April 7, 2014

G'day!

 

Thanks for the e-mail this week! Thanks especially for all the work you did setting up all the classes at BYU, you did a great job I have to say! It seems like a very good schedule and I look forward to going there again in the Fall. Tell Garrett and his new wife congratulations, they seem like they will be very good together. And the other cousins look very grown up! So this past week was fairly ordinary. It was a lot of resting for Elder Suan and his injured ankle but now it feels much better which is good, so this week should be mostly back to normal. This week, because of the resting, we didn't have too many lessons but we still were able to do a bit of teaching. We've made a big change in the area in that we are no longer teaching basically any of the people we've had in our teaching pool. None of the Burmese people that we've been teaching have been keeping commitments or coming to church unfortunately, and so because they weren't showing any desire to seriously investigate we've stopped teaching them for the moment. Hopefully in the future (perhaps when the Book of Mormon is translated into their language, since it's difficult to get a testimony without that) missionaries will be able to have success with them. The good thing though is that they all know about the church now where they didn't before and they have a good perception of the missionaries so it will be easy for Elders or Sisters in the future to contact them again. So we are basically starting fresh (obviously we have some we're teaching already who are English speaking) so we will be doing heaps of finding over the next 2 weeks, and then we'll see what happens at transfers. The 40-Day fast program has officially finished now and it went quite well. A lot of the members were more motivated than normal to do missionary work since they all knew the whole ward was a part of it, and from that there came about some good missionary opportunities. And it hasn't ended completely, in the fact that we will still be visiting all the families about every 2 weeks to follow up on their progress with certain people or ideas their working with. Hopefully one day they can do it in our ward because I found it to be a fantastic program and know it can really lift a ward to new heights. The Easter Fireside was really good last night as well. We didn't have any investigators who were able to attend, but there were a few less-active members who were able to come and they really enjoyed it. There were also 4 baptisms yesterday as well, so the ward is continuing to grow. This week is the quarterly interviews with President Maxwell which is always great to have the opportunity to have some one on one time with him. It's so difficult to believe that there is such little time left on my mission. It's obviously great to know I've been able to accomplish a lot but it will be so hard to leave the mission. I will continue to do my best to make the most of the last of it and so that I can always have great memories of finishing strong. I'm so grateful for all of the support you have given me over the course of my mission. I hope that you have a fantastic week and I love you very much! Talk to you again soon!

Love,

 

Elder Hopkins

March 31, 2014

G'day!

 

Thanks so much for the e-mail! Glad all is well. So today's e-mail is going to be really short because I only have about 30 minutes to e-mail. For P-Day today we are going into the city as a Zone and thus have to take an early train, and also the library computers weren't open for a little while so we were unlucky today. But that's alright. So this week was interesting, it was themed the "sick and broken" week. So for a few weeks now Elder Suan has had pain in his ankle and so we went to a doctor to have it looked at and he said it was a torn ligament. So Elder Suan from that day was told to rest his ankle for 2 weeks in order for it to heal, and Sister Maxwell (who is sort of the missionary doctor) said to keep the work level to about 20%. So unfortunately we couldn't do very much this week, but I was able to go on exchanges twice with other missionaries last week so I was able to go out for a little bit. And then on top of that I got really sick as well with just a big head cold, so both of us were out for the count. And on top of THAT the Mooroolbark sister missionaries got really sick as well, so it was just pretty ridiculous how the entire area was basically shut down for a bit of time because all of the missionaries were incapable of working. But we're all starting to heal so hopefully it will be back to normal soon. Elder Suan still has 9 days of rest so it wont be until next week that he can do a whole lot, and that's only if it has fully healed. In other news, this is the last week of the 40 day fast, so hopefully everyone can finish strong. One good thing that happened was that a returning less-active member we've been working with said he was ready to prepare for the Melchizedek Priesthood, so we're excited for him! With the rest of our investigators there aren't any at the moment who are shining forth, partly because they haven't been keeping commitments, but also because we weren't able to see many this week. But hopefully this week turns out a bit better and healthier for us! We have an Easter music fireside coming up this Sunday (similar to the one they had in December, I think I'd mentioned it to you) which will hopefully be a good opportunity for investigators to come. Anyway, my time went very fast because I still have to send the weekly e-mail to President Maxwell as well and we leave soon. Thanks for all your support! Amazing that there is only a few weeks left that I will be writing from across the world. It will certainly be a bitter-sweet experience when the time arises to finish. I hope you have a great week and I'll talk to you again soon! Love you heaps!

 

Love,

 

Elder Hopkins

March 24, 2014

G'day!

