March 12, 2013

G'Day!

Thanks so much for the great e-mail this week! I'm glad to hear about all the great things happening back home. This past week was alright, it was pretty busy with cleaning. A couple of days we had to spend several hours cleaning and on Wednesday we spent most of the day cleaning and having some of the missionaries assigned to help with maintenance come and fix some things in the flat as well. When I got to the flat first it wasn't in very good shape and before Elder Rua it was even worse, but now the flat looks very good and clean so the key now is just to maintain the nice state of it for the rest of the time we spend here. So during the week we weren't able to get as much proselyting done as we had planned (can't seem to catch a break in Geelong, can we? haha) but the week still turned out alright. It's been a huge blessing since we found Candice Wang because it couldn't have come at a more perfect time. Her mother and also her friend (Jaryn) from last week came to church again and loved it so much! But also we had 2 new Chinese investigators referred to us by some missionaries in the city who we contacted and also came to church by getting a lift from Candice (their names are Brian and Cuben) and they also really enjoyed church and are very interested to learn more. We'll definitely have to get some other members to help as well to fellowship and give lifts for them because Candice had a very full car this week, haha. So that's proved to be a big miracle to find her and also these other investigators who we'll begin teaching this week. With Noah, a bit of sad news, his grandma has been in the hospital the past few weeks and is now in a very critical state and will likely pass away within the next couple of days. So amidst the stress and worry of that, Noah's mom has decided she wants to postpone the baptism and the lessons as well until after funeral arrangements and what not have been made. So that was unfortunate to hear and we'd hoped that the baptism would still go forward because we felt (as well as President Lifferth) that it would be a blessing for the Grandma to hear about the baptism and also Noah if he could go and tell the grandma himself. So who knows at this point when the baptism will happen, hopefully still within the next few weeks because Noah is very ready and wants to be baptized. This week we were also able to find another unknown member on the ward list named Nancy who invited us to come back this week, so we're excited for that as well! At that moment, we're obviously struggling not necessarily to find people to teach but I guess to hold onto investigators when we get them. So we'll continue to work very hard to try and find new people to teach as well as do our best to help those investigators that we do have continue to have a desire to investigator and not to be influenced by the adversary. This past Wednesday night was also the first night that we did splits with the ward. I think I mentioned in another e-mail that when Elder Pearson was here he said that every ward needs to go out once each week on splits with the missionaries as part of the 'rescue effort' and this past week was the first we were able to do that. This week was the bishopric's turn to go out so I got to go with the 2nd councilor to visit a few names Bishop had selected while Elder Matuu went with Bishop. We were able to have some great experiences and met some really great people that hopefully we'll see some miracles from in the near future. The 2 families we the 2nd councilor and I visited, the people we were hoping to catch weren't there but at the first house we met the partner (a non-member) of one of the less-actives in the ward who ended up being very nice and said that we can come back another time so hopefully we'll see some good from that. Also, Elder Matuu and Bishop had a great experience with another less-active family who have several non-members in their family that will hopefully generate some blessings soon as well. So we're excited for the next splits tomorrow as well, this week with the Elder's Quorum. Well I wish I had more to write to you at the moment but unfortunately due to the above mentioned cleaning this past week we weren't able to accomplish too much. This week I'm sure we'll be able to see many miracles though from the time we'll have to go out and work. I'm grateful for all of you love and support and prayers and I know that it has been the key to a lot of the blessings I've received personally and we've received as a companionship. I hope that you're able to have another wonderful and great week this week! I love you and I'll talk to you again soon!

Love,

Elder Hopkins

March 4, 2013

G'Day!

