December 30, 2013

G'Day!

 

Thanks as always for a wonderful e-mail! I always love to read them. I will have to e-mail a bit quicker today (I know I say that phrase a lot!) because we are having a Zone P-Day today in Melbourne city and thus have to leave for it a bit earlier, but I will write as much as I can. This past week was a good one, good on the fact it was Christmas and we got to spend a lot of time with different members and eat heaps, and of course Skype you, but just alright from the missionary work standpoint. Heaps of people, since it is the beginning of not only the Christmas holidays but school holidays here, were out of town or just really difficult to get a hold of. We managed to still see some success and teach several lessons (only 14 as opposed to our normal 20 or so) and still found several new people to teach. We also had some unfortunate news with Simone and Jack, neither of them will be getting baptized this coming Saturday. They will need a few more weeks before they are ready, but they still are continuing on with everything. She talked to her sister (who's a less-active member who doesn't have a belief in God anymore) who basically told her not to get baptized because she doesn't know enough. However, we had a really good lesson with her that night (Saturday) with perfect fellowship as well and resolved everything and she was back on board and excited for baptism. The next day though she didn't turn up to church and we couldn't get a hold of her until she texted us in the evening saying she didn't want to be baptized but wants more time. So that was a bit disappointing for us because we all know she is ready and already has had more miracles than most investigators have, but we hope it will be still soon that she is baptized. A lesson I learned about the importance of acting when we receive answers from God (as well as keeping a journal of answers) right away and not waiting is because now it's been about a month and a bit since the purple flower incident and she told us in the lesson that she didn't feel anymore like that was enough and was even doubting that it was a real answer from God. So we will continue to try to help her as best as we can. One cool miracle we did see though is that one of the Burmese investigators we have (the one who said they might be a member of the church) was able to come to a baptismal service for another ward, and she really enjoyed it and felt good there. She is progressing well and has read through like half the Book of Mormon already and really wants to come to church. As the new year approaches we have high hopes for success in the Mooroolbark ward and the members do as well. Sorry for a quick e-mail this week but I hope you have a wonderful New Year's Day! I'm grateful for all of your love and support for the year of 2013, and I know 2014 will be another great year! I love you heaps and have a great week! Talk to you again soon!

 

Love,

 

Elder Hopkins

December 23, 2013

Hello again!

 

Quick thing, so the first video I mentioned at the beginning of the e-mail is actually called "The Reason Behind Christmas" not the "Real Meaning of Christmas." Have a great week!

 

Love,

 

Elder Hopkins

December 23, 2013

G'Day!

 

