August 26, 2013

G'Day!

Thank you for a wonderful e-mail as always! I loved being able to read it and hear about everything that happened this past week! I'm very glad that Mom did a wonderful job on the Sacrament talk! I would guess your mission helped you have a lot more confidence in speaking as it has done for me! This past week was really good for us, and extremely busy! As always the action kicks off literally as soon as I finished e-mailing you last Monday haha. Coral was fasting that day for all her family. There were a few reasons behind it, but one of them was that her family would except her decision to be involved in the church. During the day, however, Coral's nan (who she lives with at the moment up here and who is anti-any religion as Coral has told us) all of a sudden kind of freaked out at her for seeing us and going to church and everything and said that she is not allowed to see us anymore or attend church. As you could imagine, Coral was extremely crushed after hearing this and was feeling really down and overwhelmed with sorrow for that and everything else that was going on at the moment for her. We were able to help calm her down a little bit, though, after speaking with her, but we were still very worried! She was going to continue to fast though and have faith that everything would still work out even though it wasn't looking good for her at the moment. About an hour later she talked to us again and told us that she had just rung her mum down in Melbourne (who if you remember is kind of like an anti-lds less-active member, who was the one who said she couldn't be baptized before when she was living there) and that when she told her mum everything that her mum said she was very happy for Coral and encouraged her to continue on! So that was the first big miracle for her, but along with that she went to talk to her nan again (which by the way, means grandma here, in case you were confused) and her nan also said that everything was ok with her now. What big changes of hearts! So Coral was really excited that her fasting had been answered and that everything would still be alright for her baptism, as were we! While we are still on her, we also fasted for her on several items (on Tuesday) and the day after that when we saw her again she said that she had gotten a call from the doctors saying that she was going to be able to have her tonsils removed this coming friday (30th of August), which doesn't sound like much but it was actually another big miracle for her because she has had tonsillitis constantly since December and it has been keeping her from work and school and originally she wasn't able to get an appointment for tonsil surgery until November 22, so it was a miracle that it was moved much sooner. That works into the schedule for her coming baptism as well because she will be in hospital for this and just coming out on the 31st of August, so at the moment the date for her baptism is now the 1st of September, however that all depends on how fast she recovers from the surgery. We will be praying heaps that it is a very quick recovery but at the very latest her baptism would be the following weekend. She also has been living the word of wisdom since last Thursday, which was the icing on the miracle cake from this past week! So everything is continuing to go great with Coral. So now onto the other things of the week. On Tuesday we were able to have District Meeting which went well for my first time as District Leader. And from the moment we got back into Wangaratta after the meeting we had several appointments which was great! We were with Elder Laycock for all of them and then Sister Laycock as well for the last appointment of the evening-which was another miracle! So there is a less-active family in the branch who hasn't been to church for some time but used to be really active a little while ago. The parents are both converts and they have 2 teenage daughters, the older one being a member and the younger hasn't been baptized. In the past, the senior couple missionaries and the younger missionaries have really struggled to get appointments with them and have also tried pushing them too much and thus they never saw any fruits to their labors with them. However, Elder and Sister Laycock managed to get an appointment with them 8 or so weeks ago just to introduce themselves as the new senior couple and had a really great visit and built a pretty good relationship with them right off the bat and the family felt the love from them more than anyone in the past, which was great. Then when we were on the splits/rescue visits last week we saw them at the perfect time (there were some conflicts arising) and were able to schedule the appointment for this past Tuesday. Now we are up to speed! Anyway we had a wonderful dinner with them, and a family home evening. The family home evening went perfectly and they felt the spirit but also had a lot of fun with the activity too. They were extremely keen for another one and the 2 girls especially expressed that they missed doing these sort of things. Our next appointment with them is next Monday at the Laycock's home which we look forward to! This past week we were also able to see Jacko 2 more times for lessons, which went really well. We aren't sure yet what direction everything will take with him but we feel since he has perfect fellowship (who's better than your best friend who just was recently baptized and can relate to being on both sides of the spectrum!) that he will continue to progress towards baptism. He said that if he knew for sure that it was true he would be baptized, one of the concerns though is that he really REALLY over thinks things sometimes which he admits and also has a hard time with reading the Book of Mormon a piece at a time. With that, to explain a bit more, he said if he starts reading it he literally has to sit there and read it all before putting it down, and when he first read it several years ago he finished it in like 6 hours. So I wonder if we are the first missionaries to ever tell their investigator to not read the Book of Mormon so fast? Haha we did that because he said he doesn't take in much and we also want him to be able to read a bit, then pray about it, then read a bit more, and so on. But we will see how everything goes! We also were able to teach some solid new investigators this week and because of that have some appointments this week that we really look forward to! So on Saturday we had Zone Conference as well which was great! It also gives me heaps more to talk about in the e-mail that I hopefully have time for! So first off we had to wake up before the sun woke up at 5 a.m. because we had to drive an hour and 40 minutes to a town called Finley to pick up some missionaries there and then drive another hour and a bit to Shepperton where the meeting was. And since Elder G doesn't drive I had to drive the whole way. I'm not complaining about that, just that I was concerned for everyone's lives since I was really tired and the roads there are like good old Nevada roads where if you forget to fill up 10 cans full of gasoline you'll be out of luck since there's no civilization as far as the eye can see! So that kind of made me a bit sleepy but thankfully we arrived in one piece. To add to the drama, it was sister missionaries we were picking up, ahhh! Haha, obviously in normal circumstances it's not allowed, but they gave us special permission to do so. They also said that they were in our District now, which makes 10 missionaries total in the district, so it is pretty good sized! So this Zone Conference was probably the best of all recorded history because in President Maxwell's training he showed us some NBA highlights! Woohooo! That obviously wasn't all he did, but he showed us a few clips (the first of Blake Griffin, then of Kevin Love) and related the attributes you need for rebounding to the attributes you need to be a successful missionary. It actually was very good! I wish I could tell you more about the meeting but unfortunately I have like no time at all left, so I will have to finish! I have been typing like a maniac to get all of this down! I hope you have a wonderful week and thank you for all your love and support! I love you and I'll talk to you again soon!

Love,

Elder Hopkins