 

Thanks heaps for the e-mails this week! So many exciting things happening! Thanks especially for the updates on some of my friends, it's great to hear about all of them! So this week was pretty good, not as successful as other weeks have been but still good nonetheless. Something really great that I found out this past week was about one of the families I used to teach. If you remember from my time in Geelong I was teaching the Craig family (Rastafari and Jess) and their daughter Tayah was baptized the last weekend I was in the area. Anyway, this past weekend they were sealed together in the Melbourne Temple! So that was awesome to hear that they've kept progressing strong and were able to participate in such a wonderful ordinance. The 40 day fast program is also continuing to move along well. Heaps of members are starting to have really good experiences and so us and the sisters are keeping busy following up with all of them. The highlight of this past week though was being able to attend the Temple again (not with the Craigs, just as part of the mission Temple cycle). This time was probably the best experience I've had in the Temple thus far, I received a lot of inspiration and guidance. This past week investigator wise was ok. We unfortunately had no one at church this week and we also decided to stop teaching a few investigators for the time being because they weren't keeping their commitments and they were showing no desire to continuing learning. Our finding continues to be very good though as there are always new people that we are able to teach that come along when others stop investigating. Another good thing that happened this week was that we finally got a Gospel Principles teacher. For ages the missionaries would have to teach the class but finally there is a member who is able to teach the class each week (which is how it is supposed to be). Other than those things the past week was pretty ordinary so I can't think of anything to write haha. A good quote that I heard this past week was "Always keep yourself available for the Lord." In other words, always be prepared to help out in a Gospel sense, whether it is going to give someone a blessing, volunteering to help out at service projects, being a 24/7 home or visiting teacher not just a once a month friend, etc. Obviously everyone has things that they need to attend to that keep us all busy but we should never let our priority of serving the Lord fall to 2nd place on the ladder, because that is our most important duty and the one which will have the most long-lasting impact. Anyway, my computer time has run out so I will have to end this quick. I love you! Have a great week and talk to you again soon.

 

Love,

 

Elder Hopkins

March 17, 2014

G'day!

 

Thanks heaps for the long e-mail this week! I enjoyed reading it as always! In response to some of your comments in the e-mail--yes Madsen is getting married soon! Him and I have regular contact so I'd heard about it when it first happened but I didn't think to mention it to you, but I'm glad you saw. They are getting married on May 17th, so you should try and ask him or his ol' folks for the time of the reception, I'm sure he would appreciate that! Also, update with the Burmese DVD, the person that we talked to in the office didn't know of any Burmese DVD so we are going to ask the sister who told us to talk to them so she could possibly help them find it more easily. I'm always happy to hear you get the chance to feed the missionaries! What a blessing it is to have them around more frequently as opposed to never having them for 9 years because there weren't enough of them. So on to our week. It was extremely busy for us as we were blessed this week to teach 32 lessons, which is 12 more than the goal for the mission on a weekly basis per companionship. So the Lord has given us responsibility over a large amount of people here and so we are always on the go. We are still teaching heaps of Burmese but a good portion of them now speak a pretty good amount of English, several of them speak normally, which is great. Our concern at the start was that if we worked hard and got a lot of Burmese investigators that all of the work would stop if Elder Suan left, but that wont be the case luckily. One of the greatest miracles we saw was a testament to Alma 37:6. We had the opportunity 2 weeks ago to speak to a youth group in another church (our investigator was the leader of that group) which had ages from like 3 years old to 15 years old. So one of the things we decided to share with them was to teach them how to sing the hymn 'I Am a Child of God.' They did a pretty good job and we thought that was just a 'small and simple thing' that we did. But when we were talking to our investigator on Saturday, he said that prior Sunday all the youth got up and performed 'I Am a Child of God' in the main meeting of the church for the whole congregation! So we were pretty surprised to hear that! So as the scripture says, small things bring about great things. Perhaps none of those kids will join the church now (obviously some because they are too young) but hopefully they will always remember learning and singing that song and maybe one day they will meet the church again and hear that song and it will spark the memory. We also met a really awesome Burmese guy this week who is really good at speaking English and is very smart and influential for the Burmese people here. He has had some cool experiences in his life and after talking with him for a little while he wants to try to bring all the young people (as in like 20 and under) from his church to attend one of our meetings (that's like over 100 people) because he feels they should learn more about other faiths as well to educate themselves. Whatever his motive for it though that is really exciting! So we have a meeting set up with him for this week and we will talk about it more with him. Also the idea for an interfaith activity is starting to progress as we brought it up in P.E.C. this Sunday and they all like the idea. So we will be working with the Elders Quorum and Relief Society Presidents to organize something to happen in the next few weeks. Hopefully the other church will be happy to participate. Church was very good this week and it was great to have President and Sister Maxwell speak in the Mooroolbark ward. We invited heaps of people this week to come and a lot of them said they would, but unfortunately only 1 came. However, it was the teacher in another church that I talked about a few weeks ago, so it was a great Sunday for him to attend. He really enjoyed the meeting and said anytime he is able to he will continue to come. The 40-Day fast is also going pretty well, this is the week that we start all of the follow-ups with the members so we hope that they have worked hard to keep the commitments that have been given to them. The sister missionaries are also doing really well. They have a family who is working towards being baptized on the 5th of April. Simone and Jack are doing much better as well. Jack is still loving the Gospel and Simone, after working very closely with Bishop for an extended period of time, has overcome a lot of challenges. So we are very glad to see them continue to stay strong. So everything continues to progress well here and we are thankfully staying busy all the time. As always your love and support is wonderful! I love you heaps and I'll talk to you again soon! Have a great week!

