May 27, 2013

G'Day!

Thanks heaps for the great e-mail this week! I loved reading it! This past week and first week of this transfer was an awesome start with my new companion. His name is Elder Malifa (mah-lee-fah) and he's from Auckland, New Zealand. He's been on his mission just 3 months (this is his 3rd transfer) but he has a great excitement for the work and has a strong desire to work hard and be obedient. He just turned 20 a few months ago and is the oldest of 5 kids. He was raised in the church and both of his parents were converts to the church at a young age. We're really excited to work together and see a lot of miracles in Geelong this transfer. So this past week flew by heaps fast! Now that we have a car to use, the added mobility has really helped us get more done in the time we have each day. We've also been able to go more often to areas that were farther away that we had a harder time getting to with just bikes. And it has come at a very opportune time, because Rasta and Jess (the returning less-active couple I mentioned last week) live about a 30 minute drive away from our flat! We were able to visit them twice this past week and on the first visit it was just on splits again with the ward. When we saw them then we had a really great visit and made plans with them to start teaching their daughter. Also, Jess had an awesome experience just a few hours before we came because she was talking to one of her friends, Riannan, and started talking about the Gospel and how they had been coming back to church. Her friend was super interested in what Jess told her and said she really wants to make God a bigger part of her life, especially for her kids as well (she has 4 and the oldest is almost 8). She said that she really wanted to meet us and have us teach her more about the church and everything about Christ in general (she doesn't have much knowledge of Him or God because she'd only been to church a few times in her whole life). So we scheduled a time with Jess and Rasta for the very next day to come teach their daughter and Riannan at the same time. So we were able to get out there and had an amazing lesson where the spirit was very strong. Riannan is close to, if not the most prepared person I've met on my mission so far. She loved everything she learned (we started at the basics of everything, God, Jesus Christ, prophets, and eventually worked our way up to Joseph Smith and the Restoration) and felt everything was true. She made some awesome comments and really followed the lesson well. And she (along with the daughter) accepted a baptismal invitation for June 15th, just 3 weeks away. And when we gave her a Book of Mormon at the end she told us as soon as she got home she would be reading all night long. We're going to teach her again tomorrow night so we're really excited to help her progress. The only concern at the moment is that she isn't married to her partner so we'll have to address that when she's built up her testimony a bit more and understands why it's something God wants for us. It helps that her fellowship, Jess and Rasta, went through the same thing when Jess was baptized so they'll be able to help her and relate to her perfectly. I know we were able to be blessed with the opportunity to teach both Riannan and the daughter (Taya) because of our hard work and obedience over the past few weeks and the Lord trusts us with His prepared souls now. We just have to maintain and continue to increase that effort in order to be guided to help them reach their baptismal goals now. So that experience was probably the biggest miracle and highlight of the week! Another cool miracle we experienced was that there was a new contact we'd gotten about 3 weeks ago named Susan who was really awesome and wanted to hear the message we had to share. However, when we went back a couple of times she was never home. Then just yesterday, I went to see her with Elder Malifa for the first time and she happened to be home. She came outside to talk with us and said that she was actually moving to a place about an hour and a bit from here because she'd been thrown out by the owner after being there 11 years. So miracle 1 of this story that we were guided and blessed to see her the night before she left. And miracle 2 was that as we continued talking to her and she mentioned one of her daughter's and her family living in a place called Deer Park, and after she said the names of them Elder Malifa said that was a family he and his previous companion had been teaching! The kids had just gotten baptized that day and the parents were getting married and baptized in 2 weeks as well. So that was incredible to find that out and Susan recognized it as some sign from God, the same as us. We were able to get her phone number and passed it along to the missionaries in the area she's moving to so hopefully they'll be able to help her come closer to Christ as well through the restored Gospel. We're also teaching a new Sudanese woman who's very keen to learn about the church. After our first lesson with her she loved it so much she gave us like a billion referrals of her friends in the area haha. So that was a huge blessing, and we'll go visit all of them throughout this week. We also met with Bishop this past week to introduce Elder Malifa to him but also to discuss the ward and he gave us a referral to visit a new Tongan family in the area. We were able to meet the mom that same day and she said although she has a fiance at this time who goes to the Uniting Church she and her sons (both in their 30s, one with a family of his own) really want to come to church again and be a part of the Gospel (apparently they've been away for a while). So that will be great to visit them since there's really no islander families in Geelong to see. We also helped with the moving in of a Chinese family named the Songs who are moving from a ward in the Melbourne city. They're wonderful people and will be a great blessing to the ward here. There's so many experiences to share but I'm running out of time! Haha. Maybe one last one of the power of the Spirit in the hearts of others. The first full day Elder Malifa and I got to work together in Geelong we went to talk to people the Geelong city. One guy started up a conversation with us about the God as we were walking along. We talked to him for about 10 minutes and he had some very interesting beliefs about God (kind of hard to explain them here because often times they didn't make much sense) but he was very knowledgeable and we were still able to have a good talk with him. We eventually were able to give him a Restoration pamphlet and after a few more minutes of him questioning us he eventually said he wouldn't be needing the pamphlet anymore. He was pretty set to his beliefs but we kept the conversation going because it'd been like 20 minutes of talking to him now and we didn't just want to walk away empty handed. At this point Elder Malifa and I felt very guided by the Spirit on what to say to him and we were able to respond to all of his comments powerful and made him sit and think for a minute several times. A few minutes later and he asked us for the pamphlet back and gave us his number to set up another time to talk with him. So we could tell that the Spirit had worked in him to soften his heart from the beginning to the end of the conversation. Well I'm unfortunately out of time, but I was able to share most of what I was hoping to. I'm continually grateful for all of your love, prayers, and support that play a big part in our success here! I hope that you have a fantastic week ahead and continue to see many miracles and blessings! I love you heaps and I'll talk to you again soon!