Thanks so much for the e-mail this week! And I loved all the pictures as well! It certainly isn't a white Christmas over here, but it has been quite rainy and cold the past few days which has made it feel a bit more like home! I'm definitely excited to get the chance to Skype with you this week! So I will be skyping here on Christmas day which means it will be Christmas Eve for you (I can tell you the future! haha) and I'll be Skyping at about 9 or so in the morning (which is just an hour and a bit before I normally e-mail if that helps work out the time). And President Maxwell reminded all the missionaries that the Skype calls should be between 45 minutes and 1 hour. It should be great! It certainly wont be as hard as the first Christmas call since I see you again in 6 months anyway! Also, for the Christmas season, if you haven't watched them already, you should watch the videos the church put out about Christmas. One is called "The Real Meaning of Christmas" and the other is like a music video called "What Shall We Give." They're both really good and help us remember the reason we have Christmas and the gifts we should really be focused on giving to others. You can find them either on LDS.org or probably on the church's youtube channel called 'Mormon Channel'. So I encourage you to watch those if you haven't seen them because they're awesome! So anyway, this past week was really good! Our missionary Christmas party went well and it was cool to see everyone that I haven't seen in a while. And I did get the packages for Christmas and birthday! Thank you so much for sending them! The rest of the week went really well also. Something really exciting that happened for us, the area, and the ward is that they put 2 sister missionaries in the Mooroolbark area too! When we met with Bishop last week and were talking about all the work that was going on in the area and how we had been blessed with so many things to do, he said it'd be great if they put another set of missionaries in the area. So he called up President Maxwell that night and asked if more missionaries could be placed in the area since it was growing so much and President agreed and put them in this Thursday! So it was a pretty quick response, which is awesome since we weren't expecting anything until next transfer. One of them is Sister Baker from Utah and the other is Sister Burton from Wales who just got in Australia that day. They also have a car and cover all the same area as us so the area should see heaps and heaps of further growth and miracles! We are very excited for all that will be accomplished with 2 sets of missionaries here, and it was a nice Christmas gift for the Mooroolbark ward haha. The only issue is that because members (especially the sisters) love sister missionaries they've stolen all of our dinner appointments, haha. But Bishop mentioned in Priesthood opening exercises that the members should make sure to feed both companionships haha. Perhaps it could be a blessing in disguise though because I want to lose weight in the last 6 months of the mission! haha. Over the year and a half here I've gone from about 75 kg to 85 kg (so nearly 20 pounds!) but in the past few weeks I've gone back down a bit to 82 kg which is a great Christmas miracle! That is probably not what you hope to hear about in my weekly e-mail but I thought I'd throw it in there haha. Anyway, the work is obviously going wonderful and we continue to see miracles all the time. Simone and Jack are pretty determined to be baptized on the 4th of January which is great! They are some of the most wonderful people I have been blessed to teach on the mission and have such a strong desire and testimony already and we know they will be strong members of the church. So we are very confident in them reaching that date for baptism. Shannon and Van we unfortunately weren't able to see this past week (it's been kind of hard to set up appointments with several people, as well as getting member fellowship because everyone is too busy preparing for Christmas) but Shannon came to church and goes to the YSA convention just after Christmas with some of the members from the ward which hopefully will give her some good spiritual experiences and help her further prepare for her baptism on the 25th of January. We also found a really interested Burmese family this past week who also have dates for the 25th of January as well for baptism and seem very keen for that. We passed them over to the sister missionaries when they arrived so they will continue to teach them. Speaking of Burmese people, Mary is still doing really well! She hasn't missed church since she was baptized and she has such a wonderful spirit about her! When we saw her this past week she mentioned that she wanted to start bringing some of her Burmese friends to our church to help them feel as happy as she does, which is awesome! She also is going to go help some of the other missionaries teach a Burmese investigator as well, so she is very involved in the Gospel even though her English is still fairly basic and she is almost 70. Since we didn't have as many appointments as usual this week due to the busy Christmas season we had more time to find new people, and we had a lot of success in finding many new people to teach. This coming week should be busy as well, especially on Christmas! We have member families to go to for breakfast, lunch, and dinner as well as another investigator family for dinner so we will be filled to the brim after that day is finished! We also have a little Christmas tree set up in the flat so we can feel a bit festive! Anyway, I hope you have a wonderful Christmas week and day and that it's filled with miracles and that you can feel the Spirit of Christ and of the season at all times! Thanks for all you do for me and again thanks for packages, I'm always very grateful for the things you do for me! I look forward to 'seeing' you this week as well. I love you heaps and I'll talk to you again soon!

 

Love,

 

Elder Hopkins

December 16, 2013

G'day!

 

