Sister and Elder Hintze: 3/15/23
Tuesday, March 14, 2023
Howdy ya”ll!!
Last week started off really slow, and if we’re being honest here, this work is hard!! We started
off the week with a visit to a sister who is on oxygen and trying her hardest to avoid having to go
back on kidney dialysis. Our next visit was with a brother who is diagnosed with terminal
pancreatic cancer. It can really be a challenge to bear these people’s burdens with joy in our
hearts to lift them up. But we are commanded to “not be weary in well doing” so we are doing
all that we can to bring a little bit of sunshine and hope to these two wonderful people through
their difficult journeys. Then we went to the soup kitchen to do our weekly morning of service
and they told us they didn’t need us that day because they did all the preparation the day before.
And then our friend, Latrice, who we have been teaching with the Elders, decided to discontinue
meeting with us.
Fortunately, at the end of the week, we had our Stake Conference to look forward to, knowing
that we would have a visiting General Authority, Elder Daniel Amato. It was an incredible
conference, with one inspiring talk after another. I could share a dozen stories here, but I will
share my favorite.
One of the members of the stake shared an amazing story. He served as a missionary in
Czechoslovakia in the early 1990s, right after Communism fell and the country was again open
to receiving missionaries. Their call at that time was to go and find everyone that they could
who were members of the church who had been unable to gather to worship for fifty years. One
day he was in the train station with his companion on his P-day (preparation day, or day off) and
a woman came running up to them, very excited to see them. She told them that they absolutely
needed to go visit this woman who had been waiting so very long to see someone from the
church. The woman whom they were supposed to go see was two hours away, but since they had
the day free, they decided that they should go see her. They got on the train and set out on the
journey to find her. When they arrived at the house and knocked on the door, an elderly woman
appeared, overjoyed to see two missionaries standing on her doorstep. She invited them in and
within a few minutes, she presented them with a jar filled with coins. She told them she had
been faithfully putting her tithing in a jar every single month for all of those years, holding on to
faith that someday she would find someone who could get her tithing donation to the proper
place. Since, as missionaries, the Elders were not authorized to collect her tithing, they called a
member of the church to go to her home to accept it from her. The greatest miracle of the story
is that the member who came to receive the tithing donation from the woman was the very same
young man who had baptized her over fifty years earlier. I love how the Lord directs our paths!
We heard many spiritually edifying stories over the two-day conference.
With last week being rather difficult, we have been praying for more joy and success this week.
Our prayers were most definitely answered when we received a miraculous text early Monday
morning from Megan. Megan is a young woman whom we visited once when we first arrived
here in January. At the time, she accepted our request to come and see her. We arrived at the
previously scheduled time and she welcomed us in. However, when we got there, she seemed
very anxious. She wouldn’t make eye contact with us, and she would answer questions very
quietly with one-word answers. We knew something was troubling her, but she wasn’t willing to
share anything with us. Any subsequent attempts we made to visit her were ignored. She never
responded to any further texts or phone calls. So, we stopped contacting her but continued to
pray for her every night along with all of the others that we’re praying for. About a month ago,
we left cookies on her porch along with a copy of a talk by President James E. Faust entitled
“What it Means to Be a Daughter of God.” We could only suspect that she found the cookies
and the talk on the porch, but couldn’t know for sure. Well, Monday morning I received a text
from Megan that said, “Good morning. I want to thank you for your prayers. It worked! Could
we meet sometime soon?” Oh my!!! Not only had her prayers been answered, but ours as well.
We wasted no time getting over to see Megan. We met with her this morning and she looked like
a different person from the first time we saw her. Her countenance was full of joy and she
smiled, A LOT! She told us that last weekend she decided to let Christ back into her life. She
said she had turned her back on the Savior and had chosen to walk down a road that she knew
she shouldn’t have. We talked to her about the joy of repentance. We read with her a scripture
from Doctrine and Covenants 88:63 “Draw near unto me and I will draw near unto you; seek me
diligently and ye shall find me; ask, and ye shall receive; knock, and it shall be opened unto
you.” The greatest blessing of all is to see the joy and renewed faith that is filling this beautiful
young woman.
The last little thing I have to share is that we’ve been meeting with an Elder since we got here in
January every Tuesday morning at our District meetings. This morning I learned that his father
was the Mission President in St. Louis from 2018 – 2021. For his last two years of high school
Elder Bell went to Parkway West High School!!! What a sweet connection! (That’s where all my
kids went to high school).
Just for a little levity before I close, I will share something that happened at Stake Conference. I
didn’t see this happen personally, but it was told to me. Jeremiah, the newest member of our
ward, whom I’ve mentioned previously, was introduced to President Farias, our Mission
President, at stake conference. He was so very excited to tell him that he had been to the temple.
He said, “The temple is so awesome. You should go there sometime!!” We all had a little
chuckle to hear about Jeremiah telling the Mission President that he should go to the temple.
Well, we’re off to prepare for the rest of a busy week. Tomorrow, we get to do our first Elder
apartment inspections! And we only have to drive an hour to get thereѡѢѣѤ
Lots of Love,
Elder and Sister Hintze
Howdy ya”ll!!
