May 26, 2014

G'day!

 

Thanks so much for the e-mail. It's amazing that this is only the 2nd to last time I will be e-mailing you from Australia. It probably...no definitely won't sink in until I'm back at home, and even then might take a few days. Hopefully I'll be able to be busy enough so that I don't have too much time to miss the mission field! Thank goodness for the hope the Plan of Salvation gives us of being able to be with all our righteous and faithful brothers and sisters again. This past week has just flown by and no doubt this one will be even faster! We had Zone Conference this past Wednesday and that was great as always. As most things are at this point it was my 'last' Zone Conference. We were able to see Mary again this past week too. She is pretty amazing because since she doesn't have too much to do she reads the Book of Mormon most of the day and she's actually translated into her own language a majority of 1st Nephi! Who knows how close it is in meaning but nonetheless we thought that was a very touching thing. Another cool experience we heard about her just this morning from her main member fellowship happened to her yesterday. I'll try to recount it as best as I can. So the member had talked to her on Saturday to see which ward she wanted to attend yesterday, she lives in the boundaries of another ward in the Stake but prefers to go to our ward since she feels more comfortable there at this stage. She said she would come to our ward this Sunday but in the morning she didn't show up. So later in the afternoon the member called her to find out what happened and to see if she was ok. Mary told her she had decided she would try to go to the Doncaster ward (the one in which she is meant to go to). She went on the train and when she got to that city she didn't know where to go, so she decided she would just look for the building with the tallest tower, haha. So as she walked she ended up finding the church but didn't know where the entrance was. When she walked around and found one she saw a man standing just inside the door who was smiling at her. As she went in he said, "You must be Mary!" (she'd never been to that ward or known any members there). She answered, "Yes, yes! I'm Mary!" He showed her in and she met some of the sisters in the ward who agreed they would pick her up for church every week. So that was a pretty cool miracle I thought! Our other families are going well, as I said before I can't update much on them because at this point we're just waiting for their marriages to happen. Another great thing that happened this past week was that Elder Suan and I were finally able to see our Burmese investigator Jobe again! It'd been a very long time since we'd seen him and we're going back to see him again this week which is great! On a side note, there's a member in our ward who is a very good Osteotherapist (I think that's what it's called haha) and on Saturday morning I had him take a look at my neck because it's given me pain and discomfort for quite some time. If you remember that time when I hurt it at the trampoline place a few years ago I think that's what it was from. But anyway, I don't know if you've ever been treated by an Osteo for anything but there just nice and peacefully stretching your neck out and then all of a sudden *CRACK* they like twist your neck quickly and it pops heaps. It was pretty startling since I'd never had anything like that before and I didn't expect it haha but it feels better already. He's looking at it again on Friday and then will refer me to a member he knows close to our home where I can go after I get back. So that's all I have time for this week, thanks for all that you do! I hope you have a wonderful week this week! I love you heaps and I'll talk to you again soon!

 

Love,

 

Elder Hopkins

May 19, 2014

G'day!

 

Thanks for the great e-mail this week! It's always great to hear about how everything is going. I think these last few weeks of e-mailing might be a bit shorter than normal because it seems we are rushing around everywhere to try to do as much as possible before I leave. But anyway, this past week was a pretty good week for us. This past week we were finally able to have a lesson with the Sudanese family we were teaching a little while back, if you remember, and we were able to set a baptismal date with the mom for the 14th of June. So hopefully she continues to progress to that date after I leave. It's a really strange feeling when you set things up for when you know you'll no longer be here! We also were able to start teaching another less-active member family this past week which is always a good opportunity to help bring back the lost sheep. We also were able to have a meal with Mary (the Burmese recent convert from back in November--amazing how long I've been in the area!) this past week which was great! If you don't remember what happened, after her daughter found out and basically dis-owned her as a mother for being baptized because of the difficulty of living there she went to live in Sydney for a few months. The day she moved was like the same day Elder Suan got to Australia, so it was sad at first that he didn't have the chance to meet her and vice versa. But just 3 weeks ago she moved back here to a town close to Mooroolbark and so Elder Suan and her were able to meet for the first time. They were very happy to have the opportunity to meet each other and will likely see each other again in Burma (obviously Elder Suan will be back after his mission but she is planning to move back in like 2 years as well). Sunday was interesting this week. During the passing of the Sacrament towards the end of it one of the older men there (Brother Blair, he and his wife were senior missionaries for the mission for about my first year of being here) started feeling faint and then passed out. So many brethren rushed to his aid and someone called an ambulance and they helped him out of the chapel and the ambulance took him away. Apparently he had a mild heart attack, but now he's doing ok. Everything else is going good as usual, the returning less-active girl, Danielle, was able to meet with Bishop on Sunday as well which was great. Thanks for all your love and support! I hope you have another great week this week. I love you heaps and I'll talk to you soon!