Thanks so much for the e-mail this week, it was a great one! Sounds like a lot of exciting things are going on, on top of the already exciting time of the year! I'm really glad you got your birthday card on your birthday Dad! That's pretty cool how it worked out that way! This first week of the transfer was another good one. So I guess you probably want to know about my new companion, eh? So his name is Elder Lau and he is from Hong Kong. So my quest to have companions from all over the world continues (so far it's been England, Japan, Tahiti, Samoa, Tonga, New Zealand, Oregon, Australia, Utah, and now China!) haha. He was actually born in England (in the same town as Elder Rafferty!) because his parents were there studying at the time but they moved back to Hong Kong after 2 months. He has been out on his mission for 1 year and speaks really good English (because in Hong Kong, when it was still a British colony, all children learnt English. And he also studied at university in Utah at Dixie College and UVU). He grew up in the Gospel but both his parents are converts to the church. So it should be a really good transfer! I don't know if I mentioned it last week but this transfer is actually 7 weeks long, I don't know why, maybe just to make up for the 5 week transfer a couple of months ago. So our next transfer isn't until January 28th. It is scary to think that I am only in the mission field for 4 more transfers! AHHH! It's going so fast and no doubt it will just get even faster as I go along. Elder Afele, by the way, is in an area called Werribee, which is in the same Zone as Geelong, so hopefully he enjoys it there! Simone and Jack are still going pretty well, they won't be getting baptized this Saturday though because they've missed church for a few Sundays and also Simone is still trying to give up some things. Her dad, who's 85 or so, actually might be passing away today as well because of kidney cancer, which isn't very good! That's been the cause of them missing a few times at church lately because of a bunch of family things they have to do in preparation for it. They still have a strong desire to be baptized though, so it is just a matter of 'when' now. Most likely it will be early January at this point. We also have 2 other investigators right now who are preparing to be baptized in January, Shannon, who I've talked about before in the past a few times I believe, and Van, a new investigator from Burma. They are both working towards the 25th of January, Shannon seems very keen for it, and we will have to see how it goes with Van since we have only taught him once so far. But it is good that the Lord continues to bless us with things when other things fall through and we are always able to find new people to teach. We also had a cool experience during the missionary trade-offs program on Tuesday night. We were just going around to visit some members on the ward list that hadn't been in a very long time and not much information was known about them. We visited one named Brenden, and he answered the door and was very friendly and asked if we could come back the next day because they were just sitting down for tea (dinner). So Elder Lau and I went back the next day and he let us in and we met his wife and new baby and had a really good meeting with him. He's from Zimbabwe originally (he's Caucasian in skin color though) and was baptized about 12 years ago. He hasn't been at church or actively engaged in the Gospel in 10 years though, but as we talked he told us he has just felt something missing since he went away and especially more recently and he felt it was the Gospel that was missing in his life. It was good we saw him then because his family leaves to Zimbabwe on a trip this week until the 25th of January, but he said when they get back he wants to start becoming involved in the church again (his wife isn't a member of the church)! So that was a pretty cool miracle to find him. We met with Bishop this past week as well and he gave us heaps of people to go try to visit and we've been able to contact a few of them which has been good. This area has become great to work in because in many areas you usually are tracting or finding new people to teach for a little while each day, but here we've had to practically cancel things in order to make time for those activities. So we are staying super busy which is great and makes the time just fly by so fast! Yesterday was really good as well because the Stake put on a big Christmas music presentation in the evening. It featured a big Stake choir, a big orchestra, and a lot of vocalists and solos, all of course telling the story of the birth of Christ. It was 2 hours long and was really excellent! We had tried to invite everyone that we could to come and attend it, investigators and less-active members, and quite a few were able to come (at least from what we saw, the stake center was packed so we couldn't see everyone that came or left). So we are very excited for this transfer and know we will continue to see heaps of miracles! It might be a fraction difficult to keep up the amount of appointments we've been having over the next 2 weeks since it is Christmas and everyone is busy with all sorts of things, but we hope to still see some great success from our efforts. As always I am so thankful for all the love and support for me! I hope you continue to have a wonderful Christmas season as well! I will probably coordinate times for Skype next Monday, but if you could e-mail me your Skype account name again that would be helpful! I hope you have a wonderful week and I love you heaps! Talk to you soon!

 

Love,

 

Elder Hopkins

December 9, 2013

G'day!

 

