April 29, 2013

G'Day!

Hello once again, and thanks so much for the excellent e-mail this week! I loved it as I do all of them! I'm glad everything is going really well back home because it's also going really well here in Aussie land. The past week we were able to see heaps of success and more miracles and the area is really growing well. First off, Joel's date has been pushed back for now. Not because he doesn't want to get baptized yet, but last time we were there he expressed some concern with wanting to be more ready and clean by changing more things in his life because he doesn't want to fall back into any mistakes after his baptism. We were grateful for his honesty and also that he truly understands the importance of the ordinance of baptism and isn't taking it lightly. Elder Taufa has a good article to give to him that will hopefully help him to understand that none of us will be perfect before or after baptism but because we have all the great gifts God has given us we can overcome any mistake, even the ones that we continually fall back on. But we know he'll still be baptized very soon because he still is loving everything about the Gospel and loves receiving the lessons as well. Also, William is now working towards baptism as well as we were able to share the 1st lesson with him this past week and he really felt the spirit and is super keen to learn more. Another investigator we have, named Margaret, who Elder Rua and I had first contact with on the phone a few months ago, we were finally able to teach and also were able to set a goal for baptism for her to work towards. She's in her 60s or so but is very in tune with the spirit as well, and after we shared the first vision with her she said she had an impression that God was telling her 'she had a work to do', which was pretty awesome to hear! So hopefully both of them will continue to progress well and work towards baptism in the coming weeks. And to add more info to the Jaryn story last week, we were on Zone Leader exchanges this past Tuesday and I was in our area with one of the Zone Leaders, Elder Wood, and we'd been trying to apply the 'talk to everyone' principle really well that day. We were riding the bikes to an appointment with a new investigator when I saw as we passed a street one guy walking a little ways away, but I felt that we needed to go back and talk to him since we'd been trying to talk to everyone that day. So we went and biked over to him, and as I got closer the guy turned around and it just happened to be Jaryn walking to work! He was so happy to see us and was very surprised that we ran into him since that is usually the only time he is out and about when he walks to work and walks home from work. But it was really good to see him and talk for a few minutes and he is still very excited to finish his semester of University so he has more time to receive the lessons and come to church more and progress towards baptism again! On our Zone Leader exchanges we were also able to find heaps of solid new investigators as well which will continue to keep us busy with the work. It's always great to go out with the leaders to be able to learn from them and there's always miracles that you see on the exchanges. We've been able to start teaching a lot of families which I've never really done much before in the mission, because usually all the families I've worked with in the past have been either part-member or less-active families, so it's been a great blessing to get that opportunity hear and also a learning experience. One of the coolest experiences from this past week (which there were heaps of them as there always is!) was that the other Geelong Elders received a phone call from a man who was asking for some woman but apparently had the wrong number because obviously Elder Pain and Bisby aren't females. But Elder Pain just felt like he should just talk to him on the phone about religion and missionaries and eventually the man on the phone, named Ahmer, agreed to meet for a lesson the next day! He actually happened to be living in our area so we went to meet him (and his friend, Ahmed, who he brought with him) outside the library near our house. We were able to talk with him and have a really great discussion with him and briefly shared some of the principles of the Gospel with him. He's secular and doesn't have much of a knowledge of Christianity but he absolutely loves learning and wants to learn all he can. He's from a place in the middle east called Bulcistan (I have no idea how to spell it, that's just a guess) and apparently there's a really big crisis happening over there and even the U.S. is putting forth a bill in Congress to address the issue. So he's also very worried for his friends and family who are still there. But he and his friend are very excited to begin to learn from us and want to be able to come to church as well to check it out. So they were definitely a cool miracle to find this past week! Another missionary just got home as well this past week from serving in New Zealand in the Samoan program, and he seems like a really great guy as well. Too bad Elder Matu'u had to leave just before he got here otherwise he would've been able to speak Samoan with someone, but that's all good! The talks at church yesterday were also really excellent, especially when Bro. Black (who's in our ward and on the stake high council) spoke. The talks were all about the topic of 'work' which is a very important topic. There were a lot of thoughts from them that I really enjoyed and hopefully can remember and apply them in my life. I would try and quote some of them but unlike the general conference sessions I didn't get to write anything down so I just remember the general idea of them. But that definitely has made me want to study more about the topic of 'work' and how each of us needs to do all the work we can in this life because the Savior has done more work than we can comprehend for each of us. It's definitely a great goal to have to work more like the Savior and learn how his method of work can help each of us be able to do all the things that we need to do. One thought was essentially saying that it's important for us to not let all the work we 'want' to do prevent us from doing all the work we 'need' to do. So it was a great past week and I look forward to another great week ahead! Still hard to believe that in just 3 weeks time I'll have been on the mission for one whole year! It certainly has gone by so quick, even though in the moment it sometimes feels like it goes for a while. But I'm also excited to be able to talk to you live in just 2 weeks and I hope that you have a fantastic week ahead this week! Thanks again for the great e-mail. I love you and I'll talk to you again soon!

