Monday, March 11, 2013

March 12, 2013


G'Day!

Thanks so much for the great e-mail this week! I'm glad to hear about all the great things happening back home. This past week was alright, it was pretty busy with cleaning. A couple of days we had to spend several hours cleaning and on Wednesday we spent most of the day cleaning and having some of the missionaries assigned to help with maintenance come and fix some things in the flat as well. When I got to the flat first it wasn't in very good shape and before Elder Rua it was even worse, but now the flat looks very good and clean so the key now is just to maintain the nice state of it for the rest of the time we spend here. So during the week we weren't able to get as much proselyting done as we had planned (can't seem to catch a break in Geelong, can we? haha) but the week still turned out alright. It's been a huge blessing since we found Candice Wang because it couldn't have come at a more perfect time. Her mother and also her friend (Jaryn) from last week came to church again and loved it so much! But also we had 2 new Chinese investigators referred to us by some missionaries in the city who we contacted and also came to church by getting a lift from Candice (their names are Brian and Cuben) and they also really enjoyed church and are very interested to learn more. We'll definitely have to get some other members to help as well to fellowship and give lifts for them because Candice had a very full car this week, haha. So that's proved to be a big miracle to find her and also these other investigators who we'll begin teaching this week. With Noah, a bit of sad news, his grandma has been in the hospital the past few weeks and is now in a very critical state and will likely pass away within the next couple of days. So amidst the stress and worry of that, Noah's mom has decided she wants to postpone the baptism and the lessons as well until after funeral arrangements and what not have been made. So that was unfortunate to hear and we'd hoped that the baptism would still go forward because we felt (as well as President Lifferth) that it would be a blessing for the Grandma to hear about the baptism and also Noah if he could go and tell the grandma himself. So who knows at this point when the baptism will happen, hopefully still within the next few weeks because Noah is very ready and wants to be baptized. This week we were also able to find another unknown member on the ward list named Nancy who invited us to come back this week, so we're excited for that as well! At that moment, we're obviously struggling not necessarily to find people to teach but I guess to hold onto investigators when we get them. So we'll continue to work very hard to try and find new people to teach as well as do our best to help those investigators that we do have continue to have a desire to investigator and not to be influenced by the adversary. This past Wednesday night was also the first night that we did splits with the ward. I think I mentioned in another e-mail that when Elder Pearson was here he said that every ward needs to go out once each week on splits with the missionaries as part of the 'rescue effort' and this past week was the first we were able to do that. This week was the bishopric's turn to go out so I got to go with the 2nd councilor to visit a few names Bishop had selected while Elder Matuu went with Bishop. We were able to have some great experiences and met some really great people that hopefully we'll see some miracles from in the near future. The 2 families we the 2nd councilor and I visited, the people we were hoping to catch weren't there but at the first house we met the partner (a non-member) of one of the less-actives in the ward who ended up being very nice and said that we can come back another time so hopefully we'll see some good from that. Also, Elder Matuu and Bishop had a great experience with another less-active family who have several non-members in their family that will hopefully generate some blessings soon as well. So we're excited for the next splits tomorrow as well, this week with the Elder's Quorum. Well I wish I had more to write to you at the moment but unfortunately due to the above mentioned cleaning this past week we weren't able to accomplish too much. This week I'm sure we'll be able to see many miracles though from the time we'll have to go out and work. I'm grateful for all of you love and support and prayers and I know that it has been the key to a lot of the blessings I've received personally and we've received as a companionship. I hope that you're able to have another wonderful and great week this week! I love you and I'll talk to you again soon!

Love,

Elder Hopkins


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