 

Love,

 

Elder Hopkins

May 12, 2014

G'day!

 

Thanks for the e-mail as always! It was great being able to Skype with you yesterday! And happy official Mother's Day for you today! I'm very lucky to have such a wonderful mother. So this week was good and as always we were able to see many blessings. One of the greatest came on Wednesday. So as a Zone we've been doing zone prayers, which is where the whole zone prays for a specific companionship over a period of a couple of days until they have a stand-out miracle. And we were blessed to be the ones being prayed for at the beginning of the week. So they started praying for us on Monday night and on Tuesday it was just a pretty normal day, nothing too out of the ordinary. On Wednesday we saw some pretty cool blessings, one of them being that we met and began teaching someone from Myanmar (Burma) who Elder Suan had actually met once before because she had attended the church there. Her sister is also a member of the church, so that was a miracle for us! So we thought that was the miracle we were going to experience from the prayers, however, as the day turned into night we went over to a family we've been seeing for quite a while, the Viliamu family. I've probably mentioned them before in past e-mails (the dad is a less-active member from Samoa and his wife is Australian and they have 2 kids 18 and 15). So we've taught them over a period of probably 7 months (but we had 2 months where we stopped seeing them because nothing was progressing) and every time we are there the mom always talks for ages (she's a part of another faith) and doesn't really let us teach anything. The reason we keep going though is because the daughter and her boyfriend (20) are very interested in what we share and they really like reading the pamphlets and things. And so we've been wanting an opportunity to just be able to focus on them without any distractions. When we went there on Wednesday and had just sat down the mom told us that her friend's car just broke down and that she had to leave to go help her fix it, and thus for the first time we finally had the opportunity to teach the daughter and her boyfriend an actual lesson. We had a great lesson on the Restoration and the spirit was strong and the boyfriend even said the closing prayer! They accepted the invitation to read the Book of Mormon and expressed a desire to come to church. And just to add onto that miracle literally as soon as the lesson finished the mom walked back in the door. So Heavenly Father prepared the perfect amount of time for us to teach them! Our part member families are still progressing well. This past week as we had a lesson with one family, the non-member fiancé expressed that she wanted to be baptized! So that was awesome to hear, so now all they have to do is get married, which they're already preparing for, and then she can enter into that special covenant. The other family is progressing well too and the non-member fiancé in that family as well has made significant strides. She's been reading the Book of Mormon every day and said that the past Sunday was the first time she'd really felt lifted and inspired more than she has ever before. So it's great to see that she's had experiences with the Spirit. Everything else is going quite well, I just hope we can continue to maintain a high level of miracles and success during the last 3 and 1/2 weeks of my mission so I will always remember being able to finish strong. Thanks for all of your love and support! I hope that you have a wonderful week and I love you heaps! Talk to you again soon!

 

Love,

 

Elder Hopkins

May 5, 2014

G'day!

 

