June 25, 2012 (More Photos)

 

 All the new missionaries and their companions (my companion Elder Rafferty is just to the left of me)

 Our Mission President Brother Lifferth and Sister Lifferth (with me)

 Kangaroos! (on my second day in the Mission Field)

 More Kangaroos!

 Still more Kangaroos!

 And yet more Kangaroos!

 And a few more Kangas for good measure!

June 25, 2012 (Photos)

Me and Elder Smith my MTC companion

Our MTC Zone

 Me and Daniel Dimas from my ward

 Our MTC teacher Brother Warner

  Our MTC District

 The Melbourne Temple

The Mission Home

June 25, 2012

How we going?

 

Thanks for the e-mail! This week has gone by really fast and I have a hard time keeping track of what day it is because they all blur together since it is mostly the same busy schedule each day! I'm loving every minute of it though, even the parts where we just go up to random people and start talking to them about religion, which is something I'd never dream of doing regularly! We've met some really interesting people so far, some in a good way and some were just a little different! One of them was a recent convert to the church but told us that he is going to be the prophet who relocates Zion and one of the ones to get killed in Jerusalem and a whole bunch of other stuff that were just kind of silly. We've been told by the ward mission leader not to go and visit him anymore haha. So the winter here isn't nearly as cold as Utah but it does get a little chilly from the wind. Also, the other day from the moment we woke up until we went to bed it rained ALL day long. And I mean every single second! That's something I'd never seen before. So last Wednesday we got a special opportunity to go through the Melbourne Temple with our whole Zone so that was a really great experience! It's a beautiful Temple. So most of the people we taught this past week were less-active members with a few non-members thrown into the mix. The Stake 1st Councelor in yesterday's ward conference talked about helping out the less-active members more and we've certainly been doing that so far! They're actually building a new ward building that's almost right next to our Flat because the old building was getting too crowded! The area we're in, Pakenham, is actually the fastest growing area (population-wise) in all of Australia! So that's pretty cool. So with that new building that will be done by July 8th, a lot of the less-active members said they'll be attending so hopefully they follow through with that and actually keep coming to church then! So Elder Rafferty has been here for just one transfer, or 6 weeks, and most of the investigators he had when I came in were ones that were found before he came into the area; so they've been having the lessons for quite some time. Most of them, unfortunately, have reached a point where they just aren't progressing much anymore. So we will continue to teach them but we're going to put all our focus now more on finding new people to teach! We're involving the members a lot in helping us find by them giving us some referrals, helping us build a big map of Pakenham so we can keep track of where we've been and info on each house, and in heaps of other ways! So we're really keen on somewhat starting fresh in the area and hopefully we'll see a lot of growth in the coming weeks! There are about 150 active members in the ward and they're all so good! It definitely has some of the strongest members of the church I've ever met! Before I came to Australia I wasn't sure how hungry I would be each night but it's quite the opposite! We have heaps of feeds (or dinner appointments) every week, sometimes two a night, so we're always stuffed with delicious food! Something interesting that the pure Aussies do (which there are very few of in our area) is that they don't have drinks served until after everyone has eaten everything on their plates! So it's definitely a little hard to wait to drink, especially when they serve hot or somewhat spicy food! The Pakenham ward has a lot of Tongans and Samoans in it which is pretty awesome! Definitely not something you'll see in Utah haha. Last week on Tuesday, Elder Bisby (who was in my MTC District) and his companion Elder Evans came and stayed the night before we journeyed to the Temple on Wednesday, so that was fun having some more people around! They're actually coming down again tomorrow for a follow-up interview with all the new missionaries (or 'goldens') with President Lifferth. So there weren't too many amazing teaching experiences this week that I can think of off the top of my head but I know as I continue to improve in my teaching that we'll increase our statistics for the area and have several amazing experiences to talk about next week! Well that's all for now, but I hope everything is going great at home! I miss you all!

 

Love

Elder Hopkins

June 18, 2012

G'Day!

 

