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