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