October 29, 2012

G'Day!

Thanks for another wonderful e-mail this week! This past week was alright, but definitely wasn't the most successful. This was definitely not the week for set appointments, because we had nearly every appointment cancel (and their were heaps of them set) after Tuesday. So we weren't able to teach as many lessons as we would've liked to, but we found other ways to do some work in the area. However, one of the lessons that didn't fall through on Saturday was really excellent. We were going to have another lesson with Cruiz and Chelsea (the less-active family, who are also getting married this week, which will be awesome!) but one of their family friends was visiting there, named Dave, who's a non-member. Several of his kids are members of the church however after they met missionaries, and his son is actually preparing for a mission. He still didn't know much about the church, though, and had heaps of questions for us. We were able to answer all of them really well and Cruiz and Chelsea actually helped answer a lot of them too, and Dave said afterwards he liked all of the answers that he'd heard and said he actually really likes Mormons now! After we finished answering his questions we had just a really brief spiritual thought which they all appreciated and the Spirit was there. Dave said after all was over, "I think I'm going to be coming to church tomorrow!" And low and behold the next day he was in a shirt and tie at church! He loved church as well, and he even got up in the Gospel Principles class (for the investigators, new members, and less-active members coming back) and told a brief life story, which was pretty amazing, and bore a short testimony! So that whole series of events was a huge miracle for us this week! Definitely made an otherwise slow week seem like a really great one. So since there were so many cancellations this week, we had plenty of extra time for tracting! YAY! Haha. But our finding went really well this week and we got heaps of potential new investigators, so we've got our work cut out for us this next week. We also were able to go back and teach that other new investigator (who's lawn was broken from last week), who's name is Falo, about the Restoration and at the end we committed him to read and pray about the Book of Mormon and he happily accepted! So hopefully he will be able to sincerely read and pray and then receive his witness of the truthfulness of the restored Gospel. So there unfortunately isn't much to write down this week because not too much happened. But this coming week is looking like it will be pretty jam-packed with exciting things so hopefully I'll be able to make up for the lack of stories this week in next week's e-mail. All the other investigators we have are still going well. The baptismal dates are still looking promising, however, Michael's will change from Nov. 17th since he and his girlfriend would have to be married to reach that day, but they're planning to be married in the early months of next year. Melissa and David are now planning on getting married between early January and February (it all depends on when David's mom can come down from Samoa to see the wedding) so that's really exciting news and then after that Melissa will be able to be baptized. Tracey is still doing really well and we should be starting the recent convert lessons with her this week. It's been pretty hectic for them lately because Tommy is on a really tight contract for the next couple of months that's been keeping him away from home for many days at a time. But anyway, there's still heaps of exciting things happening in Pakenham! Elder Hirata and I look forward to working hard this next week and continue to build up the Lord's kingdom in this area. Thanks for all the love and support you continue to give me, I'm so grateful to have all the support to keep me going through everything on the mission. Well anyway I hope you have a wonderful week and that Heavenly Father continues to bless you! I love you and I'll talk to you again soon!

Love,

Elder Hopkins

October 22, 2012

G'Day!