The e-mail was really great this week, I loved reading it! This past week was pretty good, certainly busy at the beginning. You'll find it funny and cool at the same time that Elder Rua's new area is actually in Pakenham! So him and I just did a swap of areas, haha. He'll be there in a 4-missionary flat so that should be fun. I got to talk to Elder Hirata a bit at the meeting as well and it sounds like Pakenham is still doing well! Afa and Lisa and also the Sekene family have been able to go to the temple which was really great! Cruiz and Chelsea have kind of slipped back into a bit of a lazy state again with coming to church, so hopefully the new missionaries will help them get back into it since they were doing so well before! Joan Willmott also pushed her date back again unfortunately, so it's nice to see she's still herself, haha. I think it will be good to have so many missionaries there now so maybe one of them will be able to reach her heart more to help her feel the need to take more action. David and Melissa have also been coming to church more regularly again which is awesome! The ward is great as always as well, and Elder Hirata said that it's grown so much that Bishop Smith said he's going to have to split the ward! That's exciting for the area. So I enjoyed being able to hear about how the area was doing. So anyway, my new companion is Elder Matuu from Apia, Samoa. His english is really good as many Samoans are so it'll be the first time in a long time where I don't have any language study in the morning! He's been out for 6 months on his mission and this is his 2nd area. He's a pretty good missionary so hopefully he'll help Geelong grow as an area this transfer. He has a bit of a reputation for not being too obedient to the mission rules, however, so it may be a bit of a struggle to work hard this transfer. However, it made me extra motivated to be exactly obedient and work extra hard myself to hopefully help him see the blessings of it as well, so it's been good for me as well to increase my level of effort as well. Because of that, this first week we worked so hard we were completely dead by last night at the end of the week, but it certainly wasn't without many, many blessings! This week we were able to set a baptismal date with Noah for the 16th of this month so we're looking forward to that! Since he's just 11 and like to joke heaps, it's sometimes hard to keep him focused in the lessons but his comprehension is really good for his age and we've been able to help him understand everything he needs to so far. It also is good to know that he has some active family members who'll help him to remain active as well. His mom though is posing a bit of a stumbling block because he stays with her every other weekend and she doesn't let him go to church then so Luke (the mom's son as well) is going to try to talk to her about it this week. It's a very complicated situation with her and we don't know too much about it so it's very nice to have Luke as the fellowship. This week we also were able to find a former investigating family all the way back from 2006! It's a Sudanese family, and the dad, Joseph, is the leader of the Nuer community (an African nationality) for Geelong, so he has a lot of people who look up to him as a leader. So we have been praying that he'll be very receptive again to the Gospel because we know that so many blessings would come from him accepting the Gospel into his and his family's life. We are going to go visit them for the first time tonight so we're excited to begin teaching them again. We also tried contacting a lot of the less-active and inactive members in the ward this week, and while most of them were not receptive and sometimes a bit hostile, we did find one man from New Zealand who said that we can come back to see him this week, so hopefully we'll be able to see some blessings come from him. This past Sunday was excellent because we had 4 non-members/investigators from our area come to church. Lorraine (one of the one's influenced by anti-mormon literature) came to church again and had a really good time so hopefully she's gotten over that incident! I think it helped that we'd been having a Zone fast this Sunday for some of our area's concerns and included in that was 'overcoming anti-mormon material.' We also had a new person come to church for the first time that one of the members brought with her to church. Her name is Susan and she just moved to Geelong recently and when she was there she asked for some reading materials so we gave her a Book of Mormon and a pamphlet on the Restoration and she said she'll read them this week! Talking with the member friend after church, she said that Susan really loved church and had such a wonderful experience and felt so welcomed that she can't wait to come back next week! So as we've really worked hard we've been seeing many miracles come about such as her. Also, helping Candice and Walle Wang come back to church has been a blessing in more ways than one. Walle had to leave for China this past week to take care of his sick Grandpa but Candice is still here and this Sunday she brought with her: her mother (who's staying with her for a little while) as well as Chinese colleague she just met! So she's doing some excellent missionary work as well and both of those she brought will be coming back next week! Elder Hasson (the other missionary that stayed in Geelong) has a brand new missionary named Elder Pain from Brisbane, Australia, and they worked really hard this week as well, so we should see a lot of success and growth in the area over the next couple of weeks. So the mission's goal at the moment is to get about 85 baptisms in the month of March (which was the combination of two goals, one set by Elder Pearson of the 70, and the other set by the mission) which would be the highest the mission has ever had. So the mission as a whole has been excited and working extra hard lately so that we can achieve that goal, and for lack of a better phrase 'make history' for the mission, haha. At the moment the mission has 200 baptismal dates set, which is pretty incredible for the Melbourne mission, so we know we'll be able to reach our goal if we keep up the effort! I continue to develop a greater and greater love for the work each day and I know the Lord will continue to bless us for our hard work and effort. I'm continually grateful for all your love and support and I hope that you have a wonderful week ahead! Thanks again for the wonderful e-mail and I'll talk to you again soon! I love you!