Love,

Elder Hopkins

May 20, 2013

G'Day!

Thanks so much for the fantastic e-mail this week! I loved reading it as always and hearing about everything happening back home. Glad that all is well and also that I was able to talk to you face to face on Skype for Mother's Day! That was so much fun and it was definitely the highlight of my week! Well this last week of the transfer was very busy and exciting and we saw heaps of blessings and miracles. Where to start? I guess I might as well start with the transfer news because that's probably what you're hoping to hear the most. Well Elder Taufa is going to be moving areas and I am going to be staying for another transfer in Geelong! Wow! That will make 6 months in Geelong after this transfer. However, this transfer is a bit interesting because it is only going to be a 4 week long transfer due to scheduling with either President and Sister Lifferth's departure or with the schedule of the MTC's. So if we thought that the 6 week transfers went by really, really fast than this next transfer will go by in the blink of an eye! The following transfer after this next one though will be extra long (8 weeks!) in order to make up for the 2 weeks taken off of this one. But I'm very happy to continue to be serving here in Geelong because I really do enjoy serving here and we have a lot of potential for the next couple of weeks with our investigators and teaching pool. The other Geelong missionaries, Elder Bisby and Elder Pain, are both staying as well, so not much change for Geelong. So I'll find out who my new companion will be for this next transfer tomorrow at transfer meeting and I'll let you know next week! I'll also let you know where my previous companions are as well if I see them there. So there's the news, pretty exciting. Now for the rest of this week. On Wednesday I didn't actually end up going with Elder Taufa to the islander meeting. We had been planning to ride up there with the Zone Leaders but one of the Zone Leaders (who's just Australian and not from the islands) decided it'd be more effective for us to just stay back and work for about 6 hours instead. And it was certainly effective! Since we'd been planning to go to the meeting they didn't really have any set appointments scheduled so it was just going to be finding and searching for new contacts and investigators for 6 hours. As we went out we just tried to talk to everyone that we saw (we didn't really do any tracting but just talking to people on the street or at the nearby train station) and we saw so much success. Because we just worked really hard in that time and were able to talk to pretty much everyone that we crossed paths with we ended up finding 20 new people (not just any people but really interested and solid new contacts) for them to teach! So that was a huge miracle for us because it's difficult in the mission for most areas to get 20 in a week. So we know the Lord was very generous to us and after having that experience I can use that as kind of a bar for the future of what we can reach if we have faith and really work hard. So that was a really awesome experience that day, but the day wasn't finished yet. After Elder Taufa and I got back to our area about 6 p.m. we had a quick dinner before the other missionaries picked us up for the ward splits that night. I went with one of the members to go visit a lady that was on the ward list named Leslie. When we got there her daughter (about 17) answered the door and was very nice and then went to go grab her mom. Leslie then came to the door and was very friendly and at first she said that she wasn't a member but after we talked with her for a few minutes she said that her mom was an active member in our ward and that she was baptized when she was younger but hasn't been to church in a long time. And it also turns out that the member I was with sort of knew her from a while ago as well but he didn't make the connection before because the last name of the list is different from when he knew her before, so it was an inspired assignment! The daughter also stayed at the door with her mom listening to us and seemed quite interested in what we had to say as well. They said that we can come back again this week so that's great! While I was there, Elder Taufa was out with a member of the Stake Presidency visiting a less-active couple about 40 minutes from the chapel that they'd visited the week before as well, named Rastafari (how cool is that name?) and Jess. Rasta (as he likes to be called) is actually the brother of one of the members in Pakenham that I knew quite well. They're married and have a couple of kids but haven't been to church in quite a while. However, when they've been visited the past few weeks they've expressed that they really want to start being involved in the Gospel again. And yesterday at church they ended up coming, so that was a huge blessing to see! They stayed all 3 hours and had a really great time and got to meet a lot of the ward. They want to start coming every week again and also to talk with Bishop Sandford about preparations so they can also go to the Temple to be sealed as a family. And if that wasn't enough blessings and excitement there, they also have a 9 year old daughter who they want to be taught and baptized soon as well. So they're a fantastic family and we really look forward to seeing them often and to begin teaching their daughter as well. So Wednesday was a really great day for us, and Thursday was equally great at Zone Conference. It was a really great meeting and good to be with all the other Elders and Sisters there. The main focuses of the meeting were teaching Repentance to our investigators (not just how we often think of the big things, but even if they haven't been keeping commitments like reading and praying), getting our areas to a level where we're able to have baptisms weekly, and then increasing the effectiveness of our personal study time. They also talked about a few other things, but I was able to learn a lot from that meeting and felt motivated to apply the things we learned to helped our area grow. Saturday was also a really great day because the other missionaries in Geelong had 3 baptisms (a mom, and her son and daughter) and we were asked to participate. You'll be happy to know that I was the pianist for the meeting, so I'm having opportunities come up to keep up my piano playing. I was also asked by the family to be the one to baptize the daughter, age 12, so that was really special to be a part of that! Elder Bisby and Elder Pain performed the other baptisms. Then the next day at church the 3 of us performed the confirmations for the same people that we baptized, so that was a great experience as well. It was the first time I'd confirmed anyone before so I was a bit nervous but it ended up going really well and the spirit was felt. So it's amazing that I've been out for half of the mission now! I've learned more than I could ever imagine in these past 12 months and I'm so thankful for all the incredible and miraculous experiences I've been blessed with thus far. I thought I'd just include the most important lessons (to me) that I've learned in this first part of my mission:

