ONCE AGAIN WE ARE AMAZED<><

Sophia, Jane, Mark, Leah, Lindsay, Callie and Hannah

Field Day at the Seminary...Sept. 06

Caleb and Uncle Mark up north Christmas 06

We are SO amazed by the faithfulness of God. Not at all surprised, but we just continue to stand in awe of His goodness to us. I remember last fall being excited but also a little anxious as we headed here... so many new things and unknowns. He has more than been faithful. He provided a place to live on campus, special friends and has provided for all of our needs. The reason I am once again amazed is that earlier this week I headed to a new dentist (who gives discounts to seminary students:) because I was having problems with a crown. Well, I will save you the gory, bummer details but the bottom line was we were going to have a MAJOR expense...even with the discount:) If any of you know me I have always had some fear of the dentist and I am a bit emotional. Literally I had to fight back the tears as I called Greg to check with him and make sure I should go ahead with the work that I will have to have done. A little embarrassing, but oh well. Of course Greg was as sweet as usual. Well, God is so faithful. Today in the mail we got a couple of unexpected gifts. What we received will meet this need and has eased a great burden. We have seen his blessings through many of you over and over again. We are so amazed. We so appreciate the gifts, the notes, the encouragement, and the prayers for us. We don't ever doubt his provision it is just so awesome! We give him all of the glory!

The last picture above is of Caleb with my oldest brother Mark. The top picture is of Mark's family. For the last year Mark has been having some serious liver issues. Last week he and his wife Jane went to Mayo clinic in Minnesota to try and get to the bottom of his illness. They think that they have figured out that it is a certain liver disease , but they want to do more tests in July. There are times he feels pretty good, but then has some bad flair ups. Please pray for God's healing touch on Mark's body. He, Jane and their 5 daughters are resting in God's peace and joy. They really do have great peace about it. We know the power of God and the power of prayer so I just wanted to get the word out to some more of God's mighty prayer warriors! Thanks so much for lifting Mark and his family up to the Lord!

BUSY SUMMER DAYS!!

Caleb, Louis and Anna in front of the Muny

Sweet Little Buddies:)

The kids at the Botanical Gardens

Yes, the Hintz family has been busy with more free activities around the St. Louis area. My Dad has always said I can stretch a buck further than anyone he knows, but boy when it is free it is even better. St. Louis is full of free activities, perfect for the seminary family on a budget:)

Last Thursday I took Louis, Caleb and Anna to the Muny. It is a huge outdoor theater in Forest Park. This is the park about a mile from campus. Every night they have 1500 free seats available on a first come first serve basis. We went early and got to see a wonderful production of Oklahoma. The intermission was at 10:00pm. I wasn't sure if we would make it to the end, but the kids loved it and wanted to stay. It ended around 11:20pm. They were still awake, even Anna. Boy were they thrilled to see it and be up so late. It was really a lot of fun. They have a different performance each week so I am sure we will try to catch another.

Tuesday we went to Forest Park to have a picnic dinner with some friends and listen to a free Jazz concert outside of the History Museum. The kids had a blast playing together and trying to walk on Mr. Zieglers slack line. It was a line he had tied off between 2 trees and basically you try to balance and walk across it. It is maybe only 2 feet off the ground. It looks so easy, or I should say he made it look easy. The kids definitely had more balance than their mama. It was pretty funny.

Yesterday we spent the morning at the Botanical Gardens. It also is free every Wednesday and Saturday morning before noon. I am just totally amazed by all of the free things to do here. It was really pretty; beautiful flowers, trees, sculptures and more. It was a scorcher. I think being northerners we just aren't used to the heat. We were all really tuckered out by noon. Greg of course being from Houston has the southern blood. It was really fun to just be together and enjoy God's amazing creation. Speaking of God's beautiful creation. I was at a home school conference up in Wisconsin and the organization Answers in Genesis was there. Wow, do they have neat resources. I picked up a book on the Grand Canyon because we are going to visit some family out that direction and do some camping for a bit. The book is so cool; amazing pictures, but more importantly shows how the Grand Canyon was formed from a creationist standpoint, the biblical standpoint. It is a bit above the boys level, but we read 2 pages everyday and they are really into it. Wow, we can't wait to see in person the mighty, majestic work of God's hands. It is amazing how much I have to learn, having gone to public schools I can see how the evolutionist worldview was woven into so much that I learned. Not that I believed it, but I am excited to learn how I can defend my faith and prove God's mighty work in creation. I really want my kids to have a firm foundation in that as well. Enough rambling, but I tend to get excited about these things:) Blessings on your day!

