Autumn - Szeged, Hungary - HAPPY NEW YEARS!

BOLDOG ÚJ ÉVET KÍVÁNOK!!!

Well this new year started off with a BANG!!! I cannot believe I am serving in Szeged. This place is GORGEOUS. I am loving it. I got my new greenie baby and her name is Sister Suranyi!!! She is from Canada. Her grandparents on her Dads side are Hungarian (but she didnt speak the language before the mission) Loves to sing. Is funny and is a GENIUS at the language. Like seriously its embarassing. She speaks as well as I did just like 4 months ago. soo... that will be hilarious when she starts speaking better than me in two weeks! haha. She came into the mission with SOOO MUCH Greenie Fire and just this insane incredible desire to work hard and find people. Which is PERFECT because we have 0 investigators and 0 appointments this week and LOTS and LOTS of finding to do! woo hoo for starting over!! But I am excited for all of it. I really feel like I started a whole new mission here in Szeged. This will be unlike anything I have done before.

Some awesome things that happened this week.

1. My companion and I were called up to the pulpit in church to give introductions and bare our testimony. She stood up there and bore her little heart out and was speaking great. Then started telling the congregation "My brother is serving his mission in France" Unfortunately to say "in france" is "francba"... which means to Hell. haha... so she told the whole congregation that her brother was serving his mission IN HELL!!! haha..... poor thing. she didnt understand why everyone was laughing at her. I felt so bad. But I had no clue to warn her about that one, didnt know she would be talking about the country of france like that! haha. oh, greenie mistakes are the best. so cute.

2. On the train down to Szeged, it was like 2.5 hours. Szeged is the most southern city in the mission. Just minutes from the Serbian border. So we were on the train and in our train cab was this man with 4 little children. and they were SOOOOO cute and we got to talk to them for a long time about the gospel and book of mormn. Also him and I have similar passion for the holocaust and jewish history so we talked a lot about that. It was just a great start for my greenie to have such a wonderful teaching experience on the train to the city. We got his contact info, but unfortunately I lost my planner (for the first time EVER) and it had all his contact info. Atleast he got to talk to missionaries.

3. This city is BEAUTIFUL. Our apartment is right along the Tisza river and our windows overlook the bridge and the river. So when it was new years we could see fireworks shooting off over the River. It was so cool. This city is just gorgeuos. I am so excited to be serving in such abeautiful place. Met a lot of people from the ward on sunday and it was AWESOME becaus they have a young womens program here! the first of my mission! i LOVE YOUNG WOMENS and am sooooo excited to help out the young women in this little branch.

4. We did some whipping on saturday and I must say I am getting better at it. Sister Suranyi was a beast and was cracking the whip all over place! Like a professional! It was like she had been whipping for years!!!! So that was a fun thing to do in this beautiful park here. It was awesome because we talked to this one woman who said that in the Eastern part of the country whipping is actually a New Years tradition and she runs this little Newspaper in her little village in eastern hungary. She took a picture of us all whipping and is going to put it in her newspaper! So if I ever find the website online with the picture I will send it. It was a fun new years.

Well everyone. I love you all. So glad to have a new year, a new area, a new companion, a new outlook on the misson. Everything feels really new and it makes me excited. Makes me more energized for the work.

I love you all! Have wonderful new years!

sok sok szeretettel

Papirtz nővér

Autumn - Duna, Hungary - BOLDOG KARACSONYT!

SZIASZTOK!!!