Love,

Elder Hopkins



April 22, 2013

G'Day!

Thanks for the wonderful e-mail this week I really enjoyed reading it. First off, I forgot to say thanks before for the letter I got from you that had all the letters from the Priest's quorum, that was a great surprise! I really enjoyed reading all of them and I just wanted to say thanks for all of them and Bro. Kershaw as well. Well this past week was quite eventful. We started off the week immediately after I finished e-mailing you with some pretty unfortunate news. The APs called us up and told Elder Matu'u that he had to pack his bags and catch a train by 6 p.m. that night because he was getting moved. However, it wasn't anything wrong on our side of things, there was another companionship in another Zone that weren't getting along and had to be emergency transferred so we were the unlucky companionship that they chose to switch with. So we went straight back to the flat after e-mails with the other missionaries for Geelong and helped Elder Matu'u get everything ready for his train that he had to catch in Melbourne city, and we didn't have much time to pack because it was kind of an 'all of a sudden' decision by the mission to do the move then. So eventually we got everything packed for Elder Matu'u and then hopped in the car and started heading for the city (which is about an hour and a bit drive from Geelong). So Elder Matu'u's train that he was supposed to catch was at 6:01 p.m. but we missed that one because there was a lot of traffic near the Southern Cross Station and we couldn't find out where we needed to park. So eventually we found a spot to park for a few minutes and when we called the mission office to tell them we missed the train they said that there was another one leaving at 6:22 p.m. and that if they just talked to the front ticket office that they could change it over at no cost. So we went into the station and we couldn't find the ticket office for like 10 minutes, but when we did they were able to change the ticket over to the next train. At this time it was like 6:21 p.m. and the train platform was at the other side of the train station so the 4 of us with suitcases and bags in our hands started running as fast as we could to catch the train, and because of the whole situation and the adrenaline rush of running to catch a train we were all laughing as we ran so it must've looked pretty comical for everyone else that saw as. So we finally made it to the train platform and just as we got there we saw the train's taillights just start to go around the turn not far in the distance, so it was like a moment out of movie, just missing the train by a matter of seconds. So we had to walk back to the car through the station and past all the people that we'd just run by before. So Elder Matu'u ended up having to stay in a nearby flat before catching another train the next day. His new area is called Echuka (I think that's how you spell it) which is 3 hours north of Melbourne by train, so it's pretty out bush. He said in a quick e-mail to me though that he is enjoying it so far and that the ward there is really nice, so that's good. So after we dropped off Elder Matu'u we went to pick up my new companion, who's name is Elder Taufa (t-ow-fa). His parents are both Tongan, but he was born in New Zealand and raised in Sydney, Australia. He's been out on his mission for about 15 months now and he's a good missionary from what I've seen so far. He and I ended up having a really great week this past week despite the circumstances we were under. We were able to teach another great lesson with Joel and Camilla this week and had some perfect fellowship from the ward there to help us teach. He's still progressing well towards his baptism date and is starting to talk like he is already a member, haha. The only thing is just that we have to finish teaching him all the lessons by then, we have about 4 more lessons we want to teach him with all the different commandments, but that shouldn't be much of an issue. We see them again tonight so we're excited for that. We were able to teach some other great lessons this past week as well, and we ended up finding heaps of new people that we can start teaching as well which was a great blessing. One of the coolest experiences we had with some new investigators was when we went by on Friday night to go and see one of our new contacts that Elder Matu'u and I had gotten a few weeks ago named William. He's Chinese and is about 24 or so years old. He happened to be home at the time (he's pretty hard to catch as he is at university and is