Thanks for the e-mail! Sorry I'm starting the e-mail later in the day today because we had a service this morning helping one of the members move some things from house to house. So I won't have as much time today as usual because it went longer than expected but that's alright, you will have all the time you need to talk to me in a short time haha. So first off as you mentioned about Skyping, I will probably try to Skype about 2 pm here. We have Stake Conference from 10-12 and then a teaching appointment at 1 pm so 2 pm is what we'll shoot for, possibly plan for a range of anywhere between 1:30 and 2:30 p.m. Australia time though. It will certainly be an interesting Skype this time around and might just consist of "Are you coming to pick me up at the Airport?" "Yep" "Ok talk to you soon" haha. Anyway, we had another good week this week and another great attendance at church. Our part-member families we're teaching are all progressing well and all have marriage plans which is great, they wont be for when I'm still here but that is of course alright. Another cool experience we had this week was we got to have a Zone Conference from Elder Hamula (he's in the first quorum of the 70 and is the Pacific Area President). So that was a great opportunity to listen to him and receive heaps of inspiration from his messages which he directed specifically to our mission's needs. His wife is also actually a fantastic speaker as well. I don't have time to really write any notes on what he said but I did really like a comment he mentioned during his talk (the whole theme was knowing who we really are and having the faith to succeed). It was along the lines of "When we know our heritage (Which house of Israel we're part of from our Patriarchal blessings) their stories then become our stories and become additions to our patriarchal blessings." I thought that was an interesting thought because one thing he said off of that is how some people complain how their blessings are only short while others' are long, but said how when we turn to their stories in the scriptures we have a lot more material that then also applies to us. One last thought before I have to finish is a cool miracle that happened to us the afternoon after this conference. We were tracting on a street and hadn't had too much success but we eventually got to a house where a young guy named Ben answered the door. We gave a little introduction to us and to the message and he said, "Ya I think I have some time, come on in." Rarely do we ever get let in a home straight away so that was already a miracle. We proceeded to share about the Plan of Salvation after finding a big of background about him. He felt really good about what we shared and said how he has always had a belief in God but knows he needs to be doing more in his life to follow him and that this could be the way he could do so. We have another appointment with him next Sunday (actually our appointment at 1 that I mentioned) so hopefully we have a great lesson with him there. Anyway, I'm out of time unfortunately but I'm glad you were able to have a great week as well! I hope you have another good week this week and I love you heaps! Talk to you soon.

 

Love,

 

Elder Hopkins

April 28, 2014

G'day!

Thanks so much as always for the e-mail! Glad everything is well at home. In response to your question, the girl did get baptized the Saturday before Easter, I guess I had forgotten to tell you. Anyway, this past week was a fantastic week for us with many miracles and blessings. Yesterday at church we had all the part member families we are currently teaching attend which was great! They all had a wonderful experience and were fellowshipped really well by the ward. Probably the biggest blessing though was that one of the part-member families met with Bishop after Sacrament and from that Bishop was able to discuss with them about getting married and they decided they would be married through the church! So that was wonderful because that is a big step obviously and it also makes it possible for the non-member mom to be baptized when that point comes. But everyone at church loved it and all are excited to come again on Sunday. Also at church, there was a less-active lady who hadn't been to church for 8 years and just decided to rock up to church this Sunday. She had a great experience though and asked us to come around and visit her and her family! So that was a pretty cool miracle as well. Another good thing that happened this past week was that we were able to set another date for an investigator to be baptized on the 24th of May. It's one of the few Burmese people we are still teaching, but they are one of the most sincere investigators we have taught. It's a whole family but the one with a date at the moment is the mom. She has already been baptized but she is praying to find out if she should be baptized again. We had a great lesson with them on the Restoration and she said everything made sense and she felt that it was true. So we included her in a fast we were doing on Friday so we hope as we see her this week that she will have felt an answer come. Also this past week was Anzac day in Australia and so we had the opportunity to get up early and go to one of the local dawn services. If you aren't familiar with Anzac day it is just like Labor/Memorial Day where they remember all the soldiers in WW1 and WW2 and other wars (ANZAC=Australia New Zealand Army Corps). I'll put in a picture from that. Other than that everything is continuing to go well. There are still some referrals coming through from members relating from the 40-Day Fast which is really good to see. Well I'm nearly out of time at the library so thanks for all that you do for me and I hope you have a great week this week! I love you heaps and I'll talk to you again soon!

Love,

Elder Hopkins

Elder Suan and Elder Hopkins with Australian military personnel on ANZAC Day.

April 21, 2014

G'Day!