Last week started off really slow, and if we’re being honest here, this work is hard!! We started
off the week with a visit to a sister who is on oxygen and trying her hardest to avoid having to go
back on kidney dialysis. Our next visit was with a brother who is diagnosed with terminal
pancreatic cancer. It can really be a challenge to bear these people’s burdens with joy in our
hearts to lift them up. But we are commanded to “not be weary in well doing” so we are doing
all that we can to bring a little bit of sunshine and hope to these two wonderful people through
their difficult journeys. Then we went to the soup kitchen to do our weekly morning of service
and they told us they didn’t need us that day because they did all the preparation the day before.
And then our friend, Latrice, who we have been teaching with the Elders, decided to discontinue
meeting with us.
Fortunately, at the end of the week, we had our Stake Conference to look forward to, knowing
that we would have a visiting General Authority, Elder Daniel Amato. It was an incredible
conference, with one inspiring talk after another. I could share a dozen stories here, but I will
share my favorite.
One of the members of the stake shared an amazing story. He served as a missionary in
Czechoslovakia in the early 1990s, right after Communism fell and the country was again open
to receiving missionaries. Their call at that time was to go and find everyone that they could
who were members of the church who had been unable to gather to worship for fifty years. One
day he was in the train station with his companion on his P-day (preparation day, or day off) and
a woman came running up to them, very excited to see them. She told them that they absolutely
needed to go visit this woman who had been waiting so very long to see someone from the
church. The woman whom they were supposed to go see was two hours away, but since they had
the day free, they decided that they should go see her. They got on the train and set out on the
journey to find her. When they arrived at the house and knocked on the door, an elderly woman
appeared, overjoyed to see two missionaries standing on her doorstep. She invited them in and
within a few minutes, she presented them with a jar filled with coins. She told them she had
been faithfully putting her tithing in a jar every single month for all of those years, holding on to
faith that someday she would find someone who could get her tithing donation to the proper
place. Since, as missionaries, the Elders were not authorized to collect her tithing, they called a
member of the church to go to her home to accept it from her. The greatest miracle of the story
is that the member who came to receive the tithing donation from the woman was the very same
young man who had baptized her over fifty years earlier. I love how the Lord directs our paths!
We heard many spiritually edifying stories over the two-day conference.
With last week being rather difficult, we have been praying for more joy and success this week.
Our prayers were most definitely answered when we received a miraculous text early Monday
morning from Megan. Megan is a young woman whom we visited once when we first arrived
here in January. At the time, she accepted our request to come and see her. We arrived at the
previously scheduled time and she welcomed us in. However, when we got there, she seemed
very anxious. She wouldn’t make eye contact with us, and she would answer questions very
quietly with one-word answers. We knew something was troubling her, but she wasn’t willing to
share anything with us. Any subsequent attempts we made to visit her were ignored. She never
responded to any further texts or phone calls. So, we stopped contacting her but continued to
pray for her every night along with all of the others that we’re praying for. About a month ago,
we left cookies on her porch along with a copy of a talk by President James E. Faust entitled
“What it Means to Be a Daughter of God.” We could only suspect that she found the cookies
and the talk on the porch, but couldn’t know for sure. Well, Monday morning I received a text
from Megan that said, “Good morning. I want to thank you for your prayers. It worked! Could
we meet sometime soon?” Oh my!!! Not only had her prayers been answered, but ours as well.
We wasted no time getting over to see Megan. We met with her this morning and she looked like
a different person from the first time we saw her. Her countenance was full of joy and she
smiled, A LOT! She told us that last weekend she decided to let Christ back into her life. She
said she had turned her back on the Savior and had chosen to walk down a road that she knew
she shouldn’t have. We talked to her about the joy of repentance. We read with her a scripture
from Doctrine and Covenants 88:63 “Draw near unto me and I will draw near unto you; seek me
diligently and ye shall find me; ask, and ye shall receive; knock, and it shall be opened unto
you.” The greatest blessing of all is to see the joy and renewed faith that is filling this beautiful
young woman.
The last little thing I have to share is that we’ve been meeting with an Elder since we got here in
January every Tuesday morning at our District meetings. This morning I learned that his father
was the Mission President in St. Louis from 2018 – 2021. For his last two years of high school
Elder Bell went to Parkway West High School!!! What a sweet connection! (That’s where all my
kids went to high school).
Just for a little levity before I close, I will share something that happened at Stake Conference. I
didn’t see this happen personally, but it was told to me. Jeremiah, the newest member of our
ward, whom I’ve mentioned previously, was introduced to President Farias, our Mission
President, at stake conference. He was so very excited to tell him that he had been to the temple.
He said, “The temple is so awesome. You should go there sometime!!” We all had a little
chuckle to hear about Jeremiah telling the Mission President that he should go to the temple.
Well, we’re off to prepare for the rest of a busy week. Tomorrow, we get to do our first Elder
apartment inspections! And we only have to drive an hour to get thereѡѢѣѤ
Lots of Love,
Elder and Sister Hintze
Comments
Post a Comment