also working) but he said we were very lucky because he had just yesterday called to change his work shift. So that in itself was already a bit of a miracle. Then 2 of his housemates in the house (we'd just been on the doorstep) who he said weren't religious at all said that we should all come in out of the cold. At this time they thought we were just friends of Williams from university. So we sat down and were just talking with them and finding out more about them (the housemates' names were Carmen and Felix). Then as we were talking I felt prompting to suggest we watch a little video clip, so they said that would be alright, although they weren't sure what or why, and at the time I wasn't sure either! So we put in a USB that had all the mormon messages on it and after I briefly introduced ourselves that we were missionaries and what we do. After that we watched a mormon message called "Moments that Matter Most" which is a pretty good message but also low-key on the doctrine side which was good for this situation. After we watched it the two housemates were almost in tears because they were touched by the message and also felt the spirit strong. We talked a bit about the video and the message in it and the spirit was felt very strong as they shared the feelings they had about the video, as well as William's thoughts. So afterwards we asked them if we could start teaching them more about Jesus Christ and the Gospel and they excitedly accepted! They also asked of their own initiative where and when church was because they want to start coming there as well. So that was a big miracle as well to see their enthusiasm for learning after they'd had an experience feeling the spirit, which is why missionary work can't be done if we don't have the spirit or the spirit isn't there. Also gave me a bigger testimony of following all of the little promptings we receive even if we don't really know why and especially if we don't know how to go about it, but just trusting in the Lord that he'll show and reveal to us the things that we need to do if he sees we've put our trust in him from the initial guidance we receive. There was also another really cool miracle that we experienced this past Sunday. We were fasting for Joel to keep progressing towards his date, but also that we could regain contact with Jaryn (if you remember him from several weeks ago) because it'd been a while since we talked to him. We'd been trying to call him and see him for about a month or so with absolutely no success, so we felt that fasting would give us the help we needed. So as soon as we ended the fast Sunday evening, we tried calling Jaryn and on like the second ring he picked up! We were able to talk with him for a few minutes and he said he has just been overwhelmed with his Master's course at university that he wants to wait until his exams are over so he can turn his focus to church. We can understand that he would be working hard being in a Master's course and also having an Asian background of diligent students. And since we know him as a person we know that it wasn't just some excuse but that he was sincere about his desire and he said he feels bad that he hasn't been able to see us and still really wants to learn. So we can see him again about the 2nd week of next transfer. So that was a pretty cool miracle for us with fasting! Even if we plea with Heavenly Father for something that may seem insignificant like being able to make a phone call, we can know and have faith that He will always answer our prayers and fasting with miracles and blessings. Also this past week was our quarterly interviews with President Lifferth, the last interviews we'll all have with him! So that was good as always to have the opportunity to talk 1 on 1 with him. President's comments helped me to have even greater motivation and feelings of gratitude as they always do. So there it is for this past week! Hopefully Elder Taufa and I can continue to have even better and better weeks than the great one we've already had this past week. The area is continuing to grow and the ward is also getting more enthusiastic about missionary work so hopefully that will also help us to be able to teach even more. I'm also excited to get the opportunity to Skype with you again very soon! I hope that you have a wonderful week ahead as well and that you continue to see a lot of blessings and miracles as well. As always, I'm very grateful for all the wonderful love and support that you give me to help the work to go well over here in Australia. I love you heaps and I'll talk to you again soon!

