September 30, 2013

G'Day!

Thanks as always for the e-mail this week! That should be really fun going up to Idaho and seeing all the extended family! Just to start off I wanted to quickly mention that just recently I kind of went through all my suitcases and stuff to see what all I had and I found heaps of supplies and what not that I didn't realize I had before! So I just wanted to say that I don't need any extra supplies for quite some time (contact solution, toothpaste, etc.) which is good for you so you don't have to worry about rushing any packages off! So anyway, this past week was an alright one, it unfortunately wasn't as busy as the others as of recent times. There were quite a few cancellations and rescheduling appointments so we weren't as busy as we originally were hoping for. I guess we couldn't be having perfect weeks forever! But it was still relatively good and we did still see quite a few miracles as always. Coral is still going excellent and is loving her membership in the church. She continues to soak everything up well and has been able to feel the Spirit much more since her baptism. She will hopefully have some sort of calling/responsibility in the branch soon to help her continue to be involved and busy. One funny thing was they announced there was a new cleaning roster on the bulletin board at church and when we had a lesson with her at the Laycocks later on in the day she was asking if she was included on the roster and how many times she was allowed to come and help out with the cleaning. Its very rare to even see long-time very active members of the church jumping up and down at the chance to clean the chapel haha. Also, good news with one of our less-active members we are teaching, Nathan, who I mentioned last week we would like to receive the Melchizedek Priesthood by the District Conference coming up soon, who accepted the invitation this past week to prepare to receive this ordination. That would be wonderful to have another Melchizedek Priesthood holder in the branch since there aren't too many of them here. Also we were able to start teaching another less-active family in the branch as well with Elder and Sister Laycok this past Thursday who haven't been to church in quite some time but if they became active again heaps of others would start to come back as well because they have heaps of relatives around Wangaratta who are also less-active members. One cool experience that we had this past week was we were trying to go and visit one of the investigators that we have and when we went there this investigator's friend was the one who came to the door and said that our investigator wasn't able to talk at the moment. But as we were talking to the friend she asked if we knew a certain couple in the branch (the Hicklings, who are also less-active but we have been teaching them lately) and said that she was the aunt of Sister Hickling. So after talking with her for a few minutes we found out where she lived and then on Saturday we went and did some service for her in her garden because she is a bit older and can't do all these things herself now. So she was very appreciative of that and we hopefully will begin to be able to teach her, although it might be difficult because she told us that she is Pagan, and there would be a big change there if she were to accept the Gospel. Another cool experience that we had this past week was while we were having a lesson with Coral at the Key's home (a member family in the branch) the Key's already had a non-member friend there who agreed to stay and listen to the lesson as well! It was on Temples but since this friend has a very strong religious background and since we just taught the basic, simple doctrines about Temples and family history work it turned out very well for both the friend and Coral. So hopefully that experience will have planted some great seeds in the friend's heart because she is in her 80s and isn't too likely to change anything at the moment, so if it doesn't happen during the rest of her time in this life, she will definitely have this experience to remember in the Spirit World. On Sunday we had a fairly good attendance at church again, a bit of it due to relatives visiting for the baby blessing of the newest member of the branch, which was very nice! Well, as I said before it wasn't a week full of appointments (just heaps of tracting and finding!) so that is the main news that I have for you! Everything is still going great overall though and there are some very exciting things coming up in the month of October! Thanks for all of your love and prayers! I pray for you as well all the time! I hope you have a wonderful week and see many miracles. I love you heaps and I'll talk to you again soon!

Love,

Elder Hopkins