"So everything is on the up and up!"

Here is Bradley's letter received Monday, August 26th. Hope you enjoy:

"Hello Family! Wow this week really flew by! I don't know if I have much time today to email. The sisters gave us a ride out here, because we are very low on miles for the month, and they hate their families or something, and so there all like Elder Hintze, we have to be out of here by like 1:30 at the latest. Whatever! They can take a hike! So I am going to get right into it! But this week flew by!!!!!! Really time is flying, but I love it out here! I would be content to spend my whole mission here in Dothan.


Monday - Still no roller skating. Never enough time to do anything that we need to. After all of the P-Day jazz, hardly any letter to write and again this week.. none, where are they??? ;) So we taught a man named Johnny Facion, a recent converts grandpa, he can't read.. And he understands nothing, but agrees with everything. He thinks that his pastors are prophets, and so I don't know what to do there, the other missionaries stopped teaching him, so we will see what happens. The Spirit wasn't in the lesson at all, which is always a really crappy feeling afterwards. Then we ate at the Depews, they played a joke on the sisters and put out green juice, and made them think that it was gonna be gross, but surprise it tasted like fruit!


Tuesday - We had zone training. So all 30+ missionaries got together in the zone to meet, the zone leaders and sister training leaders instructed us and we did some role playing. We are super lucky to have the stake center here in Dothan, so we don't have to travel at all for meetings like this. THEN we met with Barbra Phillips and she read Alma chapter 7 to us in German and told us what it meant in English, and she basically said that she wants to get baptized, and she quit smoking!!!! So we were like no way. And then we explained the Priesthood to her, and we gave her a priesthood blessing to be able to quit and she hasn't since then! And we went to get her remaining cigarettes, and she went to the cabinet and said, "they're all gone, I must of smoked em, ahh, even better." Hahahaha. She is awesome. But really I am so proud of her and I love this woman so much. She is making great steps. Then we had a first lesson with a man named Will, who is Gabe Halls friend (member just got home from mission) and he has had some rough past little whiles, and said he thinks there is a reason that he has been surrounded by friends who are members. His best friend just joined up in Chicago. It is amazing how the Resoration lesson really answers every single persons questions, and he is super sincere!! So I have great hopes for him... Unfortunatley though Gabe leaves to go to BYU Idaho in a week. Everyone down here loves BYU Idaho they think that it is so prestigious.. And I'm like come on people!! Then we ate with the Marturello's that Utah family, they are so awesome! They feed us every two weeks, and you should see their house, I tell her everytime, that if my mom and sisters could see this, they would die. Super awesome. Then we played ball and Tony brought like 13 marine buddies, and we BALLED. There was this little black kid, who played in High School, but guess who beat him? I will let you guess. :)


Wednesday - We met with Kevin and April in the morning and we talked about the Gospel of Christ. So we talked to them about baptism. He enjoys our visits and we have showed him all of this new stuff, and he believes it, he just doesn't have a testimony of the Book of Mormon or Joseph Smith, that is crucial!!!! We also talked to them about quitting smoking, well actually they brought it up, so we are following up on that next time we meet with them! Then we saw Paul Kennedy. So then we had correlation meeting with all of the auxiallary heads in the ward, it was the best thing to ever happen. We are now all coordinating our efforts to find lost members! The church has like 10 step checklist to go throught that if you do all of them you can take them off your roster. There are 80 names that are lost, how does that happen? 80 people just gone! Then we ate with Cam, and studied with him.


Thursday - Today was awful. We updated the rosters in the morning. Went to Linda's she forgot about her appointment, tried a bunch of less actives, started pouring rain, so then we worked on the map. I filled up a balloon really big like the ones that we did at home, and it was huge, and then it popped all over our kitchen so.. But then we ate dinner with Bishop and Sister Cain, and it was so awesome!! We made him cry talking about some of the stuff that we had done lately! Then we went with Luke to see Danny Dee's and he was headed to bed, so we just got to know him a little bit better, and he talked about how much his family means to him, and it was great! There is so much potential with him too, just hard to meet with him.