Another wonderful week has gone by fast in Mooroolbark! This past week was actually the last week of the transfer so I guess I will update you on the news there. So Elder Afele will be moving and I will be staying in the area. We were sad that we both couldn't stay together in the area, especially during Christmas time, since we'd been having heaps of success. However, we know the miracles will continue to come for both of us. Elder Afele will actually be becoming a Zone Leader which is pretty cool, but we don't know what area it will be in. So I find out who my new companion will be tomorrow at transfer meeting. Anyway, this past week was excellent again and the work continues to roll forth greatly! We are continuing to be very blessed by the Lord with opportunities to teach, and for the past 4 weeks we have been able to teach 84 lessons in total! So we have been able to steadily maintain between 20 and 21 lessons per week, and the ward has been fantastic in helping us as well as they are all stepping up to take part in the work, whether it is fellowshipping investigators we have or bringing their friends to church/activities. A great example of the success you can have when missionaries and members work together was on Saturday. The Mooroolbark ward had a big Christmas party at the chapel that they'd put a lot of effort into. We made an effort to invite as many investigators as we could to it because activities are always one of the best ways to help people get involved in the church and get to know the members. We were blessed to have 10 of our investigators come to the activity as well as a couple of less-active members, and some of the members brought some non-member friends as well. Heaps of the members went up to those of our investigators and fellowshipped them and talked to them throughout the activity (which was about 3 hours) and those that brought non-member friends introduced them to us. So because we were able to work well together and everyone was so friendly and welcoming to all who attended (of their own free will of course, not because they were asked to talk to any investigators) the activity turned into a huge success and all those that came really loved it. One of our investigator families that came that have 2 kids in their late teens actually told us on Sunday that the ward activity was actually the first time in a couple years that they had spent that much time together as a whole family, which was amazing to hear! So when the members are exemplifying the pure love of Christ and have a desire to actually work with the missionaries miracles are guaranteed to happen. Also at church this Sunday there was a less-active member who came who hasn't been to church essentially since he was baptized about a year ago and who we've been trying to help get there for several months, so that was another miracle. Simone and Jack are also still progressing really well and another example of how the members make all the difference is in Jack. When we first started teaching them Jack would kind of do his own thing and listen in occasionally but didn't really believe in God or Jesus Christ. But as we have been teaching them more and more he has been slowly becoming more interested in the Gospel and church. But the biggest change happened as he attended some of the youth activities the past few weeks and the young men really helped him feel included and made him instantly part of the group. Jack for the first time really felt loved and that he fit in in a group of people his age. He has loved it so much that on Saturday at the ward party Simone had to leave for an emergency but Jack actually begged her that he could stay and she agreed and let him stay for the remainder of the activity. The wonderful fellowship and love of the young men not only has effected Jack's feeling of fitting in but also has increased his desire and love for church and the Gospel. He actually told us last night over the phone that after reading the scriptures and praying more for the past little while that he now believes in God and in Christ! We were so overjoyed to hear that and felt so grateful that he and his mom have found the path of the Gospel to help them through a really difficult time of their lives and especially that the ward members young and old have helped them feel at home and loved. As each new week goes by as well we have been able to continue to receive from the Lord more of His children to teach and we are remaining very busy in the work trying to be able to visit each one of them during the week. We also found out another really cool thing this past week with one of our new Burmese investigators (there are heaps of Burmese people here in Mooroolbark). They are from the Chin state in Burma and said after we came the first time and taught them about the Restoration, they thought about the name of the church after the lesson for a while and remembered that when they were younger they actually attended The Church of Jesus Christ in their village their and some of them were baptized at age 8! Not only that but they said that heaps of other Burmese people here, who all currently go to a Baptist church simply because it is in their native language, also use to attend the church there! And there are about 900 Burmese people that go to the Baptist church here so who knows how many are actually members! We still have to investigate a bit to find out if it truly is our church they were talking about but nonetheless it was still pretty cool to find that out. We are also going to start a free English class for all of our Burmese investigators to help them to learn English so they can understand more of the Gospel when we teach them but also so they can become a more involved people in their society. One of the members who's 23 years old got back recently from teaching English in China and has agreed to help us with this each week, so we look forward to getting that started up probably next week. Mary (the Burmese lady who is our recent convert) is also doing amazing in the Gospel! We were unsure how she would go with continuing in the church after baptism, as in how much she would be able to understand and how far she would progress because of the language barrier, but she has continued to attend all 3 hours of church each week and is soaking up all the things that she is learning. We just finished teaching her about the Temple this past week and she will be preparing soon to go there. She obviously has a unique opportunity to do a wonderful work for her family since she is the only member of the church in her family. So everything is going so well here in Mooroolbark and we are loving the work! I'm very excited to be here for another transfer and look forward to this wonderful time of year! I love you heaps and I'm thankful as always for all that you do for me and all the prayers offered on behalf of my companion and I and also for those we are working with. I hope you have a fantastic week ahead this week and I'll talk to you again soon!

Love,

Elder Hopkins

December 2, 2013

G'day!

 