How we going? I'm going to start using Aussie lingo in all my e-mails from now on so some words or phrases I use may seem different! So I'm in Australia now, obviously, and it is so awesome! It's very beautiful here and the people are so nice, especially from the ward which I went to for the first time yesterday. My first area that I'm serving in here is Pakenham, which is just about 40 minutes outside of the main city area of Melbourne. My companion/trainer's name is Elder Rafferty, and he's from London, England! He's really cool and we get along really well! I look forward to being able to work with him for at least 6 weeks (that's how long each transfer is and I may stay with him for a 2nd transfer but we'll see!). I met our mission president, President Lifferth, and his wife soon after I got off of the plane and they are really great! They're very nice and President Lifferth seems like he'll be awesome at working us hard and setting high goals for us. The goal he has right now is that every companionship should get 2 baptisms by July 29th, which is a pretty high goal for Australia. We had a mission wide fast this past Sunday in order to build our faith for completing this goal so that was a cool experience. It's definitely a little intimidating teaching real people here in Australia than the no-pressure situations you practice with in the MTC. I'm definitely learning a lot out here though and I'm getting to be a better teaching and missionary with each lesson we have. Something really cool that's happened so far is that on the 2nd day out here, in an area that this isn't known for, we saw heaps of Kangaroos in a field and got some cool pictures and videos of them! So that was really neat because it took Elder Rafferty a long time before he ever saw any Kangaroos (he's been out 7 months by the way) and I've seen over 20 already! It's kind of nice here in Pakenham seeing so many familiar stores and things such as McDonald's, KFC, Dominos pizza, Target, and a bunch of other stores. It definitely makes it feel like it's not too far from home which is good. So here in our mission (unless you're in Tasmania, which I hope to be in sometime while I'm out here) we use cars instead of bikes. So the first day when I got here and met Elder Rafferty I found out that he doesn't have his Driver's License yet...which meant that I had to drive 40 minutes from the mission home back to our Flat, on the opposite side of the road and with the steering wheel on the opposite side, and with me being really jet-lagged from the 15 hour flight! But luckily we made it back without any casualties and I've gotten the hang of driving here now. I've already taught heaps of lessons here, to non-members, less active members, and just regular member families, already. So far they've gone really well too which is a plus. I've been a little lost though because Elder Rafferty knows all about each one of them so he's following up on things and asking questions about things I didn't know about so I just kind of stand there and smile every once in a while, haha. But I've started to learn a little more about the people and we have some brand new people to teach this coming Saturday so eventually I'll be able to fit right in! One thing I didn't know about the mission now (which is probably something everybody else knew already but I'm just way behind the times!) is that we only do about an hour a day of just old-school tracting and talking to people. A lot of the time we get referrals from members and then the ward mission leader, Brother Atwater, gives us people to go see. We do get a lot of investigators from that short time though of tracting so I guess that's all that we really need to do at one time. I haven't had too many incredible experiences lesson-wise yet and most of them are kind of a blur so far but we have a lot set up for this week so I know that it'll be a good week! One funny thing is that our District, which consists of 4 Elders and 2 Sisters, happens to be the youngest District in the entire Melbourne mission! Elder Rafferty is the oldest (he's also the District Leader) and he's only been out for 7 months. I just thought that was kind of interesting! The days are already going by really fast and a lot of it has to do with the fact that we're always doing something and we're never just sitting idle at any point during the day. Well I hope everything is going really well back home! I look forward to hearing from you again soon! Cheers!

 

Elder Hopkins

June 6, 2012

Hi! How are all of you? Thanks for e-mailing me! I'm glad you've got all my letters so far! It has been nice being able to send so many so quickly here at the MTC. Only one Elder in our District has his Visa so far but that is because he's from Canada and for some reason theirs come extremely fast! For the rest of us we asked at the travel info center and we get all of ours the day we leave for Australia, which is next Monday! Something funny and crazy about the flight to Australia (which is something like 22 hours total!!) is that we leave opn Monday the 11th of June from the LAX Airport and get in Australia on the 13th of June!! We will be some of the only human beings to never experience June 12th 2012! haha. And thanks for the last package too! I especially loved the cookies, as did the other Elders that had some! Also I did get the full amount of the money for the bike and stuff so you don't need to worry about that! I'm not sure what my companions parents names are but I'll have to ask him soon and let you know! I have been to the Provo Temple twice since I've been here, we do it every morning on P-Days. The Temple is really nice and it definitely is very peaceful and relaxing compared to the busy MTC schedule. And the Longs are back now??? That definitely makes me sad that I'm going to miss them! Tell them hi from me and that I've missed seeing them! And my cold is tons better now so thanks for all your prayers!! I'm glad that you are all feeling blessed back home! I sure miss all of you!

       Now just a few stories from this past week. It's hard to know what to write a little bit though because the days have all been blurred together a bit so what I thought happened yesterday actually happened last week haha. One of the Elders in our District, Elder Orgill, has a brother who's something like 25 back home who has a really hard time keeping commandments and stuff and Elder Orgill is the only one who really keeps him somewhat on the right path, so it was extremely hard for him to leave on his mission because he didn't want his brother to fall too far off the map. So one of our teachers decided to do a teaching practice where Elder Orgill pretended to be his brother and the rest of us taught him as a group to try to get him back to the Church. The Spirit was unbelievably strong as the lesson went on and some of the personal stories that were shared were so sad and touching that everyone was in tears by the end of it (which is I guess a normal occurance at the MTC!). Anyway, I don't remember much of the details or what was said but we've had several experiences like that which make us that more excited to teach real people and we don't have any doubts in our minds that what we're teaching is true.

    The new group of missionaries got in today and 4 of them are actually from Australia!! What are the chances of that happening? So we've been asking them questions about Australia all the time to see what we should look forward to and watch out for. Apparently the Kangaroos can get up to 11 feet tall and will sometimes be out on the roads where they'll actually total cars sometimes if they run into them!! But the Kangaroos come out esentially unscathed so they're pretty powerful creatures. They also said that most of the people the missionaries talk to down there are Asian becuase the Australians in the more well-off communities do not like the missionaries even walking on their sidewalks! They told us some other cool stuff as well but I'll have to save that for another time!

     I hope you're all doing great back home and I'm glad that you've felt blessed because I pray for you every day! I hope to hear from you soon!

    Love,

        Elder Hopkins