August 27, 2012

G'Day!

How are ya? This week was again another wonderful and successful one. The first couple days of the week, however, made it seem like it was going to be a really long and difficult week. We had quite a few appointments fall through and when we went out finding we were having very minimal success. However, we continued working even harder and we ended up having a very successful weekend! It seemed like all the people we were able to meet that  didn't just shut the door on us right away seemed genuinely interested to learn more about the Gospel and a couple of them even invited us in right away! So that was a wonderful blessing to see! Also, our church attendance this week for the people that we teach was really good! Puot was able to make it to church for the first time! And even though we found out last minute that his member fellowship was unable to give him a ride we were still able to find someone who could take him which was a huge blessing! Puot stayed all 3 hours of church and seemed to really enjoy it and had a lot of people come and talk to him and become friends with him, so he said after church that he wants to come back next Sunday as well. We were also able to re-set his baptismal date for the 15th of September, and as long as he comes to church for the two Sundays before then he will be ready and prepared to be baptized on that day. Also at church one of the less-active members who we've been teaching, named Charlie, was able to come to church with his family for the first time in about 6 years! So that was so great to see him there. And it was even more amazing when he said he had just gotten done with work at 7 am that morning and still managed to get here even though he was extremely tired! So Sunday was a really great day to top off the week. Also, one of our investigators who's been having lessons for quite a few months, Joan Willmott (who's husband was baptized a few months ago), who is an older lady, really took some big steps this week in her progression. Two of her main difficulties have been reading the Book of Mormon and praying as Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ have showed us how to pray and not just saying written prayers. However, this past week she was able to read from the Book of Mormon and actually took notes on her reading as well! She was pretty excited to tell us about what she read so that was really great to see her progression there. Also we taught her a lesson about prayer and she has said that she will begin to pray regularly as she reads the Book of Mormon, and we've been able to see the amazing change in her attitude and countenance as she's taken those big steps this past week! This past week on Tuesday we had what's called a Zone Conference, which is similar to Zone Meeting except it's with two zones (so a lot of missionaries were there) and it went from 9 am to 3 pm. It was really great and I learned a lot as all the different trainings were giving. President and Sister Lifferth were there as well which was nice. For the conference we met in a chapel that was nearer to Melbourne city in a town called Springvale, which has a reputation for being predominantly Chinese and Vietnamese. It was amazing to see how many people were living there, because on one block there could be around 40 flats, and there were also heaps of people just roaming the sidewalks as well. We saw some really neat looking Buddhist temples though there for all the different languages (one of them I got a picture of which I'll include) but there were some for Cantonese, Vietnamese, and Chinese. It was easy to see after that though why pretty much all of the inner city missions and the surrounding areas are only for the foreign language missionaries because we didn't see any Aussies out and about while we were there! There isn't much else that has changed this past week with the other investigators we're teaching, as Tracey is still working towards September 22nd for her marriage and baptism, Melissa and David have just returned from their holiday in Brisbane (so hopefully we'll be able to set a date for her this week), but we do have a lot of new people we are now teaching so I know that we may have so more progressing investigators soon! Anyway I appreciate all the love and support you've given me so far! I hope you all have a wonderful week ahead! Talk to you again soon!

Love,

Elder Hopkins