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