Baptism! Yeah!

Nothing crazy or out of the ordinary here. Oh! Except we had a baptism last Saturday! That was so exciting! We also taught the lesson in Young Women's yesterday.

I got letters from the Buckhannon seminary class!!! I was SO happy!!! It made my day. I need to write them all back, soon. I'm so proud of them for going to seminary. I also got a giant box of every candy imaginable and a Portuguese Book of Mormon from Nate last week. That was exciting, because, you know, candy!!

that's my candy face..and that's also my laundry in the background.

We also visited Bev, this one lady who I'm like BFFs with. She's a quilting wizard.

 

OH, also Sister Loveland and I found matching footy pajamas...I'm not sending those picture though.

It was a really great week. I miss home, but I am loving being a missionary. We also put two new investigators on date for March 15th the other night! The Lord is helping us to find those that are prepared to learn about the gospel!

I know that God lives and that He loves each of us. I know that this is the only Church on the earth that has that same priesthood authority that Jesus Christ gave to His apostles. I know that the Lord is in the details of our lives, we just need to open our eyes and recognize them.

Love you!

Sister Hinkle

My Life is hilarious.

So this week was crazy. Monday was pretty normal, I wore the cat shirt mom sent me.

lololololololol

Tuesday was pretty regular, we ate Subway for lunch and stuff.

AND THEN WEDNESDAY HAPPENED.

After visiting some people who own bearded dragons

we went to Temple Square for a lesson with our totally awesome investigator, who's getting baptized this Saturday!

After Temple Square, we took Trax home. If you don't know what Trax is, it's public transit. Public transit and I have never tangoed before in this great dance-off of life. So as you can imagine, my non-Utah-native companions and I got QUITE lost. Like almost in Draper lost. That's the last time we take advice from a kindly old lady on which train to take! Just kidding, it was only like 20 minutes away from Kearns, and a wonderful woman named Sister Taylor came and picked us up. She's always helping us out. We love her and we are so grateful for everything she does for us.

Then we came home two hours later than planned and ate dinner at the Taylor's house. Now they always ask me if I have my map when I see them.

I don't even remember Thursday.

And Friday was Valentines day!!! And this sweet lady named CarrieSue and her daughters brought us balloons and flowers and stuff!!!! It was the best surprise ever!

Oh, also, our landlord gave us pink pepper spray! Yahoo!

Saturday our stake president had all 9 missionaries in our stake get up on the stand together and he asked us questions about making ward council effective and good expereinces we've had with our ward mission leaders and other things. Kearns Central is the only stake in our mission that has so many missionaries. Everyone is all excited about missionary work and genealogy in our stake now. Stake conference was REALLY good. Even if I did have to speak. Oh, and do you remember that wonderful Taylor family from earlier? They went and got us milkshakes and brought them to us that night. Needless to say, I had a chocolate milkshake for breakfast Sunday morning.

Overall, it was a pretty fun week. We've met a lot of new people and hopefully this week will be even more productive! I'm so grateful for the prayers that you all say for me, and I am so thankful to Heavenly Father for the help He gives to us every day.

I love you! Be happy!

Sister Hinkle

I don't sell religion. Also I'm not a polygamist.

This is what Sister Loveland and I did last Monday. Sticker trading party! Wooooo.

Everything is pretty much the same, the work is exploding here in Kearns and it's wicked awesome! I am loving being is a trio. I love the members. I also love taking naps during our lunch hour.

Oh, so you're probably wondering about the title of this week's email. Well, long story short, there was a man across the street when we were leaving our house the other day. We walked over to introduce ourselves and asked a few questions, ya know, do what missionaries do. Then as we were saying goodbye he says "have a good sales day! hope you make a lot of sales!" and I was all "Oh, nope! We don't sell anything" trying to clear that assumption right up. Then he looked me and said "Well, yeah sort of. You sell religion." I didn't even know what to say. Luckily Sister Ricks went "we're in the happiness business!" so that was some good comic relief.

Those words have been haunting me ever since. Is that what people really think I'm here to do? Is that really what people think the Church is about?

I'm not spending an entire year and a half of my life in the middle of Utah to try and convince people that my Church is right and their beliefs are wrong or to get their money or anything like that.

I'm here to share the truth of what I know with these people because I know it will bless their life. I'm here to teach people about Jesus Christ's church, that has been restored. I'm here to teach them about how they can be with their family forever and how God has given us prophets in these days just like He did in days of old, so we can have direction, so we can know our purpose, so we can lead our families in righteousness. I'm here to teach them about the priesthood authority and how it's been restored, and that's how we know that this is the true Church, because we have that same authority that Jesus Christ had, and that He gave to His apostles. I'm here to teach people about the Book of Mormon, and how it's blessed my life, along with the Bible. I'm here to teach them about Lehi, and Alma, and Moroni, and all the prophets and missionaries that really did live in the ancient Americas who wrote the Book of Mormon.

I wish people didn't think I was here to sell them my religion. I'm not here to convince, nothing like that. I'm here to invite them to come unto Christ. I'm here to preach His gospel.

