Thanks for writing me! This week was so busy with heaps of fun activities! It flew by so fast! On Wednesday we had what are called 'Golden Reviews' at President and Sister Lifferth's home, which is about a 40 minute drive from our flat. Golden reviews are where all the new missionaries from a couple weeks ago come back and get taught more principles and get some advice as we continue to grow as missionaries and teachers. It was really nice to see everyone again, especially all the missionaries from my MTC district! That was over at about 3 pm, and after that was another learning experience for new missionaries (I'm not sure how many of them did it on that day, but they all have to do it eventually) was that we switched companions with the Zone Leaders for a period of about 30 hours. So my companion for Wednesday night and Thursday was Elder Sherriff! He's from Sydney, Australia so he isn't too far from home! He's been out a year and a couple months and I definitely learned a lot from him over the exchange! We were in the Dandenong North area (about 30 minutes West of Pakenham) and it was hard to come back to Pakenham afterwards because I met and taught so many people that I wanted to be able to see again! One couple that we taught were from China, and there names were actually Ching and Bing! But it was a really good lesson, Elder Sherriff let me do a lot of the teaching and they asked a lot of questions throughout, which let's us as missionaries know that they're really sincere about it when they're involved in the lesson like that. At the end we committed them to come to the Dandenong Ward on Sunday so it went really well! So later in the week on Saturday we were able to participate in a really awesome experience with the youth in the Pakenham stake. It was called a 'Mini-Missionary Weekend' and for the youth it went from Friday-Sunday where they kept the missionary schedule and went to a few devotionals and things and did all the things missionaries normally do. The part that we were involved in on Saturday was that from 1 pm until 6:30 pm each mini-missionary was assigned a real missionary companion, which means Elder Rafferty and I each had our own companion we'd go out with. My companion was Brother Saliva (pronounced like Salifa) and we were in a seperate area in Pakenham than Elder Rafferty and his companion were, which means that after 2 1/2 weeks in the field I was already a senior companion! Haha. It went really well though. We did some tracting for about 30 minutes before it started to hail, but we managed to get one new contact (or new person that we can come and teach) so Brother Saliva really enjoyed that! On the note of the weather, Melbourne is known for having all four seasons in one day, so I just thought that was interesting that the weather here was actually more obscure than Utah's! Brother Saliva and I also taught a few lessons and he was able to get some good practice teaching actual people. After that was finished we came back and had some awesome desserts and just talked with all the other mini-missionaries and actual missionaries that went out on the activity! It was a really great idea for a youth activity! So on Sunday we had somewhat of a combined Sacrament meeting where the youth who participated in the mini-missionary weekend had a chance to bear their testimonies so it was really good! After church Elder Rafferty and I, as well as a lot of other members of the ward, went to a Pakenham community event called 'A Taste of Faith' where religions of all sorts came together and each did a short presentation explaining a little bit about what they believe in. The religions that presented something were (in order of appearance) Baha'i, Uniting Church, Anglican, Druze, Catholic, Islam, Pentacostal, and lastly The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints! It was actually a really cool experience but it was kind of funny because most of the groups did a performance (musical or something like that) with just one or two people but when it was our turn something like 30 youth just crowded the stage and sang some songs! So we kind of stood out in that category, haha. So lastly, Sunday night was the Mission President's fireside, which is every first Sunday of the month. In these the Mission President and his wife each give some talks and then either one or two missionaries give their testimonies. Also there were 2 singing performances by some of the Elders (which were really good!) and then two people investigating the church (one of them was actually just baptized on Saturday with his family, which happened to also be his birthday, and the other was close to baptism) bore their testimonies. It was an incredible meeting and I really look forward to the next fireside! Well I hope everything is still going really good at home and I miss you! Talk to you soon!
 
Love,
Elder Hopkins