January 15, 2009

Dear Family, So This is kind of gonna be my journal. I figure I will try and write part of the letter home and describe what I did each day. So today is Thursday Jan. 15 and President told us we have all got to step it up with finding new people and we have to get at least 8 hours of tracting each week, he would prefer 12. So we find this out on Tuesday, Monday we were on team ups with another Elder, Elder Sorenson because his companion got sent to Helena for a leadership meeting, well anyways we didn’t tract because 3 missionaries is kind of intimidating especially with me there, haha. So Monday zero hours, Tuesday we get 1 hour, Wednesday is party-day. JK So today we have 1/8 of our tracting done. So we are hoofing it on foot since its not our day with the car and we busted out 3 hours today. So we are now ½ done with our tracting requirement. Tomorrow is cut short because of weekly planning. We pretty much just got to tract 2 hours tomorrow and 2 on Saturday. Since Sunday we can’t tract because I have 8 ½ hours of Church to sit through. But after dinner we were abld to go over to the ICU and give a blessing to a lady who is not doing so hot. We have an eventful day tomorrow with a lot of walking involved, we won’t get our car back until next Tues. So on Friday I have a cool story. We are out tracting for 3 straight hours, we have the other missionaries drop us off in timbucktoo and we are going to tract our way back home. We are trying this new technique that popped into my mind while we were doing a workshop in our district meeting and I committed my district to say a prayer every 5 houses whether people answer or not, so me and Elder Barney are tracting, it is a colder day than it has been. It is snowing and it is extremely foggy. For 3 hours we are knocking doors and praying every 5 doors. Nothing, no one is interested. But we keep going. Its been about 3 hours and we have nothing to show, no investigators, lessons, or potential investigators. There are 4 more houses left on this insanely long street. We say 1 last prayer and go to finish our afternoon and head to dinner. We were able to set up 4 return appointment and all of them were genuinely interested. It goes to show if you put effort in you will be able to find. We had nobody all day and after 3 hours who would of thought, the last 4 houses! We could of been like this is pointless, lets go do something else, but perserverance is the key. So there you get a spiritual story this week. Oh and last night we had a lesson with Argentina and Kenya Stack, we are setting a date in Feb. Kenya who is 14 was really embarrassed about this but said her lifelong goal is to be like us and serve a mission. They are from Guadalajara so you can tell Korey. We also had a lesson with a less active guy who told us God is an Alien and that we were beamed down to earth and other junk
Si it is now Sat. night we just got in and planned. Right before this we did a 44 oz Dr. Pepper run. But we just got through nairing Elder Barney’s chest. (You know the hair removal cream) I was going to take pictures but I don’t think you would have appreciated them. haha Today was a good day, we were able to tract and reach our goal of 8 hours. And we gave a newborn baby a blessing. We taught a family at a members house and we are setting baptismal dates. So tomorrow will be brutal..we have ward correlation at 7:45 and Church until 4:30, then over to the Stake Center for Stake General Priesthood Meeting. It is going to be a looooong day. Oh my freaking gosh…I just got home from a crazy day just sitting in meeting for a little over 12 hours. We got picked up at 7:40, did 2 blocks of Church, ate dinner inside the Church because we didn’t have time to go over to the Robinsons house and make it back for Priesthood meeting. They then drove us to the Stake Center. That is 12 hours and 20 min. of sitting in Church Arggghhh. Well yay it was fun and I got updates as the Cardinals played. The year I go on my mission is the only year the AZ Cardianls do good. Will you tape the Super Bowl for me? Please do. We had 5 investigators come to Church, how cool is that? On Tues. night we buy body wax from Walmart, we spend the night at the zone leaders apartment and we start waxing Elder Barney, he is like bleeding from it. But we waxed my right leg and left my left leg hairy. Pretty gross. haha Have a great week. Love, Elder Hinton