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.
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