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