1. Act on every prompting we receive if it is something that is in line with the teachings and commandments of Heavenly Father

2. Willful obedience to all the Lord asks is the most beneficial attribute we can obtain in this life

3. Without faith, it doesn't matter how hard we work or how good we are at speaking or whatever it may be, we can do nothing

and 4. Patience with myself, my companions, and the Lord

Anyway, I'm running out of time, but I've been able to get across most of what I wanted to say! I really enjoyed this last week and I'm very excited for this next transfer as well and I know that if my new companion and I maintain a high level of faith and exact obedience then there are so many blessings and miracles the Lord has prepared for our area. Oh and I almost forgot, the mission president's fireside was also really great! Since I'm short on time now, I can't talk much about it other than it was focused on the Restoration of the Gospel. And one of the highlights of the meeting was afterwards when I got to talk to President for a minute and he said he's going to get our area a car for this transfer! Woohoo! That will be an incredible blessing and help to our area. My legs were shouting for joy when he said that because they were getting bored with riding the bikes for the past 6 months. We'll still use the bikes often though, but now we can go and visit those who are further out which we weren't able to see much or focus on because of our limited transportation. So anyway, thanks again so much for the e-mail this week and for all of your wonderful love and support and especially prayers on our behalf! I hope that you have a fantastic week this week and look for opportunities for your own missionary work. I love you heaps and I'll talk to you again soon!

Love,

Elder Hopkins

May 13, 2013

G'Day!

First of all, Happy Mother's Day! Hope your Mother's Day has been a fantastic one and that everything went well! This past week was another rough week on the missionary work side. Things just don't seem to be going our way at the moment. We were able to teach more lessons this week than last week, however, which was of course great! We have a couple new promising investigators as well which hopefully will start progressing towards baptism as we begin to teach them more. We weren't able to see Joel and Camilla this past week as we had hoped because something came up and they had to move the lesson time, however they're both still going really well! As I mentioned in the last e-mail, we had to spend a lot of time doing work on the flat again. They had someone come to replace one of the windows that had been broken for about a year, and then someone came to clean all the carpets as well, so we had to move everything out of the house for that. They also cleaned the carpets for the other Geelong flat so we help those Elders move stuff outside as well. We also had missionary splits this past Thursday night with the Elders Quorum again and it went pretty well. The member I went with and I were able to see some good success from it as we were able to update some information for addresses on the ward list and also met 2 members from the list that said that we can come back to visit them again, which is always exciting to have that happen! Church was quite good as well and there were heaps of people there this Sunday as it was Mother's day. Elder Pain from the other Geelong area gave one of the talks, it was just a short 5 minute one on the influence of Mothers and he did pretty good for the first Sacrament talk of his mission. They are going to give all the Geelong missionaries an opportunity to get up and speak in the coming weeks which will be good to give the ward more of an opportunity to see us and get to know us. Since we haven't been having too much success as of late in some areas, we've tried working more in other areas such as working with the members. That's proved to be helpful as the members are gaining a greater desire to do missionary work and there are several potential referrals that members have mentioned that will hopefully go really well. It's very cool to see each week in the Priesthood opening exercises that more and more members are sharing missionary experiences they've had in the past week or so. So that has been one bright spot for the past 2 weeks! And while this week was a bit bland and uneventful, this coming week looks to be a very exciting and eventful one. We have a lot of great meetings lined up, with our Zone Conference on Thursday which is always good, a Mission President's Fireside this next Sunday evening which will be great seeing as it will be the first one that I'll have been to since I moved from Pakenham, and on Wednesday they're having a mission wide meeting for all of the islander missionaries (Samoan, Tongan, New Zealand, etc.) and since Elder Taufa is Tongan I'll be going with him to the meeting so that should be interesting! They did a meeting like that last year apparently so it must be a tradition now in the mission. And of course the most anticipated events of all missionaries each transfer is this Saturday, which is transfer news! So that will also be exciting to get that as it always is, so look forward to that in the next e-mail. Turns out in this next intake of new missionaries that there are only 40 instead of the 60 that was said before, which obviously is still a huge amount! I think some of them just had some visa problems so they'll come in at a later transfer. Well unfortunately the past 2 weeks I haven't had too much exciting to mention and write about, but it's just been a slow 2 weeks. I know next week I'll have heaps to write about because so much will be happening so hopefully that will make up for the lack of info these past 2 e-mails. Well thanks as always for all of your wonderful love, support, and prayers! I hope that this week is a fantastic one for you and you continue to see many, many blessings and miracles! I love you heaps and I'll talk to you again soon!

