February 3, 2014

G'Day!

 

Thanks heaps for the e-mail this week! Sorry I'm e-mailing later than usual this week, we've been busy with so many things. So anyway it's been an interesting week! Tuesday morning I woke up and just started throwing up heaps! Great way to start the week and the e-mail. I felt so sick the whole day and the following day wasn't much better. So I missed transfer meeting and I also missed the meeting where we are assigned with our new missionaries, which I was sad about, but I needed to recover unfortunately. However, I'm all better now which is good! Elder Lau went to an area called Morrabin. My new companion is the man! My whole e-mail could be written about him haha. So his name is Elder Suan and he is the perfect missionary for this area because he is from Burma! So he's an answer to prayers for sure and will have a great impact on the people here since there are so many Burmese people. All the members were so excited to meet him on Sunday and Bishop Beckwith was especially excited since they all know about the Burmese people in Mooroolbark as well. So Elder Suan converted to the church 3 years ago from the Baptist church and is currently 21 years old. There are 5 brothers and 1 sister and his parents, but only he and 4 other brothers are members. His brother (who's currently a branch president there) is the one who invited him to church and he later met with some senior missionaries. There are no proselyting missionaries aloud in Burma so those are the only missionaries that can go there. He is a part of the only branch in all of Burma which has between 30-40 active members, and he is only about the 12th missionary from Burma to ever serve and the first ever in this mission! So it's a massive honor and responsibility to be serving with him. I've never felt so overwhelmed with responsibility to a companion before since I am obviously showing him the basics of being a missionary, teaching him English (which is pretty good but still has a lot of improvment room), and teaching him a lot about the Gospel as well because he still doesn't know too much about it but the most important thing is that he knows it's the true church. His life goal is to be able to translate the Book of Mormon, and many other church materials, into Burmese since they don't have it in their language yet. So he is awesome and has a really bright future. He's very hard-working and already very good at talking to people and teaching the Gospel. It's been a big blessing thus far because most of the Burmese people we've been teaching here speak limited English but he's able to talk to them in their own language and thus answer their questions better and teach them more powerfully. On his first full proselyting day in the mission field he gave away 4 copies of the Book of Mormon to Burmese families so he's doing great! We know there will be heaps of miracles this transfer as he helps the Burmese people come to a greater knowledge of the truth of the restored Gospel. Our investigators that we have are continuing to progress well and Ellen was able to come to church for the first time this week and stayed for all 3 hours! So that was awesome to see and she really loved it and is excited to come again. We are starting the 40 day fast 2 Sundays from now which will bring many more miracles as well! So exciting things are happening in Mooroolbark as always. Well since I started later I also have to finish sooner, but hopefully this is enough for this week. I love the work and everything is going great! Thanks for all that you've done for me and continue to do for me on my mission. I love you heaps and I'll talk to you again soon!

 

Love,

 

Elder Hopkins