November 26, 2012

G'Day!

Thanks so much for the wonderful e-mail this week! I was so thrilled to hear from all of the family! I'm very grateful for all of their great comments and am grateful for all of their continued love and prayers! Reading all of those definitely put a big smile on my face! So I guess first of all I should mention the transfer news. Drum roll! Elder Hirata.........he is staying in Pakenham! And Elder Hopkins......he is also staying in Pakenham! So not much of a change haha. We're both really happy and excited to keep working together in Pakenham! Especially I'm glad that I'm staying so that I can spend Christmas and the holiday season on familiar ground and with all the people that I've developed a strong friendship with and a great love for. I was definitely surprised at the news though, because for one, companions usually aren't together for 3 transfers (unless their both in a leadership position, such as Zone Leader) and two, I've been in the area for a long time now! I'll now be the longest serving missionary in the Pakenham area, although there's only been a Pakenham area for just over a year, but still something that amazed me! I've loved the area so much though so I have absolutely no quarrels with staying here another 6 weeks! Also, on a side note, Elder Rafferty actually got transferred again from his area so he's moved 3 times in the last 3 transfers haha. Don't know where he's going yet though, we'll hear on Tuesday. So that was definitely the big news of this past week and transfers are always a very exciting time! The rest of the week was really good as well though, although we didn't get as much accomplished as usually since we were riding around on bikes. I happened to actually enjoy riding the bikes around, however, because it was just a nice change from the car and it also helped get my leg muscles quite huge! Haha, just kidding. I did hope at some point in the mission to get the classic missionary experience, and my wish had been granted! On Saturday was probably the most difficult though, because the temperature was about 34 degrees Celsius, which would be about 93 degrees Fahrenheit! So we were quite roasted at the end of the day, but thankfully no bad sunburns! We were able to teach several good lessons this week, but we were unable to make too much more progress with our investigators. We were unable to set a baptismal date with Joan Willmott this week, so that was a bit disappointing after she told us last week that she was ready to be baptized, but I'm sure within this next transfer we'll be able to set a firm date with her. We also found out yesterday when we went to see David and Melissa (who are planning on their wedding happening in May) that David didn't want to come to church anymore. Not that he wanted to be separated from the Gospel, he just didn't want to come to actual church anymore. So we had an extra long lesson with them just talking about the reasons why David didn't want to come to church and trying to just create a good environment for the Spirit to be felt. It ended up going quite well and afterwards David didn't come right out and say he wanted to still come to church but he did say that he felt much better about it and that he felt the Spirit. We'll try to go around to see them more frequently and just encourage him and try and help him have a lot of good spiritual experiences. On a brighter side of things, this past week while we were tracting one day, we ended up tracting into a less-active lady (named Melissa) who had just moved into the area a few months ago. She said that she was baptized several years ago (about 6 or 7) and that when she came over to Australia she stopped going to church (why does that keep happening to everyone?). However, she said that she's keen on coming back to church, especially since the chapel is so close, she just has to try to get some Sundays off of work. She also has 3 kids, one of whom is of baptism age! So that was a wonderful miracle to find her this past week, and we hope to begin having lessons with her this week. There have been all sorts of members that haven't been to church in a while that are just coming out of the wood-works because there was another less-active family that's been in the area a while who just came to church again for the first time yesterday, so we'll try to go round and see them this week as well. So surprisingly that's all I can think of that's noteworthy from this past week, hopefully it will suffice, haha. But Elder Hirata and I look forward to having another great transfer together here in the great area of Pakenham! Thanks again for the great e-mail, and I hope all of you have a great week ahead as well! I love you, and I'll talk to you again soon!

Love,

Elder Hopkins