Love,

Elder Hopkins

February 25, 2013

G'Day!

Thanks for the e-mail this week, and I'm glad everything is going really well back home! The last week of the transfer went ok, certainly not what we'd hoped for, but I'll talk about that in a second. First of all the big news as always at the end of a transfer. Elder Rua is moving and I will be staying in Geelong! So I'll have at least 6 more weeks in Geelong, but it will be sad to see Elder Rua go since we'd been working really well and hard together. I'm sure whoever my new companion will be, he'll be great as well. So we have the transfer meeting tomorrow and I'll be able to let you know who my new companion is next week. Maybe I'll get lucky and he'll have a driver's license so we can have a car, haha. So anyway, back to this past week. The week started out really good and we were able to have some really great lessons with some new investigators. On Monday night we had a lesson with a family of 5 and brought Luke Grbin with us to help teach (the newly returned missionary who we've been bringing out with us heaps!) and it went really well and they asked heaps of great questions that fit right into the discussions. However, when we went back to see them twice later throughout the week, they either weren't home or didn't answer. So we'll keep trying to contact them again, hopefully they haven't become disinterested or anti'd by some friends. We also had our first lesson with a golden investigator (or really prepared investigator) named Rebecca who we met the week before. The first time we met her we showed her where the church was on the map and she told us that she'd had a dream she attended a church in that location but didn't know which church it was, so that was pretty amazing. This week we taught her about the Restoration and it went perfectly. She asked heaps of great questions and understood everything and accepted everything. When we told the 1st vision it was probably the most powerful time I've shared it on the mission thus far and she felt the spirit strong as well. She was very excited to read the Book of Mormon and pray about it and she also accepted the invitation to be baptized after she received a further witness that it is true. So of course we were very happy and excited after that lesson with her. However, yesterday afternoon she sent us a lengthy text that in short said she wasn't interested in learning more and wanted to cease all contact with us. So again we'll try to visit her to find out her concern and see if we can keep teaching her, we assume that someone must've given her some anti-mormon literature to sway her. But wait, the theme for this week isn't finished yet. Our other golden investigator Lorraine that I mentioned last week has taken a turn for the worst as well. The member friend of her told us at church on Sunday that when Lorraine went out with a friend on Saturday the friend heaped onto her loads of anti-mormon literature and thus caused Lorraine to not desire further investigation. The member is going to talk with her more this week to answer all her concerns (he's a former bishop so he's a reliable source) to help her rekindle the desire. So obviously Satan is working unbelievably hard to take away every single one of our investigators we've had this transfer, mainly through the means of others giving them anti-mormon literature. There's a few members who've also been given some anti-mormon pamphlets as soon as their new neighbors found out they were members of the church. So I've found it a bit shocking that a majority of nonmembers either have or have friends who have a stack of anti-mormon items. So that just means we have to work even harder to help members come closer to Christ while so much works against us to bring them down. It also has made it difficult that the ward doesn't seem too excited about missionary work since the beginning of the transfer, since in the past Geelong hasn't exactly had hard working or obedient missionaries. However, the new first councilor to the ward is helping to get the ward more involved and excited as we continue to try to visit all the families to help them become more involved and see that we're working hard and that Geelong has so much potential. But even though all these things would make you think I don't like Geelong, it's quite the opposite, because Elder Rua and I have felt excited to take on the challenge of the missionary work in this area and especially help turn the missionary efforts around in the ward, and I'll continue that with my new companion to the area. Just as with life in general, if we aren't challenged to our limits we can never dream of improving or progressing, and I've certainly noticed that while this past transfer and especially this past week have been very challenging that I've increased my skills and work-ethic as a missionary so much more than if we'd had everything handed to us. It's also true that the satisfaction of bringing someone to the gospel or helping a ward redevelop a love for missionary work is much greater when it's accomplished against all odds. So I'm certainly excited for another transfer in Geelong and excited to get a new companion as well and I hope that he likes hard work because that's what we're going to do for the next 6 weeks. Thanks as always for all your love and your support and especially for your prayers that I feel the impact of each day. Keep looking for opportunities for missionary work as well or opportunities to help out the missionaries there! We certainly appreciate it, haha. I hope that you have a wonderful week and I love you heaps! Talk to you again soon!