Friday - Started the day at Linda's she asked us some questions from the book of Revelations, and that my friends is some crazy stuff in that book. I have been reading it a little bit, because of her questions. We saw Barbra Phillips again and we read from the book of mormon with her, she is still smoke free, but Sister Johnson her neighbor a member of our ward bought her an electronic cigarette.. So I confiscated that baby and I broke it in half and then it started heating up on me. But we got it out of her house, I stomped it. Then we did hospital shift and we were making our rounds in the ER, and another lady says I used to be a member of your church. What? So awesome two weeks in a row. So we talk to her, she has 4 kids, one lives with her mom and is 7 and is getting baptized in a few weeks. But the others are young, and she was awesome, and says that she is going to come back, but she didn't on Sunday. But its still alright!! Then we ate dinner with the Allen family, from Arizona originally, super awesome! Brother Allen since then has helped us out a ton, he has drove us places on Sunday and is planning on taking us out to a mexican restaurant to find a less active young men in the ward. And Friday night we were out biking and we almost got eatin by 3 pitbulls, Elder Stubbs was alone the first time, and so I was laughing at him, but then they came at us on the way back, so we stood back to back with our bikes in front of us and walked slowly, they were out for blood. Then we saw the Deal family.


Saturday - Didn't really have anything planned so we walked to Walgreens and I sweat out of my slacks, but then we got there and the supplies that we needed for our maps weren't there, but we did get to talk to a couple people on the way. Then we met Anita (recent convert) in the park, it is her grandpa that we met, read with her. Then we went to talk to the buddhist woman Itsoku she let us in, we met the husband, he didn't like us, but he said, "you know we're buddhist right?" And we were like yes sir. And then he loved us after that he gave us powerade and then she played some japanese guitar for us, and they have some giant buddhist shrine in their living room. But we talked to her a lot about where she came from, and we talked about family history, and we were able to talk a lot about the Gospel. If we were able to talk to him, I think that we could have em, because he is american, so he can actually understand us better. So we will keep working. Then we saw good old Sister Knight and Cameron took us to see some folks.


Sunday - Real fine day. Real fine. we had 4 investigators at church! Church is so stressful.. I am so worried about every little thing that people say when we have investigators there, because sometimes it gets a little crazy down here in Alabama. But it was an awesome meeting, Brother Thomas, talked about prayer to end sacrament meeting, it was so awesome, so basic, with the Spirit, and then he sang Joseph Smith's First Prayer over the pulpit and it made me cry. It was exactly what everyone of the investigators needed. We had Barbra there we picked her up, and then Gloria and she loved church and she has started reading the Book of Mormon!!!!!!!!!!!! So we will see here this week, and then Tony Hansen brought two friends Tiffany and Mitchell. Both Gloria and Barbra said they were coming back next week! We ate dinner at the Lewis's they live out on a diary farm. Then we saw the Burnsed's they are going through some rough times, her son was doing drugs in their home, and so the mom called the police on him, and he is in prison. Then we went to Southside Baptist Church with Brother Willie, they had a get together outside with games and hotdogs and burgers, so we just met lots of the people, real good time, the pastor there really, really likes us. Then we went to Barbra's because it was her birthday today and she has no body so we had us, both sets of sisters, and Sister Yawei and Sister Johnson from the ward over. We got here a little gift and we made a cake and brought over ice cream, it really was such a great time, and she was so happy! I loved all of it! After when we left we said a prayer and afterwards Barbra said, I feel like I need to pray to. So she said a prayer on her own and just gave thanks! It was so awesome!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


Well that's the week! I really do love whats happening here! Some really great things!! And I don't want to count any eggs, but we have a lot of sincere people, that could get baptized. It really is so sweet to see people learn and accept the Gospel!!! So everything is on the up and up! I really am so happy about all of it! And I love all of you so much!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! The Gospel is true!"


Love, Elder Hintze!