Well this week has just been CRAZY and wonderful with the Holidays, only to be topped off with the most insane intense transfer calls of my life. So today I got the call to find out what is happening with me this next transfer. I wasnt suspecting anything, because I just started training Sister Mills. But President Baughman called me today and told me I AM TRAINING AGAIN!! .... and WHITEWASHING a new city.... SZEGED!!! ... Sisters havent served in this city for over 4 years and so this will be a big change for them and a HUGE change for me. It is just crazy to be training back to back. The awesome thing about it, is that Sister Roderick and I this summer "vacationed" to this city Szeged. We performed a concert on a friday night, and the next day was a national holiday that we were able to spend in this city. So we spent the night in Szeged and toured around the next day and I just FELL IN LOVE with this city. It is beautiful and just really culturally rich. When we were there I kept saying "oh man I want to serve here. I love it here." but sisters havent been in that city in over 4 years. So i knew it was impossible. Then sister Roderick said "Im going to make a prediction. You will open up Szeged, in January, with a Greenie" .... I just laughed that off, cause that was impossible. and seemd REALLY impossible once I found out that I was training last transfer because we dont ever train back to back in this mission. So then this morning when President baughman said I would be training and opening Szeged for sisters...my jaw just dropped and I remembered back to that day in August when Sister Roderick predicted this very same situation. We even had picked out which greenie it would be (since in the mission home you can see their pictures months and months in advanced. So back in august we had my greenie picked out)...so on thursday I will found out if I get matched with that sister. So perhaps Sister Roderick will be 3 for 3 on the prophecy scale.

I am really soo sooooo excited and terrified and nervous and freaking out and overwhelmed..but excited. I really did fall in love with that city after that one random day we spent there. So it is like a dream come true to actually be going there. I am so excited for that, but I know I am entering the hardest work I will ever do on my mission. But I am so excited to apply everything I have learned on the mission to this next area. I feel like my whole mission has led up to these next few transfers. It sounds super corny, but I know I am supposed to be going here. Almost destiny like. It just all fits so perfectly. I am really excited for my Szeged Saga. let the Adventures BEGIN!!!

OH YEAH.. and there was Christmas. It was a great Christmas. On Christmas eve we drove down to Pécs, that pretty city we went to for Thanksgiving. We ate at a chinese restaraunt. Did some shopping and played cards. Sister Mills and I did some sight seeing. We visited the Lock Wall... the place where people attach all of these Locks to these iron bars and it symbolized that they will be together for eternity. A couple before they get married, or a couple in love with attach a lock to this wall to symbolize their love. and so we took a bunch of pictures of that. I attached some cute locks we found. Then on Christmas day we went to church and then ate lunch at a members home and then got to Skype my family. It was absolutely delightful. The best call home ever. So great to see them all, and my sister Amy home. I loved it. Then monday we just hung around and watched movies and relaxed. Then that night we went to a members house for dinner and painted candle holders, apparently it is a hungarian tradition to do a painted craft during christmas. Then we played charades in Hungarian with them. It was hilarious. It was the perfect holiday weekend. I needed the rest especially since this week is going to be NUTS moving to a city with a greenie and both us of will have NO CLUE where we are or what we are doing. Well, I will know what we are doing, just no clue where we are. It will be an exciting thrilling adventure. I can't wait.

I love you all!!!

Papritz nővér

Autumn - Duna, Hungary - SNOW!

SZIASZTOK!!

WOW.... snow is falling for the first time this year. Right now. I am kind of loathing it. BUT... I will survive. The city is covered in white, which is making this land of factories look a little bit prettier...and its feeling a little bit more like Christmas.

Well this week turned out AWESOME!!! I was super sick for most of the week until friday. I was just out, couldnt really get out of bed, just flu/sinus infection nastiness. My brain was super cloudy and just couldnt think straight. Then on friday, I woke up and my mind was clear and I was just READY to get to work again! I felt like a missionary again! It was great. So we went out and streeted and tracted for a little bit and just had the funnest little miracle. We had prepared our five "presents" for people and said we were giving people a Christmas Present... aka. Book of Mormon. So we were able to hand out 4 of them on the streets and through tracting, but we were getting super tired.. and mind you this is the first day after many days of sickness that I was working. So I was exhausted...but we had 1 Book of Mormon left. So we decided to knock on one last door... (yes.. this is one of those "on the last door" stories).... and so we knocked, and these two women answered the door about 50 years old. One was a friend that was visiting, and the owner of the apartment, Marci said "come on in, just come on in"...we hadnt even said anything and she invited us in. Then we sat down and she said "I used to meet with the sisters, like 10 years ago... then they left the city and nobody has contacted me since. I always wondered where the went." then she started telling us everything she had learned from them.. she is hilarious, and we just had this awesome lesson, talked about the Book of Mormon with her friend, gave her our last copy..and then set up to come back next week. We actually ran into her on the street before we emailed and she said "youre all coming over tonight right?! We'll be waiting!"