 I'm not mad. I'm just sad, because I love these people so much. I want them to feel this happiness that I have. I want them to know what I'm here for, and I want them to know what I'm not here for.

Aside from that, my week was pretty excellent. Last night I went to someone's house and they had a giant bag of hot tamales and a bag of rolos. Best. Day. Ever.

Well, I love you. I miss West Virginia. Things are starting to melt here, I'm sure Utah is a whole ton prettier when it's not covered in snow.

Be happy!

Sister Hinkle

Loverinkle

So there's this dumb thing a lot of missionaries like to do where we combine the names of companions together to create one big super name because..you know...we need something to do while we're walking around the streets. So my last companion and I were known as Swinkle to some of the families here. Last Wednesday was transfers! And guess the heck what!? I got two new companions, Sister Loveland (who's been out for 9 months and just came from South Jordan) and Sister Ricks (who just got out of the MTC Wednesday, and we were friends up at BYU-I!! Like she lived in the apartment above me and we walked to class together sometimes and stuff!) and we are having a BLAST. One family that I'm close to has given us the combo of Loverinkle. I don't think it'll last, we have to find a better name for our tri-panionship.

Sister Loveland and I are both training Sister Ricks, it is so exciting to be a trainer and to take over our area!! On Monday night I got a call telling me that I'd be training and I felt so happy because this responsibility makes me feel that the Lord really trusts me. Then I found out we were training Sister Ricks and I was ECSTATIC!! They are both incredible missionaries and I love teaching with them!

This is like the only picture I have of them. Sister Ricks was a little dead. OH! And that's our new bunk bed in the background. Exciting, isn't it?

You know you're a good missionary when you're this tired at the end of the day.

The work is on FIRE since we got these two new sisters here! I can't believe how much we've accomplished in just half a week. Doors are opening up where before they were closed tight. Figuratively and literally. Haha. We have two people two are planning to enter the waters of baptism this month and next month and 

I'm sure there are many more people that the Lord is preparing for us to teach.

In other news, the Super Bowl was last night. So for dinner we went to a family (one of my favorite families here, actually) that's super nerdy and we had a Super-Bowl-food-minus-the-actual-Super-Bowl party. We pretty much ate nachos and candy and talked about how much we don't like football. It was awesome.

Well, that's all I got. I'm going to go to Walmart and buy some milk or something.

I love you!!

Sister Hinkle

Oh, ps, here's a picture of the Salt Lake Temple from when we went to Temple Square a few weeks ago that I keep forgetting to send. It might be crooked, so flip it if you can, haha 

At least we don't have Malaria!!!!

WELL, Sister Swain and I were QUITE under the weather this week. So whenever we weren't out working we were at home sleeping. Being sick on a mission is so dumb! All you want to do is work but can't because you feel like death. Also, I lost my voice Friday and Saturday, so you can imagine how hilarious giving lessons was. I was whispering at people across the room and Sister Swain would have to repeat a lot of what I'd say, haha. Apparently there's a malaria outbreak in Nate's mission right now, so all week Sister Swain and I keep saying "at least we don't have malaria!" Because, for real, malaria would be 385209320875 times worse. Just saying.

We found out that there's a third companion being put into our area! We'll find out who stays and who goes tomorrow and on Wednesday is transfers. We're thinking we'll both stay and we'll just get the third companion on Wednesday. BUT, anything can happen, so we'll see.

There's an older couple that we've visited a couple of times and on Saturday we were talking about how the wife collects rocks and she was showing us some of her jewelry and she gave us both a pearl ring! We were like we can't take your pearls! Are you kidding!? We don't deserve those! But she said she wanted to give them to someone who would appreciate them and that she only had sons so they'd just sell them. We were almost in tears! She is so sweet, we still can't believe it.

Well, I've been hearing about the horrible cold back in WV! I'm so sorry that's happening! It hasn't been even close to that cold here! But we do appreciate our entire shelf of Christmas-present hand/toe warmers courtesy of everyone who gave us a Christmas present. Man, we love those things! Katie even wrote on each of the ones she sent! Dedication.

The man who got baptized last week is always BEAMING when we see him! He interviewed for a job at the grocery store down the street and they asked him if we was a happy person, and he said "Of course I'm happy! I'm a Mormon!" Like seriously, he never showed emotion before last weekend and now he's always smiling ear to ear all the time! It's amazing to see what the gospel does in people's lives!!! He's baptizing his 8 year old daughter in a couple of weeks and we're so excited for him!!!

Oh, also, look at all of these cute puppies I get to see sometimes.

The only thing that would be better would be kittens. Man, I love cats.

Our  honorary "third companion" Shelby went to the Mexico MTC last Wednesday!! We miss her dearly. This is the only picture I have of her. It's while we were driving up to Temple Square, eating cookies and drinking milk out of the jug, rocking out to Church music in her hilarious mini van. You know how it is.

Anyways, I'm done for now.

I love Heavenly Father and I love Jesus Christ! I love everyone at home and I love these people here in Kearns. I know that every person is invited to partake of Salvation. Jesus Christ Atoned for ALL of us. We all have Their promise that we can live with Them again!

Sister Hinkle