Love,

Elder Hopkins

April 15, 2013

G'Day!

Thanks heaps for the great e-mail this week, I loved reading it just like all of your e-mails! I'm glad that everything is going well and that you've seen a lot of blessings. This 1st week of the transfer has been a really good one! First off, it was a false alarm about the car! The other missionaries still got to keep it in their area, I think Elder Hasson was just trying to trick us and it worked, haha. I think the best part of the past week was obviously the action-packed weekend of Saturday and Sunday, consisting of a great General Conference and of course Noah's baptism and confirmation. The baptism went really well and there were a quite a few of the ward members who came to support him and his family which was really great to see. There was a very good spirit there and Noah was very happy to be baptized and receive the gift of the Holy Ghost. His brother Luke, the one that had just returned from his mission 2 months ago, was the one who baptized him and then his Dad got to confirm him which was very nice for him. We felt really glad that we could be a part of his first steps in the gospel and we know he'll grow to be a faithful member throughout his life. So that has certainly been a great way to start off this transfer and we hope that Joel will also be able to enter the covenant of baptism this transfer as well. He and Camilla were able to attend conference and really enjoyed it. There's nothing like being able to be taught the Gospel by the most inspired men and women on earth at this time. I thought this conference was a really excellent one and thought all of the speakers did a really great job with their talks. I did catch the reference you mentioned to look for last week, that was exciting that the Australia Melbourne Mission was mentioned! Especially at the time that I'm serving in it. It be hard to pick a favorite talk that I had this conference, there were so many that I enjoyed. I really like President Monson's talk in the Sunday morning session, though, and especially his story at the beginning of his talk, I think that's one of the funnier ones that I've heard him tell! I also thought it was a great talk on full obedience and consecration to the Gospel, and also thought it was an interesting point when he said we'll receive more knowledge regarding the Gospel only when keep the commandments. As I watched conference I also wrote down a lot of some of the quotes that I liked and thought were very significant and I won't include all of them because that'd take to long, but I might include just a few. Some of them you might remember or might not but hopefully you like them as much as I did! "You will do no greater eternal work than in the walls of your own home"-Boyd K. Packer, "Rationalized false faith does not condone sin" and "See men as they may become not as they are now"-Craig A. Cardon, "A man can't fully exercise the priesthood without a woman, just as a woman can't exercise the procreative power without a man"-M. Russell Ballard, "Don't rationalize any future happiness by taking shortcuts now"-Richard G. Scott, "Love increases through righteous restraint and decreases through incorrect indulgence"-David A. Bednar "A true friend doesn't ask us to choose between them and gospel values" and "To resist temptations of Satan we must put on the whole armor of God"-Robert D. Hales,  "With increased vision comes increased motivation" and "Revelation isn't a substitute for hard work and spiritual homework"-Tad R. Callister, "You find yourself when you serve others"-David L. Beck, "God understands we get to Heaven one step at a time and rejoices in every effort to walk towards Him" and "Sometimes we confuse difference in personality with sin, and by that they aren't pleasing before God" and "We carry a container of oil to heal the sick in one hand, in the other hand a loaf of bread to feed the hungry, and in our hearts the word of God which heals the wounded soul" and "Don't wait for a particular calling to be involved fully in the work"-Dieter F. Uchtdorf (his was one of my favorites too) and then in his talk the next day "Spiritual light doesn't come from sitting in a dark room waiting for someone to flip the switch; it takes an act of faith". Well that's already heaps and heaps of quotes and I wish I could list you all of them! Maybe I'll just include a little one in each e-mail instead of loading them all of at once. But hopefully you liked and noticed some of those quotes as well. Maybe put some up on a wall or write them to someone else or even just ponder about them one day because the words of the general authorities are truly inspired and uplifting and they relate to us in this very time. If you had any favorite quotes from general conference I'd like to hear them as well! Anyway, writing down these quotes has taken up a lot of time but I certainly enjoyed going over my notes from conference and re-studying these sayings and the doctrines that were taught so hopefully you got something out of me listing them as well. Well I'm very grateful again for the e-mail you sent and I hope that you have a miracle filled week ahead! I love you heaps and I'll talk to you again soon!!