Thanks so much for such a great e-mail this week! It's been a really good week for Elder Hirata and I as well. Since it was the first week of the transfer we wanted to work really hard and set the standard for ourselves for the other 5 weeks in the transfer to come. And on a cool little side note, Elder Rafferty is no longer in Tasmania! After a short 6-week stint in the city of Launceston, he is back up on the mainland and is now serving as one of the Zone Leaders over the Pakenham Zone! So that'll be really cool to be able to work closely with him again and I know he'll do a great job and help the Zone progress heaps. So also because of that I personally wanted to do extra well this week to show Elder Rafferty that Pakenham is still doing well. So we were able to teach a lot of good lessons this week seeing as it was one of the few weeks were nearly none of our appointments cancelled or fell through! We didn't make any spectacular progress with our main investigators but we were able to provide some good spiritual lessons for each of them. One really neat thing that we found out this week, is Michael, the new investigator we found about 2 weeks back, told us that he and his girlfriend are planning on getting married soon now. That was really good to hear and we were very happy for him, and also a bit relieved because that was going to be one of the possible roadblocks in him progressing to be baptized if he continued to live with his girlfriend as unmarried. We also mentioned to him that the Bishop is able to perform marriages as well for essentially no cost and he sounded really keen to talk to him about it, so that was good! Another really neat experience this past Saturday, was after we finished providing some service for a member we were going to go straight to another appointment, however, we felt that we needed to do some tracting really quickly before we did so. So as we were driving along we decided just to stop on a random street that looked like people were home on. So as we got out and were going up to the first house on the street a man came out from the garage to meet us and identified us as 'mormon missionaries' and then told us that he wasn't really interested. Well anyone we meet that knows who we are as missionaries we try to talk to a bit to find out where they know us from, so as we talk to him for a minute he said that several of his relatives are members of the church and that one of his cousins served a mission, so that's how he knew missionaries. He also mentioned briefly that he was just out back trying to fix his lawnmower, so we immediately offered to help and he thought that was very kind of us so he invited us in. We didn't end up doing anything with the lawnmower but just sat down with him and talked and just found out more about him. In the interest of time, essentially we learned that he'd recently just come back to his faith (born again Christian) after he'd hit rock bottom, and he said that if we'd come to his house any sooner, like a week or so ago, he would've just turned us away, but we ended up seeing him at the perfect time (let alone when he was home and not at work) and he felt like we'd met him for a reason so he really wanted us to come back and talk to him about what we have to share. So that was a really cool miracle and probably the best thing that happened to us this week. It also gave us a greater testimony towards always following promptings we receive. That Saturday night we had the great opportunity to go to a ward party that they were having in honor of the Pakenham ward's 1 year anniversary since it was first formed. So that was a really fun event, and a couple of the people that we visit (less-actives and 1 investigator) were there as well. Sunday was pretty good as well, however, our church attendance for investigators was a disappointing 0, being the lowest of my mission, so that was a bit of a downer  but nothing that could overshadow the good rest of the week that we were able to have. Hopefully next Sunday will be able to make up for it, though! Well not too much else out of the ordinary happened this past week that I can think of mentioning right now, since it was just a normal week without either of us being transferred. But we look forward to another great week ahead, and I continue to be very grateful for all the blessings we've received, and I've received personally, in this great area. Thanks for all the love and support you provide which really helps me to keep pressing forward through all the work! I hope that you have a wonderful week ahead as well and that the Lord continues to bless you so much! I'll talk to you again soon!

Love,

Elder Hopkins

October 15, 2012

G'Day!