THEN i got the surprise of a life time, a call from Béla! This investigator that Sister Roderick and I found in Budapest, the one that we did Tai Chi with, and he told me he was getting BAPTIZED on sunday!! So I rearranged some stuff and we were able to go to the Baptism in budapest! It was the most wonderful baptism I have been to. So many people were there and another girl named ZsuZsa got baptized the same day. I was able to talk to Béla and see so many people from Pest. I miss the city so much and it was so fun having everyone say "wow you speak Hungarian now!".. since that was my greenie area, I communicated with a lot of smiles and laughes. It was so great seeing my old friends, and then seeing Lászlo and Barbye, my two miracle children. I was so grateful to have 3 people be there, whose baptisms I was able to be apart of. It was just the greatest joy to see them all. The best part was when Béla was baptized. He went down into the water and came back up beaming, and then embraced the Elder that baptized him, with the fiercest gratitude I have ever seen. He just didnt let go for the longest time, and I could just feel the genuine love he had for the gospel. You could just feel the spirit so strong. I knew back when sister Roderick and I found him that it was too good to be true. Then it was all manifest in that font, all of the preperation he had had was so evident in that hug and his beaming smile. It was one of those moments I will always remember from my mission. It was TOTALLY AWESOME! (to use a favorite papritz phrase)

So that was the week. spiritually packed. It is so great to be serving here and on a mission. best decision ever. OH ALSO this week we went to a Christmas concert for a less active member who sings in this local choir. The first half of the concert was the school of music recital, and all of these cute little kids were banging away on the piano and clarinets. and then the grand finale was an ACCORDIAN QUARTET... they did a rocking version of "Jingle Bell Rocks" full of all of that Umpa umpa umpapapa accordian style. I felt so european to be watching a christmas accordian quartet.

So this week is Christmas and I am so excited to talk to my family! woo hoo! AMY gets home tomorrow! wow! Christmas is so great. I am excited to spend it on the mission and basking in all of the Christmas glory that the mission has to offer.

I love you all!!

Love
Papritz nővér

Amy Nov 6, 2011

Qin ai de jiating,

Ok before you kill me mom I'll write my weekly e-mail. You gotta shake things up a little right? This week has been pretty good. Another week has gone by and I can't believe it. Nothing super eventful happened. Oh, last P-day I passed off Phase 2 for Chinese!!!! I am now on the last part of the language program. I can start studying characters. I am really excited. For the Phase 2 test I had to test with the Assistants. Luckily Elder Binkinuan was really nice and helped me a lot. When I pass off Phase 3 I pass it off to President Grimley. Basically I just read the Book of Mormon to him in Chinese. But first I have to get through 2,530 flash cards. Yahoo!

This last week many of our investigators had mid-term exams for college so we weren't able to meet with them. This week we will be able Tiffany will have her baptismal interview this week and get baptized on Sunday!! I am so excited for her. She is ready to get baptized. So keep her in your prayers. Many of our investigators also set baptismal goals. Sister Finch worked really hard to help them understand the importance of baptism. The Spirit was so strong in those lessons. We also had more of our investigators come to church. It was so great to see them at church and also to have the ward memebers guanxi (fellowship....ba) them. Our investigator Zhan jiemei is also progressing a lot. She is set to get bapitzed on November 19 but we will need to move back her date alittle so that we can teach all the lessons.She came to church on Sunday for the second time and really liked it. Many of the ward members who have peiked for us talked to her and helped her get to the Sunday school class and Relief Society.

