"We are preparing for snow and ice tonight and tomorrow, nobody told me that it snowed here?!?!?!?!"

I am sorry I have been slow posting from Elder Hintze. Here is from Monday, January 27th. Thanks for your support.

"How is every one doing!? I am doing great today, it is 60 degrees outside loving the weather, we are preparing for snow and ice tonight and tomorrow, nobody told me that it snowed here?!?!?!?! What the heck? Does nobody remember when I got called to the FLORIDA Tallahassee Mission, oh well!

Monday - We had our District activity and we went mini golfing.. get this guys. Elder Hintze came up on top, I won out of the district and I finished with a score of PAR. Probably my best mini golfing score in my life. Then in the night we packed up some stuff and we started to move apartments once more!

Tuesday - Was an all day move.. we had District Meeting in the morning! And we ate dinner at Bishop's house in the evening, which was really, really good! A lady that we found and passed on to the sister's about 2 weeks ago, is set to be baptized, so that is really cool, she is the sweetest lady.. we talked to her while she was getting into her car!

Wednesday - We got back into the swing of things! We have tried to cut down our less active visits and focus on the progressing ones, and so we are focusing a lot on just potentials and investigators.. So in the morning we tried a bunch of potentials that we had found. We tried to see that Media Referral that we got, and she was not home and would not schedule an appointment with her again, so we will see if we can wrangle her down! We went and saw Barbara Phillips with Charles Bain, she again just continues to do better and better each and every day, so sweet to be a part of it. And yes she does talk just like she writes in her letters! :) We had Ward Correlation meeting in the evening.

Thursday - We had several appointments with potentials that did not work out in the morning. So we did Weekly Planning. We knocked on this ladies door and started talking to her, and apparently she used to be an old member... crazy! We just stumbled into her, she said that she still has her scriptures and her temple garments and she was smoking and says that she plans to come back to the church in three and a half years.. so I don't think that is exactly the way that it works, but the sister's are going to start working with her, since she lives alone. It is always so fun to see how the Lord leads us when things don't always turn out exactly as planned. We did a lot of finding efforts, and we saw Brother Dobbs, the less active guy! And many others, so we will see how effective it is with returning members! And we had an appointment with Marcus, but he was not there, we are meeting with him this evening, so we are very excited to meet with him! We saw the Hughey's, and only Jef was home, so we were able to talk with him for quite a long time! It really was so awesome, I challenged him to read the Book of Mormon, and asked him if he had ever read it, because it sits in their home, and we were able to read a lot about the pre earth life with him, he loves to know about the Plan of Salvation. 

Friday - We had our Hospital shift and it was a busy one. We were called down to help a family that had just lost a loved one, so we went in and we prayed with them and just offered counsel anyway that we could. It was a family and they had 3 ordained ministers in there and a lot of the family left when the 2 Mormon dudes showed  up, but we were able to talk with them for a bit. And the spirit that was with them was so sweet, as we talked about our Savior Jesus Christ and the plan of salvation with them. They had such great faith, it was actually a blessing for me to be with them. So crazy when we are called on to do things like this, always paints a much bigger picture for me. On the way to the hospital we tried to see some potentials and to see Jon Davis, his brother had a heart attack, so we haven't been able to see him for a while. On the way there, I popped my tire, so we had to walk the rest of the way, haha.

Saturday - We saw Barbara Phillips in the morning. She was not able to make it to church, because she can't walk. But it really has been neat to see her understanding grow and grow. We also saw Sister Knight, she is back in Dothan again, so she started calling us to go out and see her, she is an absolute hoot! We also had a lesson with Gloria and Zoya, they are still just as solid as can be! We are working to get them to the temple, they had a temple trip scheduled in February, but it has now been canceled, they may have to wait until May to go do baptisms. It is so difficult to think what a chore it is to go to the Burmingham Temple, a 4 hour drive... and to think we have so many temples so close to our home! We ate dinner with the Hansen's in the evening! And we visited Brother Nunez with Brother Shelly, we got him to church again!!!!! So his wife was sick, but he has been there consistently! And Yovanny the son was there and I know that he has said this before, but he told us how he sat in church and how good it felt and as he looked through his scriptures he found an old talk that he gave, and he said he wants to quit his job so he can come, so we will see!

Sunday - Sacrament Meeting was great. We taught the Gospel Principles class! We ate dinner at the Lewis Farm after church. And we headed out on the bikes and we are just going up the hill and my tube boom just pops.. again. I was about ready to throw my bike in the trees, but I was like NO. This is good, this happened for a reason!!! So we start walking and we walk to the neighborhood, and we were led there at that time to talk to the people that we did, there were many, many people outside. And we got a lot of really, really good return appointments for this next week. One we are particularly excited about! We also saw the Brown family again, and they are really awesome, they are very nice, and we have got a good friendship going with them, they said that this Sunday they are going to come to church with us, so we will see if we get them there! Then we saw Sister Burnsed in the evening.

The common factor this week, was that the Lord was leading us to be in the certain areas and certain times, were able to contact lots of old members or people that had had contact with the church! So just got to keep looking forward with Faith, and stay happy! Love ya'll!!!!"
 
Love,
Elder Hintze