Thanks for the great e-mail as always! I'm glad that everything has been going well back home! It's been a very eventful and blessed week these past seven days for us, so where to start? I guess I'll begin with the transfer news which we received early Sunday morning. Elder Hirata will be staying here in Pakenham and I..........will also be staying! So that was very exciting news for us since we've really enjoyed this past transfer together and were able to accomplish a lot of great things in setting up what looks to be a very promising next 6 weeks! I love serving in Pakenham so much so I'm really glad that I'll have the opportunity to serve a 4th transfer here and continue to teach all of the great investigators and less-active members in the area. That was the news that was biggest for us this week but there was also heaps of other great events. Obviously General Conference was such a blessing to be able to attend this past weekend, and it was definitely one of the best that I've seen (and one of the only where I've stayed awake all of the sessions! haha). But all of the talks were very inspiring and I was able to learn and grow a lot from it and able to receive a lot of personal revelation as they talked as well. I think my favorite talk would have to be Elder Holland's as well, and not just because he's my favorite apostle to listen to. I loved the power that he spoke with and the way that he told the story as well. One of the phrases from his talk that really hit me as well was when he mentioned about returned missionaries who've baptized someone before and about them remaining steadfastly faithful and so on. That was relevant to me since Tracey's baptism wasn't too long ago. So although his was probably my favorite talk, I still had many others that I thoroughly enjoyed and were close seconds. Unfortunately I forgot the notes that I took from the conference back at the flat so hopefully I can remember most of the talks that impacted me in this e-mail! I don't know if you remember Elder Hawk's talk (from the Quorum of the Seventy) about a testimony of the Book of Mormon but that was one of my favorites as well. I really liked the stories that he mentioned and I feel like a lot of the material from his talk can help me as a missionary in talking to others about the Book of Mormon. I also was rapidly writing things down during President Uchtdorf's talk in the Saturday Morning Session because nearly everything he was saying was very profound and very true. Since I don't have my notes handy I can't remember much of the specifics, but his is definitely worth re-watching or re-reading as it had a lot of inspiring thoughts. President Monson's talks were always good of course and I really enjoyed President Eyring's talks as well. I love how President Eyring seems to always have the spirit with him so strongly as he speaks which makes me always love to listen to him and his wonderful messages that he gives. One talk that I thought was very interesting was Elder Oaks' address. He definitely must've had a lot of courage to give that talk! I think everyone that spoke though was fantastic and each had their own wonderful insight to the different principles of the Gospel and continued guidance that Heavenly Father has instructed them to give to us. I was quite shocked at Elder Boyd K. Packer's condition when he spoke! I don't remember him being in that state last conference so hopefully he's still able to be with us for a little while, but who knows. But conference was great and provided a wonderful spirit for all of us missionaries to carry with us through these next couple of weeks. So this last week of the past transfer was quite good. There wasn't too much out of the ordinary the past several days except normal missionary work. However, on this past Thursday we received a referral from the APs for a girl that they'd just met who lived in Pakenham. They told us that the girl, Moono (a Samoan name), said that they could come by on Friday morning, so after they'd given us the information we went to see her. She let us in straight away, which was nice, and her cousin Lina (who's house it was) was there as well. So we talked with them a bit to find out more about them and it turns out that Moono was a former member of the church, but a while ago she was baptized into the 7th Day Aventist church. So that was some pretty interesting info to find out! But anyway, we were able to teach a really powerful lesson on the Restoration and they were genuinely interested throughout. They asked heaps of good questions, which we were able to answer, and they felt that what we were teaching them was true. The spiritual climate by the end of the lesson allowed us to extend the invitations to read the Book of Mormon and pray to know if it is God's word and also if Joseph Smith was a prophet, which they both were excited to do. We also were able to commit them to a baptismal date of December 1st as they receive their answer to their prayers and know that this is Heavenly Father's restored church. So that was a wonderful experience and we look forward to teaching them again this week! So with Michael from last week, and now Moono and Lina, there are some great promising investigators for us to help and teach this next transfer which we really look forward to. All of our other investigators and less-active members are still going well. Tracey is still doing well and we'll continue to teach her and provide her with spiritual messages when she's available. Melissa and David are still preparing for marriage. And most of the less-active families we've been visiting and teaching have been coming to church regularly again and a couple of the men have been moving up in the priesthood, which is very exciting for us to see. The Pakenham ward is really growing and the members in the ward continue to be a great help to us as we work here in the area. So Elder Hirata and I are greatly anticipating this next transfer and know that we'll continue to experience wonderful blessings and miracles as we continue to work hard and excercise our faith! Thanks for all of your love and support and I hope that you have a wonderful week ahead as well! Talk to you again soon!

Love,

Elder Hopkins

October 8, 2012

G'Day!