Well I dont' know if there is anything else to write about. One last thing, There is a man that lives next door to the church and owns a motorcycle repair shop. He talks to the missionaries a lot mostly to the Elders. The only time he ever talks to me is to ask if I want to eat cuabing. I usually just ignore him. So the other night right before we had to go home he walks up to me as I am unlocking my bike. He told me he had given Elder Wyatt a picture of him and he wanted to know if I wanted one too. I said hesitantly ok. He went back into his shop and got me this wallet sized picture of him. It is hilarious. He isn't even smiling in this picture. He was so excited to give it to me so that I can remember him. haha

I hope that you all have a great week. I love you all!!

All my love,

Sister Amy Papritz

P.S This month the mission is working on becoming better teacher through studying Chapter 10 in Preach My Gospel. President Grimley invited us to memorize or review the How to Begin Teaching Phrases. It has been great. They have so much power. So my invitation to Autumn and Austin if they don't have those memorized is to memorize them. They are great!!

Austin Oct 31, 2011

Dear Family,

So last week I talked about how I was reading the war chapters in the Book of Mormon. Well that night we had a dinner appointment with the bishop and his family and I gave a little spiritual thought based on something I read that morning. There was actually a little part in one of the chapters that reminded me of the ward and it's situation with a lot of new move-ins and converts. I could tell Bishop really liked it. At church yesterday someone in the ward council told me that Bishop really wants to focus on the recent-converts and get a binder made so that we can keep track of them and make sure they are being taught. He told me that Bishop mentioned that the scripture I shared after dinner last week had really impacted him and he had been thinking about it all week. Then the stake had a temple night at the Chicago temple and he even took it to the temple to pray about it and figure out a plan. Anyways, he told the ward counsel the summation of his thoughts and plans and that we need to fortify our recent-converts to avoid being 're-captured' by the adversary just like the cities in the chapter I shared with him. That was a lot of comfort to hear that because last month when they had us over we didn't have a lesson because we were rushed and we figured 'Hey, he's the bishop. If he needs a lesson then we are in trouble so we can skip it.' But the spirit later chastised me about it and now I'm rather glad I prepared for it. And then he bragged about us during testimony meeting yesterday (we have stake conference next week).

We received a referral last week for a lady that lives here in Waukesha and just had a heart surgery, I think. She has been having a hard time and her brother (who is a member in Kentucky) told us to go visit her. We had a fanTASTic lesson with her. I think she cried like 6 times and told us they were tears of hope. She had just got over a hard divorce and had many questions that she wanted answer. Definitely one of those times in my mission where I knew I was fulfilling my purpose. She is already on track to be baptized and reading the Book of Mormon.

Our ward had a Trunk or Treat last week and a lot of the kids went all out. It was pretty impressive. There was this kid in this hilarious outfit it was this little pillow pet apparently but it looked like his parents just put him in a dog bed. I laughed every time I saw it and he was too young to even realize what he was in.

The less active we found at the library went to the temple last Saturday with the stake. Apparently they had a great experience. I can't believe how awesome that guy is just coming out of the army and having never really experienced church outside of it. We had a dinner appointment with a member and it was a last minute thing so we didn't have a lesson prepared so we just did a music extravaganza. All their kids are super young and so we did little primary songs it so was funny. One of the kids was super shy and was practically crying while doing the popcorn popping. The whole thing was a sort of disaster but that's what made it hilarious. But we ended with Families and Be Together Forever and that one went well.

Love you all and pray for you and that you can speak your little langauges that you'll never use in the US!
Elder P

Autumn October 31, 2011

Hello EVERYONE!!!!!