Love,

Elder Hopkins

May 6, 2013

G'Day!

Thanks heaps for the great e-mail as always! I really enjoyed reading it and I am also really looking forward to skyping with you next week as well! This past week was quite the opposite of last week as it was a pretty slow week and we didn't see as much success as we would've liked to. We were able to see many of our investigators and were able to still teach some good lessons but our finding of new people to teach this week didn't prove very fruitful. But obviously every week can't turn out the way we would hope it too and these weeks happen every so often, so we'll just continue to work hard and we know this week will bring more blessings and miracles. Joel is still going really well, however, we didn't get to see them this past week because he started a new shift at work which messed their schedule up a bit for a few days so they weren't able to have us round, but we see them this Wednesday (and they were at church and loved it as always!). One highlight of the week is that we've been able to get some more activities started up in the ward that will hopefully help the missionary efforts and fellowshipping to increase. We've organized a weekly sports day for the Elders Quorum and anyone else who wants to come where they can bring their friends or any less-active members to a low-key environment where they can just have fun but also interact with the members and have some involvement with the church, so hopefully that will turn out well. We're also going to start a monthly 'cottage meeting' as they call it, which is just like a mini fireside at a member's home where we bring investigators or less-active members to where we have a lesson and maybe a musical number or a video and then of course food as well (that's where we catch them! haha just kidding), but it's worked really well in the past so hopefully Geelong will see success from that as well. If you have any other ideas of activities or events that we could do that might be good to try that could help give members opportunities to help and fellowship like those, that would help a lot! Another few ideas that we're working on are: Doing a missionary presentation in a combined relief society and elders quorum meeting to help members get to know the missionaries in the ward and also help them with their own missionary work, a cultural presentation (which would be just an event where the different cultures of people would put on a performance or a show), and of course more splits with the missionaries! But that's something we were able to make progress with this week and we know that will help increase the member work for the ward, and as they talked about in General Conference the members are the most important part of missionary work! One cool experience we did have this past week though, was that we went to see one of our newer investigators named Kurt just last night and his roommate was home as well. His roommate answered the door and he just happened to be someone that Elder Rua and I had talked to about 3 months earlier. However, when we got his phone number then we had written it down wrong and thus weren't able to keep contact with him. So that was really cool that we were able to find him again that way! We'll be teaching them both tomorrow night so hopefully it will go really well! And this week we also have our favorite thing to do in Geelong again, more cleaning of the flat! We feel like part-time service missionaries with the amount of work we've had to put into this flat. Hopefully this week will be the last time that we have to focus a lot of our time in cleaning the flat. It's definitely difficult to want to clean for hours and hours when you weren't the ones responsible for the way it is but at least we'll be helping it to look nice for whoever is in the flat in the future. I certainly have learned how to clean more from this experience so maybe I can take that as a positive side to it, haha. So thanks again for the wonderful e-mail this past week and for all of your love and support that help us so much in the work each day! I'm very grateful for all that you do for me! I hope that you have a wonderful week ahead and continue to see a lot of blessings and miracles as well. Continue to look for your own opportunities for missionary work or in helping out the missionaries there if you can. I know from experience now how much the help and love of the members really carries the work in that specific area. Well I love you very much and I look forward to talking with you next week!

Love,

Elder Hopkins