Love,

Elder Hopkins

February 18, 2013

G'Day!

Thanks for another wonderful e-mail this week, I always love reading them! We had a really good week this past week with a lot of blessings and miracles. It was also a very busy week too! We started off with Tuesday as an exchange with our District Leader Elder Hasson, who happens to be in the other set of Geelong missionaries so we didn't have to travel too much for that exchange haha. But it went really well and we accomplished a lot. I was with Elder Hasson in our area. As we tried to contact some of our investigators we were unable to find many people home or available, so we decided to contact some of the members on the ward list in the area who we didn't know. The first name that we picked was Walle and Candice Wang. We went to their house and when they opened the door they invited us in straight away and were very happy to see us. We were kind of expecting a different reaction from contacting some of these people so it was a nice surprise. As we talked to them we found out they'd moved to Melbourne about 3 years ago from China (near Beijing) and had met with missionaries when they lived in the city and were baptized about 2 years ago. Then they moved over to this suburb of Geelong about 1 year ago and weren't able to find out where the nearest church was or where any members were who could help them. So after a while of searching for some reason or another they weren't able to find one. So they said that they were so excited to see missionaries at their door because they'd been searching for the church in the area and also it was their only day off of the week so we were very blessed to find them home. So we invited them to church again and they were able to come to Stake Conference this weekend and look forward to being in the Geelong ward next Sunday! So that was quite a miracle to find them. On Wednesday was Zone Conference and it went really well. There were a lot of inspiring trainings and talks given and I was able to learn a lot. For the sake of time I won't go into much detail about it but it was good. On Saturday we had some really great lessons with some new investigators. The first lesson we had was with a woman named Lorraine. She'd moved next door to one of the members of the ward in December and had come with him to church for the first time last Sunday and said that she was interested to learn more (I can't remember if I told you that part already or not?). Anyway, we were able to go and teach her for the first time on Saturday at the member's home and it was a really good experience. We found out about her background and then taught about half of the first lesson focusing mainly on God's love for us and the Great Apostasy. She understood what we were teaching really well and wants to continue to learn more. We also had a lesson with an 11 year old boy named Noah. He is Luke's (the returned missionary from last week) half-brother. His mom is less-active but wants Noah to have the missionary lessons now and Noah wants Luke to baptize him now that he's off his mission. So we began teaching him and he's looking to get baptized in March next month, so we're excited for him and his family. Hopefully his mom will have a desire to return to church as well through the experience. His dad is an active member in the ward, however, so he'll be sure to bring him to church and help him remain active which is good. Stake Conference was excellent yesterday. It was a live broadcast from Utah that was being played at the same time as all the other stakes and districts in Australia, which was pretty cool. We had a few general authorities speak, Elder Baxter of the 70, the 1st councilor of the Relief Society presidency, Elder Christofferson of the 12, and most excitingly President Monson spoke as well! So that was a great surprise to hear from the prophet and the other speakers. They all had wonderful talks and President Monson's focus was on 'going to the rescue,' or in other words helping to bring back those members who've gone into inactivity. So hopefully that will spark a new, more diligent effort in the members of Australia. Throughout this past week we were able to find a lot of new investigators as well who we will be seeing this coming week (which is now the last week of the transfer) so we're excited to see the area continue to grow! We also don't find out the transfer news until next Saturday, even though the leaders already know the transfers, they just want us to live in suspense haha. But we'll continue to work very hard none the less to set up the work for the next transfer to be even more successful. Thanks again for all of your love and support and especially your prayers that help so much! I hope that you have a wonderful week as well and have the opportunity to have missionary experiences, big or small, yourselves! I love you and talk to you again soon!