HAPPY FATHER'S DAY

It was an eventful day here at the Hintz house. We went to church last night at a church called Christ in the City, CRAVE coffeehouse. It is a coffee house during the week but they hold a church service there on Saturday night. It is a really neat place. Today the boys had a BIG baseball game on campus. Just a big group of boys getting together to play. This has been the new thing as of a week ago. They have been practice playing everyday, but today was the actual game. It was soooo hot, the boys didn't notice they could've played all day.

After the game they were all going to run through the sprinkler (mom included). Caleb went inside to get a snack and cut his finger badly. He is usually my vegetable peeler and cutter and does a great job, but today the knife slipped and caught his middle finger. So Greg and I headed across the street with him to the hospital. He was so scared that he'd have to get stitches. Thankfully the Dr. was able to just use the glue. He was very relieved. It is so sad to see your child hurting. But thank the Lord, he is just fine tonight.

We had a nice calm dinner back at home and finished off the night with an episode of Little House on the Prairie. We just love that show:) Happy Father's Day to all the Dads out there. We are so blessed to have such wonderful Father's but are even more blessed to have our awesome Heavenly Father.

THE HEAT IS ON!

Louis with new baby cousin Ezra

Cousins Grace and Callie with Caleb
Cousin Sophia and Anna having a tea party

Yes, the heat is on in St. Louis. I think it was 94 degrees in the shade yesterday. A little steamy for us from the north. Greg loves the heat and humidity with his Southern Texas blood. We have had a busy last few weeks. We just returned from Wisconsin. It was a wonderful chance to get away and spend time with lots of family and friends. We were also able to visit with churches that have helped us since we have been here at the seminary. We were pretty much on the go most of the time. The kids loved having sleepovers, camp outs, tea parties:), lake time, and just spending time with their cousins. It was great!

We were thankful to be able to be there while my dad had throat surgery. Praise the Lord he seems to be recovering great. He is now on voice rest, so any of you that know my dad know that this will be quite a challenge, he loves to talk. He had to do this about 6 weeks ago and actually did quite well. It was really funny to see him trying to mouth words to us (that didn't work real well), and write everything out ( that also didn't work that well, his handwriting isn't the best:) The kids got a kick out it saying that they want Grandpa on their team for Charades at the family reunion at the end of summer. We are so thankful that the surgery went well. We thank God for His healing touch.

So right before we left for vacation we had 2 of the families in our building of 4 move out. And just today one of my running partners and her family packed up the truck to move to Florida. It is really exciting but also a bit sad to have so many neat friends leaving. We are excited to hear more about the ministries God has been preparing for them. But at the same time the campus is getting really quiet compared to a month ago. It is a bit strange. We have already had two new neighbors move in and in fact at the moment we are getting ready for a Building 4 cookout to welcome the new guys. Our previous neighbor the Williams always organized the group cookouts in fact Scott the husband had quickly earned the name "Mr. Cookout" by the kids. That was pretty much all they knew him as. It was funny. Well I better run to cut up the watermelon.

A LITTLE GETAWAY FROM THE SEM

Praise God, Greg is done with finals. Yeah! One year down and one more to go here at the seminary. Then one year of vicarage. We are excited. The finals were difficult, but he survived. It is kind of funny to see him reading some of his school books just for fun. He says that now he actually has more time to read and enjoy it compared to just reading so much material to complete papers, prepare for tests, etc. Now he can take the time to absorb a little more. But actually he is spending a lot of time playing with the kids and relaxing a little bit.


Last weekend we were able to get away for a little bit. We went to Columbus Indiana to visit my cousin's family. The second picture above is of all of the second cousin kids together. We all enjoyed the great hospitality they offered us. What a wonderful treat. It was really nice for the kids and I to see Greg be more like his usual fun-loving, silly self. It was great! We all love it here, but it has made Greg a bit more serious at times. We did a lot of biking together and even had a chance to go swimming. It was really refreshing(chilly:) but that didn't seem to bother the kids at all, especially Louis the water bug. We also got a chance to go up near Indianapolis and visit some dear friends of ours, the Bramlets from Wisconsin. They have since moved there. We were in a small group together for 5 years. It was a short visit, but so special. We are God-parents to one of their daughters so it was neat to get to spend some time with her. All in all it was a real blessing for us to get away for a bit and have some family time together.


Louis had some standardized testing this week here on campus with some other home schooled children. It was kind of funny, he loved it. We were happy about that. The top picture above is of Caleb, JOJO and Lou enjoying some ...brotherly love:)

HAPPY BIRTHDAY CALEB!

