February 10, 2014

G'day!

 

Thanks for the e-mail this week! And also a big thanks to everyone else who has sent little notes the past 2 or so weeks, they make my day! I'm grateful for all the support throughout my mission that has helped make it the incredible experience it has been. This past week was really good as most weeks are. Elder Suan and I have unofficially become the Burmese speaking missionaries for the Mooroolbark ward haha. The sister missionaries are teaching most of the English speaking families and investigators right now because 1) a lot of them are females, and they have a bit of an advantage on us with connecting and relating to them and 2) we are luckily extremely busy already with all the investigators and Burmese that we are teaching that we don't have time to teach all the others too. Mooroolbark has been such a great experience for me because basically ever since I got here and was serving with Elder Afele and Elder Wood, we've been having anywhere between 15 and 24 lessons every week so we've been blessed to be very busy. And since with Elder Suan being a new, language-learning missionary that's 2 extra hours of study every morning which makes our schedules even more packed. It's been good with Elder Suan because he's a great teacher and is able to help the Burmese people understand more by frequently explaining to them things in their own language, but of course I'm not just a fly on the wall but still am teaching just as I normally would. As I said before the Burmese people are mostly Baptist and it's very difficult for them to change even if they know the church is true because if they do the entire Burmese community, including their own family, shuns them. Which if you remember is what happened with Mary and her family, but she is so strong so she stayed true to what she knew. So most of them that we teach understand and accept what we teach, but the progress towards conversion and baptism could be a longer one than normal because it's a hard decision to choose to be on your own, which is unfortunate that that is how it is. There's one investigator we're teaching though who's name is Jobe (Joe-bee) who seems very interested in the gospel. He was at church yesterday for the first time and really enjoyed it and the members were very good at introducing themselves and making him feel welcome. What helps him to be much closer towards conversion and baptism is that he isn't regularly attending a Baptist church (some other church) and he doesn't live with parents who he relies on for financial support. So if he were to join, he wouldn't have to go through as much difficulties of being 'on his own.' And of course in saying all of these things I'm in no way saying anything bad about the Baptist church specifically or the Burmese people, it's just a part of their culture that they stick to the family's way or they stick to their own way. So because of Jobe's situation at the moment we feel he could be prepared for baptism very soon. The biggest difference maker for our investigators and for any investigators I think is when they make the effort to come to church on a consistent basis so they have the opportunity to feel the Spirit and see the restored gospel in action, so Jobe and several others have already made that step and because of that they are the ones who start progressing more and have more of a desire to learn. Also, at church, the Sacrament program was an introduction to the 40-Day fast program starting on the 25th of February as a way of informing all the members about it and helping them to be excited for it. So the first speaker was one of the sister missionaries, Sister Baker, and she talked about what the program was and what the members' responsibility was. I was the second speaker and talked about fasting, what it is and the blessing that we receive from it. And then Bishop Beckwith spoke last about the law of the harvest and about aligning our will with the Lord's will. It all turned out really well and all the members are very enthusiastic and optimistic about the program and in just the first day of signing up families we've covered 24 of the days (with a lot of them having 2 families on a day), so everyone is very willing to be involved. We know it will bring so many miracles and strengthen the ward and it's members. So everything is continuing to progress in Mooroolbark and it's only the 3rd week of the transfer, so we know the rest of it will be very busy for us! I hope you have a wonderful week this week and continue to see many miracles of your own! I love you heaps and I'll talk to you again soon!

 

Love,

 

Elder Hopkins