Thanks for the great e-mail, I was excited to hear from you! This past week was a pretty good and flat out (busy) one for us with heaps of blessings and miracles. Back on Tuesday we had Zone Meeting again which is always great. This time, though, it was more like District Meeting with the Zone Leaders because some of the companionships that live pretty far out were told to sit this one out (you'll understand why soon). But it was still a great meeting and we talked a lot about how we can improve as a Zone, specifically in our finding efforts (Tracting, talking to people on the street, getting referrals, etc.). We also talked about the new goal that President Lifferth and the Assistants set for us, which is that each Zone should get 5 baptisms each month, which our Zone ended up getting this past month but is still a fairly lofty goal to achieve. So after discussing the expectations, we talked heaps about things that could help us as a Zone achieve this goal, with the main ideas ending up being 'Zone Prayer' every Thursday at 10 a.m. (every companionship in the Zone prays at the same time for a specific purpose), miracle callouts (the Zone Leaders gather one miracle of the week from each companionship and then read them off in a voicemail that's sent to everyone, for the purpose of helping to motivate us and let us know of all the great things that are happening throughout the Zone), and a 'Zone Fast' (pretty self-explanatory, we all fast on the same day as a Zone for a specific purpose). So these three things should be a great benefit to all of us as a Zone and we're all excited for each of them. The following day, Wednesday, we had President interviews with President Lifferth back at the stake center in Narre Warren (hence why the missionaries far out were asked to stay home during Zone Meeting so they didn't have to travel huge distances 2 days in a row). So that was fun to be there with all the Zone again as well as President and Sister Lifferth. It's always good to have the opportunity to sit down and talk with President 1 on 1, although it wasn't much of interview, because he basically asked me two questions, "Are you keeping the commandments," and "Is Elder Hirata ready to be a trainer?" haha so it was quite a short meeting but still a good experience because President Lifferth is such a great man and has an awesome spirit about him. So we were at the interviews with all the missionaries for only about 2 hours or so, so after that we just went back to work. On Thursday we had our first Zone Prayer which was cool as (in case you didn't know, Aussies like to put 'as' at the end of things to mean something like 'very', so in this case 'very cool') and this first one was for the purpose of everyone in the Zone being led and guided to those who Heavenly Father has prepared for us to teach the Gospel to. So being a part of that gave us some renewed faith and an excitement to see what blessings we could receive from that. So later on in the day we went and began tracting a certain street that we'd picked and the first person that opens the door to us is named Michael and he was the nicest and humblest guy we've met and he seemed quite keen (interested) to have us back and hear about our message (the Restoration). So already we could see that the Zone Prayer had an effect on our efforts. The rest of the day went really well especially when we had a feed at a member's home, the Skipwiths (from New Zealand). They really like having us over now because they all lived in Japan for a while so they enjoy talking with Elder Hirata in Japanese and also making us Japanese food for dinner, which is very good! Also this time, they were extremely generous in giving us each a New Zealand All Blacks (the biggest Rugby team) custom made T-shirt and hat! We were so excited to get those and are going to wear them every chance we get now. So we greatly expressed our gratitude to them for those gifts. On Friday we had exchanges with our District Leader, Elder Krix, and for that exchange I was with him in Pakenham and Elder Hirata and Elder Gaffney (Elder Krix's companion) went to work in the Narre Warren North area. So we had a pretty good exchange, not so much in the statistics category but we had some solid lessons and a lot of fun because Elder Krix is crack up (funny)! He's from Sydney, Australia and this is his last transfer on his mission so that must be a pretty wild feeling for him to be going home in such a short time from now, and it was cool for me because I'm the last person to go on exchanges with him. So I was able to learn a lot from him and his experience. So on Saturday we spend a lot of time with a young less-active couple named Cruiz and Chelsea because in the morning we went and shared a lesson with them about the Holy Ghost and Enduring to the End. It went really well and at the end we watched a Mormon Message that tied in with the principle of Enduring to the End but also it seemed like it was tailor-made for them because it was like watching their life play out before them because the situation in the video was exactly the same as one they'd had recently and even the young couple in the video had the exact same age and gender of the kids as Cruiz and Chelsea so they were able to relate really well and it helped them feel the spirit well. Then later on in the day we went over again to have a big feast with them to kick off fasting for fast Sunday which was delicious (and a bit unhealthy, haha). Sunday was an awesome day as well. Church was really good, however, I think a lot of people forgot about daylight savings time because the numbers were a bit low to start but it ended up filling up eventually. After church we went to go and see Michael (from Thursday) again to teach him the first lesson about the Restoration of the Gospel. When we saw him he was just as friendly and nice as before so he let us in. We started off really well and answered all of his early questions that he had and the spirit was very strong there as we went through Joseph Smith's first vision with him. At the end of the whole lesson he accepted the Book of Mormon and was happy to read and pray about it to receive an answer of its truthfulness. We also invited him as he comes to know of the truth to be baptized on November 17th and he gladly accepted! So that was a wonderful teaching experience for us and a great miracle resulting from the efforts of the Zone Prayer! That was a great way for us to end the past week on a high note. This next week is the last week of the transfer so we'll be sure and work extra hard and put in our best. We'll find out this Saturday night the news on if we're staying or going. Also general conference is this weekend for Australia so that will be a wonderful opportunity to go and watch that and be enlightened by all of the general authorities and the Prophet! Well that's us and hopefully you have a wonderful week ahead as well back home and I'm so grateful for all your love and support that's definitely help us with the work here in Pakenham. Always be looking for missionary opportunities as well because there's nothing more rewarding and important that we can do than by helping someone come closer to Jesus Christ. Well thanks again for the e-mail and I'll talk to you again soon!

Love,

Elder Hopkins

 Elder Brandon Hopkins and Elders in the Zone.

