September 10, 2012

G'Day!

Thanks for the great e-mail this past week! This week was a very busy one being the first week of the new transfer and especially since I have a new companion! So my new companion for at least the next 6 weeks is Elder Hirata. He is from Japan and actually was on the same plane over to Australia as me so I knew him a little already! So that was a surprise! And since we've been out the same amount of time on our missions, I guess it makes me the senior companion since I've been serving in Pakenham already. So now I have a little more pressure because I have to kind of take the lead in the teaching situations. But I'm glad that I have the added responsibility because it'll help me to grow more as a missionary than just being the junior companion again. I can't feel too overwhelmed though because if you remember my MTC companion Elder Smith, he is going to be training a brand new missionary and has also been appointed District Leader, so he certainly has a lot on his plate! Haha. Elder Hirata seems like he will be a great companion, though, and he speaks very good English even though he's only really spoken it for about 5 or so months. It's taken us some time to kind of find a smooth flow together in our teaching but we're already becoming more fluid and working well together. Elder Hirata is actually 21 years old so has seniority over me in that regard haha, so that's good that he's out on his mission now! He has a very strong spirit about him and he knows the gospel very well so already he's brought a lot of blessings to Pakenham! So just to kind of give you an idea of how the transfer meetings go, on Tuesday all the missionaries getting moved around, leaving, or who are Zone Leaders or APs (Assistants to the President) come to the chapel that is right next to the Melbourne Temple in a town called Wantirna. The meeting starts off with a brief message given by President Lifferth and then a musical number. Then the moment everyone has been waiting for occurs and the APs read off all the new companionships and the area they'll be serving in. So eventually they go to "...Serving in the Pakenham area will be Elder Hopkins and Elder Hirata..." then you get up and go sit down with your new companion. After that all the departing missionaries get up and bear their last testimonies in front of all the missionaries, so as I'm sure you could guess most of them shed some tears. Then all the missionaries sing "God Be With You 'Til We Meet Again" before the meeting adjourns and everyone travels back to their respective areas. So it was an excellent meeting and was exciting not only to find out who my new companion was but to also see who everyone else will be serving with and in what area! So anyway, this first week of the transfer was a pretty good one. However, we faced challenges right away as we had several days where nearly all or most of our set appointments cancelled or fell through. So that was rather unfortunate and we spent a lot of our time tracting, with one day tracting for nearly 5 hours! We spent a bit of time just kind of sitting in the car deciding what we should do, so after this past week I've learned to be more prepared by thinking of more back-up plans in our daily planning sessions. We were able to find a lot of prepared people to teach, though, amidst our many hours of tracting so hopefully there are some good things that will come of that! Sunday didn't prove too successful either as we had just one investigator who attended church, which was way less than we were expecting. However, on the bright side of things we had one of our highest, if not our highest, attendance for less-active members that we teach so that was great to see! One of the biggest focuses I think for Pakenham missionaries has been less-active members so we always have heaps of families to visit and encourage to come back to church. One really cool thing that happened in this past week was with a new investigator. Elder Rafferty and I had tracted into a man, his wife and 2 sons from New Zealand and he invited us to come back (most New Zealanders know the missionaries so his first greeting to us was "Elders! How are ya?"). So on Saturday Elder Hirata and I went back to see them and teach them a lesson. The man, Inia (e-knee-ah), was the only one there though with his cousin. So a lot of the time we just spent talking to him and building a good relationship with him. We found out that a lot of his relatives, including his Dad, where LDS members! He also told us that his wife, Robyn, actually joined the church about 10 years ago but has been less-active ever since they moved over to Australia. So that was pretty amazing to find out that information about him! Elder Rafferty and I were actually the first missionaries they'd met since they've lived in Australia so that's pretty amazing as well! So things are still looking very bright for the coming transfer here in Pakenham and I look forward to working with Elder Hirata and continuing to grow as a missionary and as a person. Thanks so much for all of your love and support as always, I know that Heavenly Father has blessed us very generously because of it! I hope that you all have a wonderful week ahead as well! I'll talk to you again soon!

Love,

Elder Hopkins