Transfer 6 week 3... weird. I hit my TEN month mark on the mission..... and that just seems like a lot of months. That is nuts, because I vividly remember the day my sister went into the MTC and that seemed like just yesterday, but that was in JULY of last year...and now she is coming home soon. wowzers. Time is flying. MAKE IT STOP!....well maybe not, just uh make it go a little bit slower.

This week wasn't super eventful except for this one big event.... haha. Uneventful in the sense of missionary work, VERY eventful in the sense of fending for our lives from a scary man that looks like a clown, without makeup...well, heh, with makeup, that would be weird. anyways, so this man named Nandor..well we were tracting in his building, knocked on his door. immediately my creepy senses were going crazy. We stood there and said "We have a message about Jesus Christ can we share it with you?".. after talking about religion for a while at the door he was all about it, ... thinking there was someone else in the house we stepped in, bad move, so we left him with a short message set up for a later time and left. Just feeling like, eww that was weird. BUT he asked some really good genuine questions. So we set up for the following saturday and we planned to bring a young male member... to protect us, and be a member present. SO that day comes, we go to the apartment building and the MEMBER dogs us... what the?! so we are left to fend for ourselves, we step up knock on the door.. literally throw a book of mormon at him (i know the wettlaufers are scoffing at my use of literally there, no we did not LITERALLY throw the book, just really maybe practically threw it at him) and said "this book is about Jesus and faith and here's a good chapter on faith... got to run" (our voices are trailing off as we are running out the door trying to escape his creepy gaze) mind you he keeps looking us up and down, gross. and he looks like a creepy clown... creepy giant mustache, hair that LITERALLY (used correctly) stuck out from both sides of his head, bald on top, squinty little eyes, kind of muffled slurring speech (im sure clowns talk muffled and slurridly). So we run away, but still want to give this guy a chance to accept the gospel because he genuinely had some really good life questions, and so we set up to come back tomorrow WITH the member. Tomorrow comes, member is with us, we go in the apartment and teach a great lesson on the Book of Mormon, testimony is shared from the member and sister Wright. Unfortunately I cannot concentrate I am devising an escape plan in my mind and other self defense methods if something were to happen... etc. My mind is always working as the protector/nurse. So I notice he is not really commenting on what we are saying other than like "yea thats a possibity, sure that sounds nice..etc" but he strangely enough liked to stare at us. sooo yet again creepy sensers are going crazy, we decide to wrap this up and leave. The member leaves the door first and turns to shake his hand then walks down the hall to the elevator. Then sister Wright and I turn around to shake his hand and say goodbye. Sister Wright sticks her hand out and he grabs it and looks like he is going to kiss it (which is something some old men do out of respect) but instead of kissing it, he just gets really close to her and starts pulling her back into the apartment, I step in and grab her arm to pull her back, we keep telling him "This is not allowed, stop, we cannot be in there alone with you" and he kept saying "just come in, I have something to tell you" .... OH REALLY?! yeah right. So I grab her and try to put her behind me, so I could step between them..so I could do what?! No clue, punch the guy?! who knows.. All I knew is that I needed to step between Sister Wright and the creepy clown.. then he lets go of her hand and we just BOOK IT to the elevator. We turn the corner and the MEMBER who was there to PROTECT US, was like what just happened. We just had huge dazed eyes, and then he knew he had failed at proteting us. haha. he felt so bad. needless to say. A large majority of men in Hungary are really creepy, and even if we want to give someone a chance to learn the gospel.....sharing it with CREEPY men is not the best method. So now we have devised a plan where the Elders and 3 of the biggest men in the ward are going to go to his door for the "next appoint" and stand behind us as our body guards, and we will give him a little taste of judgement day. haha. So that was the big event of the week. It was creepy, and we survived. Hallelujah. Sister Wright wanted me to note, he was super short and so we could have taken him anyways.. no worries.

