October 7, 2013

G'Day!

I loved your e-mail this week! It's always wonderful to hear from you! I'm glad you had a wonderful week and that's great about your new calling Dad! You will do great! It was also a great surprise to hear from Kate and Jay and Christopher as well! Thanks heaps for the e-mail and glad you are well and staying busy!  This week has been an okay one, there were quite a bit of difficulties and a lot of cancellations as well! Coral had a few trials come through but she is still going well, please continue to keep her in her prayers! It is always greatly appreciated when you do. One highlight to the week was on Monday, when during our P-Day time we went on a bush-trail about 15 minutes from our house. The nature was very beautiful there and we finally got to see some Kangaroos up here! So that was fun! So as I mentioned before there unfortunately weren't too many lessons this week due to cancellations, so I can't report too much on any of those! However, we have started teaching another one of the less-active members in the branch with Elder Laycock which is good. The Laycocks are doing great in helping out the branch as well as us! I don't know how I will cope if I'm not serving around a senior couple anymore, they are truly a blessing to the missionary efforts! We also were able to set up another family home evening with the Hickling family for tonight which we are excited about! The rest of the week was spent doing a lot of finding new people to teach, and in Wangaratta the only way you can really do that since it is not a busy town is through tracting (and of course working with the members, but in a branch there are only a limited number you can work with in a week). So we were occupied a good share of the time with that, but our efforts weren't in vain because we were blessed to be able to find 16 new people to go back and see. Some of them obviously seem more likely to progress than others but we were still very grateful to find that many people through our efforts. School holidays just ended here in Australia (which had been on for the past 2 weeks) so we think that might have an effect on the amount of appointments we are able to have now since many people were quite busy and also out of town during that time. Our investigator Kellyanne and her kids were at church again (this is the 3rd time for her family) and really loved it as always! We have an appointment with them tomorrow night in which we plan to talk more about baptism because they are progressing really well and we feel they are ready to make that first step in living the Gospel. Well I feel bad that I don't have too many stories or information this week, but it just wasn't the best of weeks for us! We know that if we keep working as we have been though that the Lord will bless us with success. We are very excited for General Conference here this coming weekend as always and look forward to receiving divine counsel from the Lord's mouthpieces that is specific to our time. The lesson at church on Sunday was on the importance of living prophets and one comment made that I liked was something along the lines of 'next to your standard works should be a copy of the most recent conference ensign because that is almost the most important scripture for us right now since it is very specifically for our day and time.' Thanks for everything you do in supporting me out here in Australia and I am grateful most of all for all of your prayers, especially on behalf of those we teach out here, I know that it makes all the difference in the world especially as we have faith that our prayers are heard and answered! I hope that you have another wonderful week this week and continue to have opportunities to share the light of the Gospel with those around you! I love you and miss you! Talk to you again soon!

Love,

Elder Hopkins