Love,

Elder Hopkins

February 11, 2013

G'Day!

Thanks for the great e-mail this week! They always are something that I look forward to each week and it always makes me smile to hear about all the things going on. This past week was pretty good. The work has been very up and down this transfer seeing as the first week was a lot of tracting and finding and the next two weeks were successful with a lot of lessons and people to teach and then the past two weeks have been back to a lot of finding again. Although our teaching pool and people to go see has grown so much since we began the transfer. We had about 4 or 5 names the first week, and for this week we have over 30 people to see plus a lot of less-actives Bishop has asked us to visit, so we have seen a lot of progress and blessings. This past week the only difficulty was catching people when they were home. A lot of people were out of the house when we went around to visit them and unfortunately with a majority of the new people we have we don't have a phone number to ring so it's just more trial and error with seeing them now. We were able to visit with one of our new investigators named Emmanuel who's from Sudan. We were able to teach a really good lesson to him about the Plan of Salvation and he grasped and understood everything really well. He's married with a few kids but he was the only that we were able to teach at that time. One of his friends came by about 3/4 of the way through our lesson and we were able to teach him a bit as well which was good. Also on another note, this week isn't actually the last week of this transfer. With the huge incoming of the new missionaries this upcoming transfer the dates of arrival have changed a bit (note sure why) so the transfer actually ends up being 7 weeks instead of 6. But I obviously don't have any problems with that since Elder Rua and I are enjoying the work here in Geelong. This week we also have Zone Conference again! Thankfully it's not today but on Wednesday this time, but that should be good. I don't think there'll be any General Authorities at this one, however. This coming Sunday is also Stake Conference again for the Wyndham stake, so it will be a very conference-y week, haha. Yesterday, church was very good as well because there was a return missionary from the Geelong ward that had just gotten back off his mission on Saturday! So he was able to speak to the ward and did a very good job. He also wants to come out a lot with both sets of the Geelong missionaries so that will be good to have an RM to help us out. His dad (who's on the stake high council) spoke before his as well and his talk was excellent. He was very emotional throughout the talk as he shared a lot about some of his sons life and mission. It was a very spirit-filled meeting and there were a lot of non-members that attended as well, so hopefully they were able to feel the spirit there as well. On Saturday we scheduled 3 services to do with the other elders, which were: cutting down an overgrown bush from one of the members home, moving a big pile of bricks at an investigators home, and also helping a member move into a new house. Overall the 3 services took about 6 1/2 hours and we all felt dead afterwards because it was a lot of hard work! We love doing service for people but we'll try to limit the service to just 1 a Saturday from now on so we aren't zombies for following few days. Elder Rua and I were pretty tired on Sunday but still were able to sit up and listen in church but the other 2 elders were fast asleep for most of the 2nd and 3rd hours, haha. Something that I heard as well on Sunday that was a bit shocking was that the general authorities had told all missionaries in England to stop tracting, and also in the Perth Australia mission a few months ago. Some of the members were saying that pretty soon all of Australia's missions will have stopped tracting. I thought that was quite an amazing change and I didn't hear why they had stopped it but it must be for good reason. So the members are going to have to step it up to help the missionaries, seeing as tracting is a big part of finding people to teach. Thought I'd just share that, might be something interesting to look up more about. Anyway, it should be another busy week ahead and we hope to see a lot of success as we continue to work really hard to help build up the area and strengthen the Geelong ward. Thanks as always for the support and love you show that helps the work go better! I hope you have a wonderful week ahead as well and Happy Valentine's Day! Talk to you again soon!