So that was the big event of the week. Dont worry mom, I have been doing P90X, I am prepared to keep us safe. It was a crazy feeling after that, we just went home and had to pray and read our scriptures to get our heads on straight. After that we realized we had a learned a couple of good lessons and were grateful that we had been able to just go on with our day.

I learned a great lesson last week from a less active member that we looked up. Her name is Danfy Anna and she lost her right leg and left toes to Diabetes. We had no clue who she was when we knocked on the door and then got let in, low and behold she was legless and so HIGH SPIRITED! She was HILARIOUS!!! We sat and visited with her for a long time, and we got to talking about her illness (Hungarians LOVE to talk about their sicknesses) she told us, "You know a lot of people would think I am in a really rough spot, and I am, but you know what... whats the use of being sad about it? I would rather laugh about it all then be sad!" She was just all smiles and made us laugh and seriously, I was so inspired by this woman. Because I have met a lot of Hungarians who in that circumstance would have essentially stopped living, would have just given up all hope. But not Anna, she lives each day laughing and loving her family and just holding out, despite her lack of leg, heart problems, poor eyesight, yet has the incomprehensible ability to say "Its so much more worth it to laugh." Thats my kind of woman. Just laugh it off, and keep on keeping on. Laughter has always been a huge part of my life, but on my mission it means so much more to me. Its what keeps me and companions sane, it what always makes a crazy day better. If I have laughed that day, then It was a good day. I know that laughter is a true gift from God, and I am so grateful for it.

The mission teaches some incredible things, and I think the most intriging thing is that it has illuminated the simple everyday life things that I perhaps took for granted. I now appreciate my family, laughter, sunshine, health, english, happiness, america, freedom, my job, my friends, my education, my parents, the gospel.. more than I ever could imagine. It so incredible to think that it would take a mission to put it all into perspective. I am truly so blessed to be here having this experience, there is absolutely nothing on this earth that I could exchange it for. Thank you all for your support. Go share the gospel with someone this week. Do it, you'll never regret it.

Sok sok szeretettel,

Sister Papritz

p.s. today was super PDAY and we had some incredible adventures including a roadtrip to the Balaton, a castle, thatched roof houses, true Hungarian countryside, amazing rock skipping, and incredible fall colors and hanging out as a district. Details to come next week. Stay tuned!

Amy Oct 30, 2011

Zao an qin ai de jiating!!

I hope that ya'll have had a great week. Wo de zhege libai guode bu cuo (My week wasn't too bad). Not much happened this week besides the normal missionary work. We have a lot of steady investigators that are progressing really well toward their dates. Tiffany set a baptismal date for November 13!!!! She is definately going to make that date! We found one new investigator who is great. The Elders tracked into her. She is 16 named Zhang. She told us that her family opposes but she still wanted to meet with us. She has a lot of kewang (desire) to learn the Gospel and see how it will help her.

We had an interesting experience at the park the other day. I was riding my bike when a man started riding next to me. I found out he was from France. He was in Taiwan for work and to try out a new bicycle. He asked about why I was there and when I told him I was a missionary it started a very interesting conversation. I found out that he is basically atheist. When I tried to share about the Book of Mormon he started to tear it apart and say that the people back then didnt have a writing system so how could they write a book. He said that the Bible is man's creation and not from God. He was taught by Jesuit scholars which teach them to question everything but forbid them from questioning God. Its so interesting. He said that the question he has asked his whole life, He was once a devout Catholic, is who created the creator. His answer....man did. It is just an imagined thing we have no evidence that God exists. It sounds a lot like Korihor in the Book of Mormon eh? Needless to say we didnt' get very far with him. I left that conversation very sad that he has been so decieved. There really is a God, our Heavenly Father, who created this earth for us His children. There are so many things on this earth that testify of God's exisitance. Anyways, I hope one day he will come to know the truth.

Well I think thats this week in a nutshell. I hope that ya'll have a great week. Love you!!!

Love,

Sister Amy Papritz