Love,

Elder Hopkins

 Elder Hopkins, Luke (Noah's Brother), Noah, and Elder Matu'u at Noah's baptism.

 Elder Hopkins, Luke (Noah's Brother), Noah, and Elder Matu'u at Noah's baptism.

April 8, 2013

G'Day!

Thanks heaps for the fantastic e-mail this week! I loved reading it as always and am glad that you're seeing a lot of blessings lately. This last week of the transfer was really good and we saw a lot of miracles and blessings as we worked. However, I'll save that for a moment as you're probably wanting to know about the transfer news. Well it seems that it's back to my usual routine of the mission thus far as Elder Matu'u and I will both be staying in Geelong for this next transfer as well! I'm excited to keep working here now that the area is really starting to grow and we're seeing a lot of success as well as to continue to work hard with Elder Matu'u. I am pretty drained physically, and mentally from the past 2 transfers here though so hopefully it turns out to be a really good transfer. Too add to the stress a bit there will be no more car in Geelong either. We obviously haven't had a car but the other area of Geelong did have one but they're moving it to another area in the Zone. So now the 10th biggest city in Australia is now exclusively a biking area for missionaries. We're considering after this transfer to try our luck getting into the 'Tour de France' since we've become quite accustomed to riding the bikes. So that's the transfer news for me, I've asked the other Geelong companionship to see where all my past companions are going to (they'll be at the transfer meeting because Elder Hasson is moving) so I'll let you know about that next week. So with hearing that news I'm quite amazed that in my 1st year of the mission (it still feels so weird that after this transfer I'll be able to say I'll have been out that long!) I've served in just 2 areas. Also, another fun stat is that my mission is split in half with time on bikes and time in the car, the 1st 6 months in a car and these 2nd 6 months on bikes. Looking back I think I the bikes have been better for missionary work purposes (being able to talk to everyone as we go to appointments or from place to place, keeps us fit and healthy, and I've been able to get a nice tan on my arms haha). So anyway, not too much change in transfers but that's something I'm fairly used to by now. Now back to this past week. We were able to see Noah quite a bit this past week and he's still going really well and understanding everything great. He's very excited for his baptism this coming weekend, which will be on Sunday the 14th now so some of the family will be able to come that wouldn't have been able to on the Saturday. We've almost finished everything lessons-wise so all he needs now is just his baptismal interview this week and then he'll be ready to enter into the his first covenant in his path through the Gospel. Also, Joel and Camilla are going excellently as well! We were able to teach them this past week for the first time in a few weeks and it went so well. Joel is very prepared and has one of the strongest desires to learn and grow that I've seen thus far on the mission. He's now preparing to be baptized on the 4th of May so we'll pray fervently for him to continue to feel the spirit and receive his answer about the truthfulness of the Gospel. We're excited for General Conference this weekend especially because we know that could play a big part in Joel (as well as Camilla) receiving an answer and learning more from the Prophet and general authorities. So we're excited to continue to see their progress. We've also found some really keen new investigators this past week, a couple have come off referrals from Neil. Neil I think I mentioned a few weeks ago, one of the ones we found off the ward list who really wants to come back to church. He's been a huge blessing to us so far because he loves to help us and also has helped us find some really great people to teach. So finding both him and Candice and Walle has been a great blessing not only in helping them return to the Gospel but also in having others come into the Gospel as well. Jaryn is still going pretty well, his university has kept him from having as much time to receiving the lessons more frequently though. He still enjoys church each week though and hopefully will continue to work towards and be ready for his April 20th baptism. This past week we've also had to do some more cleaning on the side because we have another flat inspection this Wednesday (this time by the actual owners) so hopefully everything will go well with that. So at the moment it looks like this coming transfer will be a really good one with hopefully continued blessings and success. I've already learned so much and grown so much since I've served here in Geelong and I know that will continue to happen as Elder Matu'u and I continue to work hard and improve our level of commitment and obedience each day despite whatever trials and challenges we may face. This mission as a whole is growing as well as there will now be about 220 missionaries in the Melbourne mission after the new missionaries come in this transfer. The mission also has set a new goal for this 2nd quarter of the year (April, May, June) that we'll get 151 baptisms which would be great to see happen as President and Sister Lifferth only have these 3 months left of their service and it'd be a great send off to see the mission reach new heights by hitting that goal. Well again I'm grateful for the e-mail this week and for all of your continued love and support that helps me each day feel comfort and courage as we work. I hope that you have a wonderful week this week as well and that you continue to see a lot of blessings and miracles. I love you heaps and I'll talk to you again soon!