Love,

Elder Hopkins

February 4, 2013

G'Day!

Thanks for a great e-mail this week! It was another good week in Geelong this week. We didn't see as much success as we did last week but we were still able to accomplish quite a bit. This past week on Friday we had our quarterly interviews with President Lifferth where he usually just asks how we're doing and what he can do to help us accomplish the work more, but it's always good to speak with him 1 on 1. He mentioned that Elder Hirata and his new companion were doing well in Pakenham and that the new missionary is really good! So that was good to hear! He also asked me if I felt they could fit 2 more missionaries in the flat there in Pakenham and I told him yes so they may have 4 missionaries in Pakenham now! Wouldn't that be cool? We also saw that in the next transfer there will be 27 new missionaries coming into the mission! Wow! So the big influx of missionaries is beginning and right now we're still at about 165 missionaries but President and Sister Lifferth said by May we'll be up to 220. So it's definitely a very exciting time to be a missionary in the Australia Melbourne Mission! We were able to finally teach Joel and Camilla for the first time officially. We didn't teach too much as to what we'd planned because Joel had a lot of questions about the Temple and sealing of families. He had a bad experience with the Temple before because when he and Camilla went to go see Camilla's sister get sealed, no one told him why he couldn't go into the Temple so he thought there was just a lot of secretive stuff that happened in there. We were able to explain to him more about how the Temple is just a sacred place and that you just need to have a Temple recommend to enter showing that you are in line with God's will and thus will help maintain the purity of the spirit there. We were able to answer most of his questions pretty well but next time we'll teach him more in depth about the Plan of Salvation and how the Temples and family sealings fit into it. He still is very keen to learn more and said he wants to put in a lot of his own effort such as reading the scriptures, praying and coming to church and he said he knows that as he does it will help him be able to receive answers and get a better understanding of the Gospel, so he has a great attitude about it all. I've been studying a lot differently lately as well in my personal studies each morning. President Lifferth asked us in preparation for Friday's interviews to pick a topic of Preach My Gospel that we wanted to learn more about and then for a couple of days just really focus on that for our study and seek a better knowledge and understanding of it. Before I'd just study really basically a lot of topics at once and felt that it would suffice, but when I did this I was able to learn so much more and it made me more excited to study than ever before. So now I'm going to continue doing that with all the principles of Preach My Gospel   and literally exhaust all the resources and scriptures I can about that topic before I move onto the next, and hopefully I'll be able to become a more effective teacher through that. I can't believe that it's only 2 weeks left until the next transfer already as well. The time has just gone by so fast here in Geelong, but we've been able to accomplish so much. Throughout this week Elder Rua and I have been trying so set up as many appointments with the active member families as we can to share the family mission plan with them because we know that we'll be able to get the ward more excited about missionary work through that and hopefully find some really solid new investigators instead of searching the regular way of just tracting. We've been able to set up quite a few so far so we hope that it works well for us. Well thanks once again for the wonderful e-mail this week and especially your love and support which helps me get through this time on the mission! I look forward to another great week ahead and hope that you have a great week as well. I love you and I'll talk to you again soon!

Love,

Elder Hopkins

January 29, 2013

G'Day!

