Sister and Elder Hintze: 9/18/23

 

The work of the Lord marches on!!! The greatest joy of serving as missionaries is to get to see

the change in a person’s countenance as they open their hearts to the gospel and gain a desire to

live on the covenant path. We have had several wonderful experiences, but yesterday’s

experience with the Coley family was the Lord’s masterpiece. As previously mentioned, Sister

Coley has been inactive in the church for several decades. Her older children were baptized, but

her younger children, ages 18 and 20, were not. When we first began trying to visit them, they

were not interested in inviting us in to their home. One day while driving in their area, we

decided to go and knock on the door. Sister Coley stepped outside and during a 45-minute visit

on her front yard she tearfully shared her testimony of the gospel with us. With such a deep

testimony, we asked her why she had been away from the church for so long. She said she had

no excuse. We invited her to return and a few days later she contacted us and asked us to come

to teach her sons. We have been teaching the gospel to her two sons and her son-in-law. In just

four weeks we have watched the transformations of all three of these young men as they have

accepted the invitation to be baptized. It is such a joy to serve as the Lord’s mouthpiece and

hands to do His work on the earth.

Also a joy to us this past week was our visit with Brother Giddens. He is another member of the

church who has not been attending for a very long time. We visited with him twice, and as is the

usual pattern, he stopped responding to our texts and phone calls. So again, we decided to drop

by and knock on the door. While driving into his street, we passed him driving out. We stopped

and rolled the window down and he did the same. We asked him if we could come by the

following evening and he agreed. After getting to know him better, we came to know that he

possessed a deep testimony of the gospel. After helping him get past the several excuses that he

gave for not coming, he gave us his word that he would be in church the following Sunday. Oh,

how great our joy to see him walk through those doors yesterday. Even better was his phone call

several hours after church ended to tell us how much he enjoyed being there.

One of the things we miss the most is getting to watch our grandkids in sports. But we’ve had

the privilege of supporting Sister Coley’s son on his football team. We’ve gone to watch him

play in two games. The atmosphere of a high school game on a Friday night is always fun.

Sadly, in the game last week, with 15 seconds left on the clock, he went for a dive, and although

he caught the ball, he broke his tibia!! It will require surgery to repair it and he is out for the

remainder of the year.

Another awesome thing we got to do in the world of sports is attend at game at Truist Stadium to

watch the Braves play the Cardinals. As we approached the gate, I was excited to see a fan in a

Cardinal t-shirt, so I stopped to greet him and say, “Go Cards!” In his broken English he told us

that he was Gallegos’ father and that he was visiting for a few days from Mexico to watch his son

play. I was star struck and asked if we could take a picture with him. Sadly, Gallegos didn’t

even play in that game. I was definitely in the minority as a Cardinals fan, but I’m sure that it

was all of my cheering and yelling that allowed them to win that game!! We had a wonderful

night with our friends in the ward, Jim and Janice.

Another transfer occurred and Thomaston has been blessed with the addition of Sister Pierre

Jerome. She told us we could call her Sister PJ. She is from Haiti but has been in the U.S. since

she was just over a year old. She is a beautiful young woman with a deep spiritual belief in the

gospel and in possession of strong teaching skills. The people in Thomaston are definitely

blessed by her work here. On our last P-day we went with Sister PJ and Sister Winn to

Andersonville to visit the prisoner of war memorial there. It was hard to learn about the

experiences of the many prisoners of war all over the U.S. but very educational and eye-opening.

There is so much rich history within a short distance of where we are serving.

Well, this is the long-awaited week when we get to go home to meet our newest grandson,

Cole Michael Schwartzman. We are so excited to meet him and to get to see all of our kids and

grandkids for a few days. We will return to Thomaston to complete the last three months of our

mission.

With love,

Elder and Sister Hintze