G'Day!
Thanks
so much for the wonderful e-mail this week! I loved it as I always do!
I'm glad that you had a great week and that Elder Dearing was able to be
sent off to Ghana safely! So anyway, the big news obviously is my new
area and companionship. So the new area is called Mooroolbark and it is
like an hour and a half away from Pakenham or so, so it's still fairly
close to the city area. It's a pretty nice city from what I have seen of
it so far. It's mostly Australians that live here from what I've seen
as well as heaps of Burmese people. The ward here also seems really
good, there are about 150 or 160 who attend regularly each week but the
ward has quite a few people in Stake callings so it fluctuates a lot in
attendance. And so my companionship actually isn't a companionship at
all, it's another tripanionship! In other words there are 3 of us
together again. The mission has heaps of tripanioships now but some of
them will be split apart mid-transfer because that's when the new
missionaries come in so we'll see if that happens to us or not. It has
been so good so far though and we have seen so many miracles come about!
My companions are Elder Afele and Elder Wood. Elder Afele is from
Canberra (the capital of Australia) but was actually born here in
Melbourne. His parents were born in Samoa but since he was born in and
grew up in Australia he isn't like my companion Elder Matu'u who was
actually from Samoa. He has been out on his mission for about 13 months,
so he came out here 2 transfers after me. Elder Wood is a very special
companion because he holds the honor of being my very first Utah
companion! Haha. I was kind of hoping to go for a record and serve my
whole mission without having a companion from Utah as well haha since
everyone eventually has one, but Elder Wood is awesome! He is from Logan
and has been out on his mission for about 4 or 5 months. We have all
been getting along really well and we work and teach very well together
so it has been an awesome tripanionship so far. So I will try to
describe some of the miracles that we've seen in the past week. The most
recent one happened on Sunday. There is an investigator named Andy who
Elder Wood and Elder Afele (who were together for 1 transfer before) had
been teaching for a while who was really nice but hadn't been
progressing too much and was quite sad a lot due to bad circumstances
going on in his life. However, he finally came to church for the first
time yesterday and had a really great experience! We went to see him
later on in the afternoon (by the way church is at 1 pm here!! we share
the chapel with another ward that meets earlier) and he had completely
changed! He was really happy and energetic and mentioned how one of the
testimonies at church really touched his heart and changed his outlook
on a lot of things. It was funny because the lady who's testimony he was
talking about actually said at the beginning of her testimony that she
didn't want to get up (she was the next to last one to get up) but the
spirit was really strongly pushing her to get up the whole meeting! So
what a blessing she got up to share her testimony because it made all
the difference for Andy. And before we left his house he actually asked
if he could offer the closing prayer and he offered probably the most
sincere and beautiful prayer we all had heard on our missions. He was
just saying that he wants to really know if this is true and he wants to
be able to have the blessings that God has to give us and how he wants
to feel as happy as he did then all the time! So that was the first time
I'd met him but Elder Wood and Elder Afele said it was a miraculous
change from what he was before. We see him again this week so we are
excited to see the progress he makes. Another miracle was when we were
teaching a long time investigator named John who is an older man and in a
wheelchair. He had been really struggling with accepting Joseph Smith
and the Book of Mormon so in our lesson with him we focused on how we
can get an answer the Book of Mormon is true. It would take to long to
include all the details but essentially we were working through the
Spirit as a tripanionship so well that we would think of something and
someone else would say it! So everything ran so smoothly and the spirit
was so strong and we feel he has what he needs now to know it's true.
There is also a Burmese lady who is in her 70s that we are teaching
named Mary and she will be getting baptized on the 16th of November, so
we are very excited for her. Her english is ok but not the best so for
the lessons with her we just have her read out of a Burmese pamphlet of
the topic we're teaching as we follow along in the English pamphlet and
then she explains back to us in English what was taught. Her
understanding is really good and she loves church and is excited to be
able to be baptized and participate in the things that come along with
it, even tithing and fast offerings! Haha. We also were able to teach a
really good lesson with someone that we found tracting early in the week
named Daniel. We didn't know this when we first met him but we found
out he actually works for like the Australian version of the CIA but not
quite as secretive as that. He has some amazing stories and has
actually received a bullet wound. He's only in his late 20s but is very
smart and knowledgable about religions. He is an honest seeker of truth
and as we just were giving a simple explanation of some of the beliefs
and functions of the church he became really intrigued because he hadn't
really learned much about the LDS church before. Eventually we
introduced the Book of Mormon to him and he is very keen to read it! He
mentioned that it was funny timing because he was soon leaving for about
6 months or so for a mission off the coast but that he would take the
Book of Mormon with him and read it. So those are just a few of the
miracles we saw this week but there were countless! I think this could
end up being one of my favorite companionships and the area is really
great as well! So we are excited for this next week and look forward to
the many more miracles that we will see as we continue to work hard. We
actually have Stake Conference next week at the chapel next to the
Temple and Elder Hallstrom of the Presidency of the Seventy will be
there! So that will be a wonderful experience! Anyway thanks for all
your love and support and especially prayers! I hope that you have a
wonderful week this week as well and see many miracles! I love you heaps
and I'll talk to you again soon!
Love,
Elder Hopkins
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