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
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