July 13, 2009

Dear Family,
Had another crazy, extremely tiring week. We ended the week at 33 lessons! On Thursday alone we were able to teach 12 discussions. I was so pooped after that day. Lawl This week might be a little slower but I hope not. Tuesday we are probably going to be gone all morning building a fence. That will use up a lot of our teaching time, but I don’t mind serving people. We may drive into Bozeman Wed. morning and stay all day. Since we have to be in Bozeman again very early on Thursday to drive to Helena for Zone Conference. So we may miss out teaching lessons Wed. night also. Then Thurs. is Zone Conference and it will take 3 hours to drive all the way back to Livingston. We got shorted hardcore the amount of miles allotted to us this transfer so we borrowed some bikes from the ward. They are extremely lame sauce. I might have to get a bike but I am considering how much I would actually use it since you can’t ride it in the winter. So, IDK. Like I said we had a baptism just over a week ago. We have another on the 28th of July for Heather Burril. She is solid, found her the first week I was here so I am stoked. We are setting another date but Shelby Felkins missed Church so we are going to have to push it back into the first week of Aug. probably. Chris Norris is completely solid. We taught him the first discussion the first week I was here. He has been reading and praying. We taught him the second and committed him to come to Church. We are going to be setting a date with him real soon also. He works a crazy shift at the mine, 4 days on and 4 days off so its either we catch him or we don’t but his 4 days off is this next weekend and he committed to be at Church. Last week we found this girl named Tony Kostman. Taught an amazing first lesson. She committed to read and pray. Found out her husband is actually a member, went to 4 years of Seminary and then kinda fell off the band wagon. He said he has never prayed to know so he committed also. Hopefully that will go well and we can se a date. We are teaching so much it’s insane. President Gardner told us that we are leading the mission with discussions taught. Craziness. We are already in week 4 of the transfer. IDK why but I think I’m going to get transferred but you never know. My butt feels completely bruised because of all the bike riding we did on these craptastic bikes. Haha. So we went out to Big Timber on Friday. It is one of the branches we cover and we met a member, Bro. and Sis. Spackman. They picked us up and fed us dinner. But they have a sweet set up for missionaries. They have a complete basement with our own bathroom, kitchen, the whole chabang. But I called Pres. Gardner and he approved that we live there when we go to Big Timber. So that means we can spend more time in Big Timber without wasting tons of miles and it means we get some relief from the cramped Vandvorfs. Well, Love you all a ton, Elder Hinton