Thanks so much for the wonderful e-mail! Sorry it's taken until so late to be able to e-mail you back, we actually went to Healesville Sanctuary today which was awesome! If you remember, I went there very early in my mission when I was still with Elder Rafferty and it has all of the Australian animals and such. We went with all the District (so 10 of us altogether) and because of the times of some of the shows there we had to leave earlier and thus we didn't have time to do e-mails, hence why I am writing to you now. Anyway, I will unfortunately have to be a bit quicker again which I am sorry about, but I hope to be able to get down all of the important things. So we had some unfortunate news on Tuesday because at 1 pm the assistants to President Maxwell called and said that Elder Wood had to be packed and ready to move areas by 3 pm. There was another companionship where one of the missionaries was leaving so they needed someone else to replace him and since we were in a tripanionship we were kind of the 1st ones targeted, which is understandable. We were all sad though since we have been having heaps of great success and Elder Wood was also sad since he didn't get the chance to say goodbye to very many people after serving here (his 1st area) for 5 months. But it turns out he actually just went to the next area over from us in a place called Yarra Valley, so he is still in the same District as us, which meant that we saw him again today at Healesville Sanctuary haha. So even though we lost one of the members of the three musketeers, Elder Afele and I still had a successful week. Simone and Jack are still going really well and are reading heaps and obviously continuing to pray many times each day. Jack came to the young men's activity for the first time this past Tuesday and he really enjoyed it which was great. We have also started teaching some more part-member families in the ward as well which is always one of the best settings for missionary work. The Mooroolbark ward has also really started flourishing in missionary efforts of their own. So many of the members are starting to step out of their comfort zone and reach out to others in sharing the gospel in one way or another. They have all found a great joy come from that and everyone is starting to 'catch the wave' as Elder Russell M. Nelson said in General Conference. That obviously is great for the ward and the ward members, but it also has been helpful for us as well since we have been given several referrals for people to teach by the members in the past few weeks. On Wednesday we had a Zone Conference which was good and inspiring as always. Another cool thing that happened recently was we have started teaching a German man and his wife who have a fascination for American Indian history and culture. They were telling us when they were living in America for a few years they became good friends with a Native American man who told them a lot of history and stories that his people have. One of them that stood out to us (and any member of the church) was that there has been a story passed down for ages (much earlier than the first Spanish settlers) among his race of people of a man who came down to them and told them he was a messenger sent from God and how this man taught the Natives the law of God and visited them a few times and would pray with them and minister to them. I found that pretty incredible coming from an actual Native American that there is an actual tale amongst the Indians that matches almost exactly the events in 3 Nephi of the Book of Mormon when Christ visits them. I believe the race of Native Americans that was being talked about is called the 'Hopi' Indians. There was also a really cool story with Mary (the Burmese lady who was baptized just 2 weeks ago) from this past week. She had been away for a few days and we hadn't been able to get a hold of her. Then we were talking to her fellowship on Thursday and she had just visited with Mary and told us what was going on. So after her baptism, President Maxwell had sent her a letter congratulating her (because he was involved in the baptismal interview, so that was very kind of him) but before it got to Mary her daughter and her daughter's husband (who she lives with and is Buddhist) took it and read it. Mary didn't actually get to read the letter until 5 days after. Her daughter and her husband got very angry with Mary and would just yell at her and say bad things about her, and they actually went around the house and threw away all pictures of them that Mary was in and said to her that she was no longer one of them. It was getting too much for Mary that she left for a few days to stay with a relative nearby (which is when we couldn't get a hold of her). But we were told by the fellowship (and Mary as well) that Mary just told the family that she knows it's true and right what she did and she will continue to be active in the church. So that was quite amazing to hear that Mary was so strong about it, but also sad that her family basically disowned her. So I think those things are all I have time to talk about this week. Thanks as always for all that you do for me! It's so hard to believe it is already December and that Christmas is so soon! I hope that you have a wonderful week this week and continue to see miracles and blessings as well as many opportunities for missionary work big and small! I love you heaps and I'll talk to you again soon!

 

Love,

 

Elder Hopkins

November 25, 2013

G'day!

 

Hope you have had a wonderful week this past week! Thanks for the e-mail and also for the Thanksgiving package! That was great and Elder Wood and Elder Afele enjoyed the extra's for them as well and say a big 'thanks'! We have had another great week this week and continue to see so many miracles! But unfortunately the internet at the place we do e-mails was down all morning so now we are able to do it (2:30) our time but have to be somewhere in a few minutes so I was pretty crushed knowing I can't e-mail too much info. The main big news for the week is that Simone and Jack are preparing for baptism on the 21st of December! They are really excited to work towards that date and the way it works out, Simone would actually be confirmed on her birthday!! Also, since you talked about Thanksgiving and Thanksgiving 'feasts' in your e-mail, you'll be glad to know that we had a big Thanksgiving feast yesterday with a family in the ward who has some Americans in their family and thus celebrate all the American holidays. So that was very enjoyable! We did have another amazing week this week and are continuing to see heaps of miracles. Over the past 2 weeks combined we've been able to teach 43 lessons, which is really good for us! We are busy literally all the time with people to see, and normally on the mission where my companions and I have had heaps of time to do tracting or talking to people on the street, we maybe get 5 hours maximum a week of finding because we have been blessed with so many appointments. So things are going excellent here in Mooroolbark! Sorry I can't e-mail much this week but hopefully I can make it up next week! Thanks a million for all the love and support and prayers! I love you heaps and I'll talk to you again soon!

 

Love,

 

Elder Hopkins