 

Love,

 

Elder Hopkins

 

 

 Elder Hopkins, Elder Suan, and the youth from another church in Mooroolbark.

March 10, 2014

G'Day!

 

Thanks heaps for the e-mail this week! That's fantastic that the Elders there are working hard and I really like that idea you included that they used for helping members go and fellowship the families, we will definitely try that out here. Also glad to here that everything is ok for BYU this fall! Tell Tanner congratulations on his mission call, he'll love it. How is Ryan going with his mission? Thanks so much especially for getting the line of authority for me. It's really exciting to look at all in our line, especially seeing that there are just 3 people between me and prophets! So obviously we found out transfer news on Saturday and the news is that Elder Suan is staying and that I am also staying! Exciting! So this will be my 4th transfer in Mooroolbark and then I will only have 1 transfer left (scary!) so I might end up 'dying' in my mission here. That would be pretty cool if I did since not many people serve in only 4 areas on their mission. We're both really excited for this transfer because we feel heaps of great things will happen in the next few weeks. We found out something pretty cool this past week that was an answer to our struggle with language and the Gospel. One of the past missionaries from this mission who's living in our ward said that once on her mission she and her companion were teaching a Burmese family and they got from the mission office a DVD that was in Burmese that had testimonies from a lot of the first members there and how the family was really touched by it and felt the Spirit. So we were very happy to hear that and we will hopefully be able to get some from the office soon. That will no doubt be a massive help for our teaching pool and we hope it will be a turning point for several of our investigators in their conversions. Yes we are still teaching Ellen and Jobe, they just haven't been progressing much lately, Ellen because her Pastor told her she is only allowed to be baptized once in her life which caused some doubt and confusion with her, and Jobe just because he's been very busy with work and school. We did see him last week though and he is still reading, which is good, and we plan on inviting him to be baptized this coming week when we see him. We will try and especially encourage all our investigators to attend church this week because President and Sister Maxwell are coming to speak in our ward as part of our 40 Day Fast program. The program is going pretty well so far, all the members have people or activities they've committed to act upon and the follow-up is just starting with them so hopefully the fruits of their labors will start to show. We are still in sort of the same position as last week with a majority of our investigators: we are teaching them once or twice a week, they are reading and praying (if they are able to read English), but they are having a hard time attending church and aren't ready to accept dates for baptism. We had the idea though just last night to try and organize some sort of interfaith activity with the Chin Baptist church and our church. Whether its a big BBQ/picnic or some other activity, it would be a great help for both sides. On our side it would help the members have opportunities to become friends with them and learn more about them and their culture. And on their side it would help them have more English-speaking friends (most of them have none) and they would feel more comfortable with the church. So we will talk to Bishop about it this week and see how he feels about it. This month is also Temple month for us which is always a great experience. But anyway, that is essentially all that is new here at the moment, we are still as busy as ever and hope to continue to keep the momentum up this transfer. Also, on a cool little side note, in Burma they just recently received the first set of young proselyting missionaries and they already are having some good success! So that is great that the church will hopefully start growing more there. I hope you continue to see many blessings at home as well and that you have a great week! I love you heaps and I'll talk to you again soon!

 

Love,

 

Elder Hopkins

March 3, 2014

G'day!

 

