigator we were going to visit wasn't home anyways.) And we biked him with a little rabbit in a cage. We got home and realized we had no food for him and so we headed back out to this Italian family that we met on the street that sold vegetables from their front yard (that's a funny story, I'll have to share that one next week) and he gave us some rabbit food because we knew he owned rabbits. We also ran in to his neighbor and had a way sweet lesson and passed him on to the English Elders and they tell us that he is doing well (which is about the only good thing that came out of all of this). We headed back home and tried to feed him but he wouldn't never do anything but just sit in the corner of the cage and just stare at nothing. So we hit the sack and just left him in the cage. When we woke up (Sunday morning) he wasn't in the cage. Yeah we didn't put the top on the cage but the walls are a good foot high and he couldn't even jump 5 inches on to a stinkin' curb. We were befuddled. We started tearing through our apartment to find him and eventually Elder Woodward took some stuff from under his bed and I could tell he found him because he jerked back. It kind of startled him; there was Genesis (we named him Genesis) just sitting there....in the dark...staring back. So we rounded him up and put him back in the cage and left for church but THIS time with the cage closed. But then when we got back from church HE GOT OUT AGAIN. So we declared him a devil animal and we found him in the corner of our closet and we went outside and put him in the grass in the front yard. We sat there for 5 minutes and he didn't even go anywhere. It was so bizarre just like a horror movie or something, it's like he doesn't move if we are looking at him and then he just POOF and then reappears under beds and in closets from an ENCLOSED CAGE whenever we're not there.
So that was weird and kind of funny.
Well, I got to go. Everything is going sooo well. I started P90X today and it was ROUGH but hurt oh so good.
Much love,
Elder Papritz