Last Friday the 11th was Caleb's 8th birthday. That means he was king for the day. We took the day off of school and he chose to let everyone have Dusty Road Sundaes for breakfast, definitely not something we do on a regular basis:) We spent the rainy day at Grant's Farm, another neat free place to go in St. Louis. It is owned by Anheuser-Busch. There is so much to do there. We rode the tram that takes you through a wild life area with elk, deer, buffalo, zebras and all sorts of other animals. Elijah was just thrilled to get to ride on a train, trains are his new thing. There is a petting zoo, animal shows, shops, and the world famous Budweiser Clydesdales. It is a beautiful place with a lot of history. The land was at one time owned by President Ulysses S. Grant, hence the name Grant's Farm. It has his log cabin on it. Another neat thing was that the fence that goes around the animal park was made from the barrels of civil war rifles. The boys thought was really special since we studied the civil war this past year. We splashed around in the rain and had a great time. The top picture is of all of our children and the Tiews children getting ready to have some birthday brownies. They are our friends from our church in Tomball, Texas. They are now our neighbors here at the sem.


We also had visitors from Wisconsin a couple of weeks ago. My brother John, Katy, Ella and Grace came down. It was wonderful, we got to catch up and have some good laughs together. They got to attend Springfest here on the sem campus. That gave them a real taste of sem life. We went to the Arch, up Luther Tower and for a bike ride in Forest Park. We even had to drum up an extra bike since we woke up that morning to find that Greg's bike had been stolen over night. Bummer, it has happened to other residents around here also. Thankfully, it was a very old bike. We crammed a lot into a couple of days but it was a lot of fun.

Greg is taking finals this week. It has been so busy for him. He has been in another world, just totally studying, working, and writing like crazy. I think in the last 2 weeks he has had to write 40+ pages worth of papers/tests. That will keep you busy huh? He is plugging away and we are all proud of him for persevering through the tougher times. We are heading to Indiana on Thursday for a little get away to visit my cousins, and Aunt Adrienne and Uncle Thomas. We are all looking forward to time together. The kids can't wait to play with papa:)


The last picture above is of JOJO sleeping. He had just gotten his hair cut, fell and bruised his eye and was all tuckered out. Greg and I laughed when we saw how he was sleeping with his arms behind him like that...so relaxed. He is such a funny kid. The older kids get such a kick out of him.

CALL DAY MADE FOR AN EXCITING WEEK

This last Wednesday was Call Day on campus. It kind of took me by surprise how the campus really came to life and how exciting it was for us. We were able to watch the vicarage and call services on the Internet. Man, my heart was pumping to find out where some of our dear fourth year friends will be serving in a few months. There were calls all the way from Alaska to Florida, and coast to coast. It kind of made the reality of things here a little more real to us. In one short year we will find out where God has planned for us to serve. Yikes, where will it be?Greg will get his vicarage assignment and hopefully it will be convertible which will make it our permanent call after a year. That is usually the way it works with the alternate route program here which is what Greg is doing. He has 2 years of course work and then vicarage. It was a really exciting week with lots of visitors on campus. I never really thought I would be saying this...But with this year passing soooo quickly, I know I will be really excited but so sad to leave this place and all of the special friends we have made here.

The top picture is of the boys and Brenden our neighbor at the Cardinal's game a week or so back. And then there is Louis picking up trash. He wrote an article for the campus newspaper that was published this month. So that was the picture that they put in with his article about keeping our campus clean. With so many kids on campus there can be lots of bits of trash lying around. Bummer. Anyways, it was fun for him and cute to see his response as people came up and talked to him about his article. He even got a phone call from a professor's wife who lives in Professor housing.

Greg is incredibly busy these days with the end of the quarter coming in a few weeks. At the moment he is feeling totally overwhelmed with the amount of work he needs to do. This usually happens this time in the quarter. He has spent the entire day in the basement studying and working on a paper. He does enjoy what he is learning it is just a bit challenging when it doesn't seem like there will be enough time to complete it all. We (the kids and I) are praying that the Lord gives him peace and determination during the BUSY times. That's about all for today, I am fixing pizza and popcorn for the 8 kids. Our 4 and our friends the Tiews children. We are switching date nights and babysitting once a month. They are dear friends from Tomball Texas. It is a real God thing how this all worked out. We were in a small group with them when Greg and I were teachers at Salem Lutheran in Tomball 8 years ago. Now they are our neighbors here at the seminary. We are actually planning a Texas small group reunion, with all 4 families in the Ozarks for 3 days this summer. We are looking forward to it:)