Thanks for the e-mail this week! Just in response to some things from your e-mail, Sister Burton is better now and they are back to working in the area, which is great, so thanks for your prayers on their behalf. And that's great that you've made some progress on the line of authority, that will definitely be cool to look at when it's ready. And a big thanks to everyone else who sent an e-mail this week! I loved hearing from you all and greatly appreciate your love and support! This past week was really good for us. Our strengths have always been being able to be busy with a lot of teaching appointments and new investigators, but our weakness has been having people commit or accept a day to prepare for baptism. All of them have a sincere desire to find truth and also find out if the church is true, the only problem is that they can't read the Book of Mormon. There are several of the Burmese investigators we have who are capable of reading it and understanding most of what they read, but the majority of them can't read English, which obviously makes it difficult in a quest to find if it's true. However, the ones who do understand English say they feel good and feel the Spirit as they read it, so we hope they will be able to act on those feelings and promptings. But I know that the Spirit can cross all barriers, including language barriers, since Mary was baptized and has been active ever since even though her English wasn't too great. So we hope that we will be able to see some miracles soon with some of our investigators. The Sudanese family we're teaching is going really well though. They were able to come to church for all 3 hours this Sunday and really enjoyed it! They've been fellowshipped by the members very well and they'll be at church again next Sunday. We hope to talk more about baptism with them this coming week. We also had Zone Conference this past week which was great as always. We had visiting and speaking to us Elder and Sister Taylor who are the Pacific Area Mental Health advisors. They talked about how to have good relationships with our companions and other things relating towards maintaining good physical and mental health during our missions, which are things that they don't often cover or talk about. Since the age change and there being younger missionaries in the field, there apparently have been a lot of problems with emotional and mental stress in the missionaries, so Elder and Sister Taylor have been going and speaking to the 18 missions they cover in the area. Also this past week the 40 day fast has started and it has gone average so far. We had 3 of the 6 families signed up first actually fast, so 50% success rate isn't exactly desired, so we hope that the rest of the members make a more concerted effort throughout this week. Well unfortunately the computers this week don't have as much time as usual because they're reserved for some other activity so I will have to make this shorter than normal. But everything is going well and we are loving the work! Hard to believe it's already the last week of the transfer, so we will continue to work hard this week and find out Saturday night if there are any changes. Thanks for all you do and I hope you have a great week this week as well! I love you heaps and I'll talk to you next week!

 

Love,

 

Elder Hopkins

February 24, 2014

G'day!

 

As always, I loved the e-mail this week! So many exciting things happening, if you see Ryan again sometime soon tell him congratulations and I'm very excited for him because he will have so many great experiences. That's great that there are so many missionaries out at the moment in our ward and the other wards, there is always a need for more serving! Tell Alyssa happy 10th birthday for me! And thanks for the suggestion about BYU, I will remember that for this Sunday. Hard to believe there is only 2 weeks left in this transfer and after that there are only 2 transfers left on my mission. The time just melts away so fast the closer you get to the end, which is sad, but you just have to continue to work hard and make the most of it! Thanks heaps also for looking up the lineage for me, hopefully they are able to get the correct information without too much difficulty. So each week is a great week in Mooroolbark and the past one was no exception to that. We continue to see many blessings. We did have a few disappointing things this week though, one of them being church attendance. We had 8 people who were confirmed to come to church with members to pick them up but within the last 24 hours before church 6 of them cancelled for various reasons, so we were a bit sad about that especially since the talks were really great in Sacrament. It always seems to be the case that the very best Sacrament meetings for your investigators are the ones when nobody shows up haha. But we hope they will all be there next Sunday. The Pencostal teacher agreed to come check out our church next Sunday as well which will be very interesting to see what he thinks, especially since it's testimony meeting-a.k.a. the scariest sacrament meeting for missionaries hahaha. Ellen wasn't able to come to church either yesterday which means her baptismal date will have to be changed, which is unfortunate but hopefully it won't have to be pushed back very far. We were fasting on Sunday for all the investigators we currently have who are seriously reading and praying about the Book of Mormon at this present time that they can receive and recognize their answers to the truthfulness of it. So we hope this week we will be able to see some fruits from that fast. One really good thing that happened this past week was with the Sudanese family I mentioned last week. The daughter, Monica, was able to go to young women's on Tuesday and had a really great time! All the young women really made her feel welcome and a part of the group and Monica is excited to continue to be involved in the Young Women's program, so we look forward to continuing to see their family progress. Also on Tuesday we had a really great experience with the weekly splits with the ward. We were trying to contact some people on the ward list who we didn't know and most of them had moved house. However, we met one man named Adam who was at the correct address. He is an awesome guy! We talked with him for about 30 minutes and found out he's been less-active in the church for about 15 years but still remembers a lot about it. He said even though he wasn't attending church he was still praying and reading the scriptures. After talking he said he was happy for us to start visiting him on a fairly regular basis and that he felt sometime in the near future he would be ready to come back to church again. So that was a pretty good miracle for us this past week! Another cool thing this past weekend was that on Saturday it was the Chin (a state from Burma--Elder Suan and all the Burmese people we are teaching are from the Chin state) National Day. So all the Chin people from Australia came down to celebrate the anniversary of the national day, and it just happened to be a few minutes from where we live! So it was perfect timing for Elder Suan to be here. We got permission to go to the national day festival and were able to meet a lot of people, so it was a great opportunity. So everything is continuing to progress here which is good, and we are excited for the 40-Day Fast which starts tomorrow which we know will keep us very busy and bring heaps of miracles to the area and ward. Thanks for you support and love and e-mails! They always help a lot! I hope you have a great week this week and I'll talk to you again soon! Love you heaps!

 

Love,

 

Elder Hopkins