Elder Brandon Hopkins and Elder Hirata looking tough in their New Zealand "All Blacks" (rugby team) T-Shirts.

October 1, 2012

G'Day!

 

Thanks so much for the wonderful e-mail! I loved reading it and hearing about all the fun things that happened over the past week. I'm glad that you enjoyed the e-mail from last week! I don't know how many will be that long because most weeks haven't been that eventful! Although they probably would be to you, it just is same old missionary work things to us! This past week was pretty good! We accomplished a lot of great things. However, the weather didn't help much in our efforts because we had soooo much rain! When we were out tracting on Friday the rain just became too much even with our huge umbrellas. It ended up being one of the worst rain storms I've ever seen! Melbourne weather seems to like to change its mind a lot, so hopefully this week will be a nice and sunny one. Since we're on Friday, we also had the wonderful opportunity in the morning to go up to the Melbourne Temple with all the other missionaries (just the Elders this time) in our Zone. It was a great experience and very special seeing as we only get to go every 3 months here. So that definitely provided us with a wonderful spirit and helped motivate us to continue to work hard in this wonderful work. The following day (Saturday) was a pretty big day for Melbourne because it was the big Grand Final for the AFL (Aussie Football League), which is the biggest sport followed by the state of Victoria. So lots of people were talking about the game, and even though we didn't watch any of it we probably had the whole game told to us by others anyway! haha. On Wednesday we had a really great lesson with one of our investigators named Rodney (I don't remember if I've told you about him before or not?). We did kind of a different lesson than normal, where we had his whole family come join us, who all are members, and then watched a mormon message and following that had kind of a little testimony meeting about how the Gospel blesses families. It went really well and one of the best things was that we invited one of the less-active members in the ward (the one I mentioned last week) to come out teaching with us and we had him help us with this lesson with Rodney. He shared a really great and powerful testimony which you could tell helped Rodney to feel the spirit, and it helped the less-active member to feel the spirit as well. So it was a two-in-one lesson in a way because both men benefited from the lesson. Also, a couple days later when we went to see the less-active member and his family again he said how he loved coming out to teach with us and that he'd really like to help us out again! So that was really awesome for us to see, and we look forward to having him out with us again. We've been able to have some great news this past week regarding Melissa and David, that being that they were able to speak with Bishop Smith of the Pakenham ward and they're going to get married! They don't know the exact date yet, they're still talking about it, so it may be while I'm still in Pakenham or it could be in a year, but either way we were both very happy and excited for them because we know that they'll be so blessed in their decision and also when Melissa will be able to be baptized after their wedding. So they've been going really well still and are probably our main people that we're teaching right now. On the other side of the spectrum, however, we lost one of the less-active members that we've been teaching since I first got here with Elder Rafferty. It was rather sudden because he'd been progressing so much, especially lately, but he just said that he was done with the church. So that was a bit dissapointing but hopefully over time whatever has happened will dissipate and he'll be ready to come back to church again. But every time one door closes another always open if you continue working because we have a new less-active member (and hopefully her non-member family too) to teach. The member's name is Robyn, and she was baptized about 8 years ago and has only been less-active since she and her husband Inia moved to Australia. Now that I'm writing this I think that I've already told you a little bit about them before, haha. But anyway we just saw them for the first time in many weeks yesterday and Robyn said that she and her family would be at church this next week (fast Sunday for us) and that she'd like to be retaught the missionary lessons to have her memory refreshed, so that will be really excellent! Nearly all of our main people that we visit and teach now are less-active members, which isn't a bad thing at all because the more active members in the church the more missionary efforts can progress. So a lot of our focus is there right now as we continue to try and search out some new, strong investigators to the church. Also, I think I forgot to mention that last week one of speakers in Sacrament cancelled last minute so they called us and asked me to speak in Sacrament meeting! So I had to pull a 'Dad' and basically do an impromptu talk for about 12 minutes or so. That along with everything else that we have to do speaking-wise on a mission has definitely made me less nervous or afraid of public speaking! I just thought I'd share that little note. Anyway this coming week will be busy since we'll be having Zone Meeting again as well as interviews with President Lifferth, so it should be good. Thanks again for the great e-mail and I hope you have a fantastic week ahead! Talk to you again soon!

 

Love,

 

Elder Hopkins