Thanks for your e-mail! I loved reading it! Well I'll get right to the most anticipated part of the e-mail, the transfer news! So for the final transfer news of the mission the results are Elder Suan.....staying and Elder Hopkins.........also staying! So as they say in missionary terms--I will be 'dying' in Mooroolbark and Elder Suan will 'kill' me, haha. So we were very excited at that news and I was especially excited to finish in probably my favorite area of the mission, although I have only had 4 to choose from haha. Elder Suan will also be the 3rd compaion that I've spent 3 transfers with. And just to run through some other news that you might find interesting about my missionary companions. Elder Rafferty obviously has finished and is back in England. Elder Hirata is finishing this transfer, even though we were on the same plane over here he was in the MTC longer because he was learning English. Elder Rua is still doing well, he trains new missionaries like every transfer haha. Elder Matu'u has been in the same zone as me the past transfer and finishes 1 transfer after me. Elder Taufa finished in January. Elder Malifa I'm not sure where he's serving right now but is doing well. Elder Gabignaud is in a very country area, which is what he prefers haha. Yesterday we had a Easter Music Fireside for missionaries and their teaching pools and I was able to see Elder Afele again (and of course Elder Wood, but I see him every week at district meeting). So I will include a picture of us 3, which we say was probably our favorite companionship (tripanionship) of our missions, although every one has been very rewarding. Elder Wood has served the first year of his mission within the same missionary district but is now moving areas so he is kind of happy to see another part of the mission now haha. Elder Lau has been in the same area since he left Mooroolbark and will be staying there this transfer as well. So I just thought you might like to hear about how all of my past companions are doing. And also with the Mooroolbark Sisters, very sadly we will be losing one of them, Sister Baker. She has served very well here and she's actually going to Tasmania for her next area which is pretty cool. Sister Burton is staying and will get a new companion tomorrow. I also counted up and surprisingly I have only attended 6 transfer meetings in my whole mission, or in other terms I have attended 35% of the transfer meetings I have been in the mission for, where most missionaries attend a lot more. Since I've only had 4 areas and not too many companions things were pretty stagnant over the mission haha which has been a blessing I think! It's very sad to know there is only 6 weeks left to serve here in Australia and it feels very weird to think about finishing and probably still will for a while after the mission. Anyway, I'll tell you briefly about our week this past week because I don't have much time. It's a public holiday today here and so the libraries are all closed, so we're at an office supplies store borrowing their computers so we don't get as much time to e-mail. Also, transfer-eve p-days always seem busier than normal even if you aren't moving anywhere haha. The highlight of this past week was probably that we've started teaching another ex-part-member family in the ward. What I mean by that is the man used to be a member, but for whatever reason is no longer one, and the woman is not a member. Their names are Conrad and Carla and they are really nice. He's from the Phillipines and she's Aussie. Elder Wood, Elder Afele and I had visited them once almost 6 months ago now but have struggled to have any contact with them since. Bishop tries to keep in good contact with them though and had asked us to try and visit them again. We were on exhanges this past Wednesday and Elder Brown (the missionary I was with) and I went by their house and met Carla and set up a time to come back the next day. So Elder Suan and I visited them on Thursday and started off just getting to know them better and building up a good relationship of trust with them. After a good chat, we shared a message with them we had prepared on how the Gospel blesses our families (they have 2 kids) and especially carries us through hard times and trials. After talking about it and sharing a scripture we watched with them the Mormon Message "Mountains to Climb" (one of my personal favorites). It happened to be the perfect message/video because after that Carla started getting emotional as she said how it brought back vividly (John 14:26--Holy Ghost brings to our remembrance) some memories about how her dad had a lot of trials when she was really young and how she remembered him kneeling by the bed each night with her and praying (which is what one of the men was doing in the Mormon message) and apparently she never really understood why until that moment. She was so overwhelmed that she ended up having to leave the room for a few minutes and we continued just to talk with Conrad about the message. After she came back in we talked a bit more and were able to set up regular teaching appointments with them to go through the missionary lessons, which is great since missionaries haven't been able to do that with them in the past. So that was a big miracle for us this past week. Also, we were able to set up regular teaching appointments with another less-active part member family. So this transfer will I guess have a theme of teaching part member families haha which is fantastic! The rest of the week was good as well and we have been able to find a few new people to go back and teach as well. Elder Suan and I are very excited to work hard for my last 6 weeks and we hope to witness at least one conversion (not necessarily baptism) of someone we're teaching in that time. Thanks as always for you great love and support and I hope you had a great Easter! I love you heaps and I'll talk to you again soon!

Love,

Elder Hopkins

Elder Hopkins reunites with former companions Elder Wood and Elder Afele.

April 14, 2014

G'day!