Love,

Elder Hopkins

April 1, 2013

G'Day!

Thanks for the great e-mail once again this past week. As you can see the 'Australia public holiday' struck again and I couldn't e-mail you back on the usual day, but we're able to send our e-mails today. This past week was a very busy one, in which we weren't able to spend as much time in our area that we'd hoped to or would've liked. However, our time was spent doing very fulfilling activities, especially on Wednesday as we were able to attend the Melbourne Temple once again! The Temple is always a magnificent place to be and reflect on all sorts of different things and especially to seek personal revelation for ourselves, our investigators, and our area as a whole. I felt the spirit very strongly as we attended and I was able to learn a lot of things that I hadn't realized or known before, so it was a great experience. I certainly wish we could attended the Temple more often than just every 3 months because it's such a great place to be and a great opportunity to resolve to improve. President and Sister Lifferth shared a good thought with us before we went in using a scripture from Isaiah (I can't remember the exact scripture at the moment) that mentioned the Temple as a 'house of repentance' and I'd never really heard it termed that way before. So it's a great place to resolve to change and become better disciples and followers of Jesus Christ. So that was one of the highlights of our past week, another one involving Noah! He has a new baptismal date for the 13th of this month and it's a very solid date now so we're very excited for that. He's very excited to be baptized on that day and doesn't have any concerns holding him back now. So in the next 2 weeks we'll just be focusing on finishing to teach him all the lessons and helping him have spiritual experiences. We also are beginning to teach Joel and Camilla again more frequently now that everything has settled from the wedding, so we know we'll begin to see miracles from their family as well. Jaryn is also continuing to do really well in the gospel and is still working towards his date for the 20th of April. We also have a lot of new investigators we've found as well who we hope will begin to progress in the gospel. We certainly have very high hopes for this last week of the transfer, it's certainly flown by sooooo fast! We know that the Lord will continue to bless us as we continue to put in our full effort and stay obedient. We also will have more time to work in our area this week which obviously will help. We find out the transfer news this coming Saturday which will be exciting news as always. The past 2 transfers here in Geelong have definitely been really difficult and even frustrating at times but I've also seen myself grow so much more in these 12 weeks. I've seen the improvement in my teaching and also in my testimony and relationship with Heavenly Father and I have the hard and trying experiences to thank for that. These hard times of course haven't come without a fair share of blessings though, as this area has really begun to take off and especially our teaching pool has increased by so much from when we started. This coming transfer will be another exciting one as there's another big onslaught of new missionaries, with 27 coming into the mission. So this time certainly continues to be an exciting time for missionary work and I know the church will continue to see huge growth from the efforts of all these faithful missionaries for the next several years. Sorry this e-mail hasn't been as eventful and 'exciting' as last weeks but I wish every week could be as good as it was then. However, there's always the highs and lows, although the week wasn't really a low it just didn't have too many noteworthy events. So I hope that you have a wonderful week ahead and that you continue to see a lot of blessings back home. Thanks for all your continued love and support that you give! I love you and I'll talk to you again soon!

Love,

Elder Hopkins

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