 

Thanks so much for another wonderful e-mail this week! I loved reading it and hearing about all the exciting things happening lately. Sorry again for being a day late. On Saturday it was 'Australia Day' (which is like the 4th of July for the U.S.) and since it fell on a weekend they made the following Monday (yesterday) the actual public holiday. And on Australia Day nobody works, so the banks were closed, almost every shop was closed, and most importantly the library was closed, so none of the missionaries were able to e-mail their families. So we get the opportunity to e-mail today instead. It certainly has been an interesting transfer missing 2 e-mailing days already. The past week was excellent though other than that, and we accomplished heaps of things. Elder Rua and I have really been working hard in this Geelong area and have been seeing so much success and so many blessings. On Thursday we had an exchange with our Zone Leaders for the day but since they live a bit of a distance away from us they just stayed in our area so because of that we were able to accomplish double the work on that day with 4 missionaries instead of just 2. The past week as a whole we saw so many blessings with finding good new people to teach. Total for the week we had 25 new people to go and teach which was only 1 off of 26 new people in a week which was the last week when I was with Elder Rafferty. Not that it's a contest of numbers but I just thought it was awesome that we were able to find so many prepared people to go and teach, and they were all very genuinely interested in learning more. So we certainly are getting heaps of work to do in Geelong! This past week we also finally had the chance to meet with the bishop of the Geelong ward, Bishop Sandford. He and his family had been away for 2 weeks on holiday so we hadn't been able to catch him until just recently. But we were able to have a good meeting with him to discuss all the progress that we hope can be made in the coming little while. He gave us several names that we can pursue of less-active members and also of unbaptized children and teenagers that we hope to be able to visit and teach soon. Our area is one of the biggest this side of the mission so it's definitely difficult for us to get to everyone we want to see just on bikes. However, the ward has just implimented a plan for the members to go on splits with us and the other Elders every Wednesday night, so hopefully we'll be able to contact some of the people that live a bit farther out on those days. We also have been trying to go around and visit all of the members in our area of Geelong to get to know them and also share the Family Mission Plan with them. We've only been able to see a few thus far but one of the families we went to see, the McCoy family, have only been here a month or two and just moved from Pheonix, Arizona! So quite a big move! Bro. McCoy actually served in this mission about 17 years ago and that helped them make their decision when they were thinking about where they wanted to move. So that's certainly nice to have some fellow Americans in the area. Last week we were also able to have another lesson with one of the investigators we found in the 1st week of the transfer named Joel. He's Australian and hasn't had too much of a religious background but is very nice and open to hearing about all different beliefs. We were able to teach him about the Plan of Salvation with a focus on how living the main principles of the Gospel are what help us to get there. It went really well and you could feel that the Spirit was there. At the end he committed to pray on his own about the message we shared and also to know if Heavenly Father is there. It's nice because he works with one of the members in the ward, Bro. Ceff, so it hasn't been hard for us to think of who the fellowship can be. We hope to be able to teach him about the Restoration this week. Joel and Camilla (confusing with your two main investigators being named Joel, isn't it?) are doing really well as well. They met with Bishop on Sunday and finalized everything for their wedding on the 23rd of March, so that'll be great! The ward seems like a really great one because there were so many people and families that came up after Sacrament meeting and after church to talk with them and fellowship them which really helped them, especially Joel, to feel welcome and have a good experience. We'll be seeing them this coming Thursday night which is where we'll begin teaching them officially, which will be wonderful! Yesterday we also had some service scheduled with a new contact we met on Sunday named Paulo (an Australian born Italian). He'd met some missionaries several years ago who helped him put up his fence so he knew that he could ask us for some help when we met him on Sunday. We went over there at 12 noon and helped him to strip some of the paint off of the side of his house, clean his backyard fence with a water pressure shooter thing (I don't know what it's called haha), and oil his back deck. So we helped him accomplish a lot and it ended up taking us 5 hours to do. He has a rare spinal condition where some of the nerves between his spine were lost and his back vertebrae began fusing together and cause him agonizing pain. I don't remember what the name was for it though. It prevents him from doing hard labor though so he greatly appreciated the help and said that we are welcome in his home anytime so hopefully we'll have the opportunity to share the Gospel with him and his family. We're excited for another busy week here in Geelong and are really loving the work right now and hope that we can continue to really build up the area! I'm grateful for all of your continued love and support and hope that you have a great week ahead as well! I'll talk to you again soon!

 

Love,

 

Elder Hopkins