 

Thanks heaps for the e-mail this week! That phrase is really repetitive from me but it's true each time I say it! I'm glad everything is going well back home. First off, in completely unrelated gospel or mission work terms I heard from a member this past week that there is a new series of 24 coming out in May. How exciting is that! A proof that serving missions brings blessings. Haha just kidding, but I thought you might like to know that as well. Back to church related news not associated with my mission, I'm not sure if you've heard about the member of the church who is getting drafted into the NBA this year? Once again, all this I heard from several members so hopefully it's all accurate, but essentially there is a member who is going to play for the NBA, and supposedly predicted to be drafted pretty high, and the Church and the NBA have reached an agreement with each other that he will be able to be a proselyting missionary at the same time! So wherever he is drafted is where he will serve a mission. So he will still play in all the games and participate in the practices and road trips, but whenever he isn't doing that he will be out knocking doors and teaching the Gospel. They said his companion will be sitting on the bench with the players in full proselyting clothes and the Church was able to get the NBA to agree that in each game they will get 2 screenshots of the companion on the bench. I thought that was awesome! I'm sure you could find out more information about it since you have access to the 'worldly' web, haha. So anyway, I'm sure you would like to hear about our week as well. Amazing that it's already up to the last week of the transfer! Time is just disappearing more rapidly with each passing week. We had a pretty good week and saw some great miracles. This past week we didn't have as many lessons since we are starting mostly fresh but we were able to start teaching a part-member family who moved into the ward not long ago. It's the son of a less-active member who we visit who's just come back to church and his wife and kids who aren't members (the kids are still under 8 though). They're really nice and we were able to see them twice last week. They have a lot they have to work through at the moment, but we have great hope and faith that they can make the necessary improvements in their lives and hopefully the wife can accept the gospel. Another cool experience this past week was we were tracting and we came across quite an interesting fellow. He just got out of prison not too long ago after being in there for 18 years. His crimes were very serious and was only let out early for good behavior. He doesn't like religion but we talked to him on the doorstep for a little while and eventually were able to give him a pamphlet and promise him some blessings. He didn't ask us to come back or anything but hopefully he reads it and it brings him a bit closer to Christ than he is at the moment. We also had interviews with President Maxwell this past week and those were good as always. It seems like everyone got told about their upcoming transfers or non-transfers except Elder Suan and I, which is quite unfortunate! So we will have to wait patiently to receive the news on Saturday like the other normal folk. Some other great news is that the other girl from the family that was recently baptized is going to be baptized by Elder Suan this Saturday, which will be great. Also, we have someone who has a baptismal date for next month on the 10th which we hope they are able to progress towards that day. The returning less-active member that I mentioned before who is receiving the Priesthood also has a friend from work that he has invited over to his house this coming weekend to meet with us because he was asking him questions about the purpose of life. So that is really exciting since it is very rare (at least here in Melbourne) that missionaries get those opportunities where members bring people to their homes ready to be taught. Conference of course was fantastic as well! I won't list heaps of quotes like I've done in the past because this conference instead of just writing good quotes verbatim to what was said, I tried to focus more on what the Spirit told me personally from the messages that were shared. But of course I had some favorite talks! Elder Holland's was great to start off the conference and set the tone. I enjoyed both of President Uchtdorf's talks. Randall L. Ridd's I thought was fantastic. And I also really thought Elder Oak's in priesthood was very pertinent as well seeing as that topic has been a bit of a problem lately. My personal feelings are that this conference might be President Packar's last, partly because of his health but also because the theme of his talk was the most important things he's learned in his life. Obviously as a missionary you don't quite know the situation of normal life at the moment, but from the overarching theme of this conference it's safe to say that things will become very tough in the near future for members of the church. So many talks were about challenges and trials, but especially about standing firm in the faith no matter what. One last thing I'll share was something cool I learned from this mornings study. Normally I don't e-mail my studies but this one I really liked this morning. It was an analogy that I was able to get out of Alma chapter 51. This chapter is in the midst of the famous war chapters but the part I marked was about contentions within the Nephites. As will all scriptures there are things we can get out of them, with the help of the Spirit, that apply directly to our own lives. The main verses of focus are verses 2-5, 13, and 18. I won't describe them out but let you see what you get out of them. But what I got out of them was a pretty interesting analogy of the process of apostasy from the Gospel and eventually to the point of becoming sons of perdition, or siding with the adversary. It is amazing what small doubts or disagreements can bring about if left unchecked or unresolved. If you are unable to find anything from it you can ask me in about 7 weeks haha. Anyway, everything is well here and Elder Suan sends a big 'thank you' for the contents you included for him in the Easter package, as well as me! I hope you have a great week and I love you heaps! Talk to you soon!

 

Love,

 

Elder Hopkins