March 17, 2014

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.

March 10, 2014

G'Day!

 

Thanks heaps for the e-mail this week! That's fantastic that the Elders there are working hard and I really like that idea you included that they used for helping members go and fellowship the families, we will definitely try that out here. Also glad to here that everything is ok for BYU this fall! Tell Tanner congratulations on his mission call, he'll love it. How is Ryan going with his mission? Thanks so much especially for getting the line of authority for me. It's really exciting to look at all in our line, especially seeing that there are just 3 people between me and prophets! So obviously we found out transfer news on Saturday and the news is that Elder Suan is staying and that I am also staying! Exciting! So this will be my 4th transfer in Mooroolbark and then I will only have 1 transfer left (scary!) so I might end up 'dying' in my mission here. That would be pretty cool if I did since not many people serve in only 4 areas on their mission. We're both really excited for this transfer because we feel heaps of great things will happen in the next few weeks. We found out something pretty cool this past week that was an answer to our struggle with language and the Gospel. One of the past missionaries from this mission who's living in our ward said that once on her mission she and her companion were teaching a Burmese family and they got from the mission office a DVD that was in Burmese that had testimonies from a lot of the first members there and how the family was really touched by it and felt the Spirit. So we were very happy to hear that and we will hopefully be able to get some from the office soon. That will no doubt be a massive help for our teaching pool and we hope it will be a turning point for several of our investigators in their conversions. Yes we are still teaching Ellen and Jobe, they just haven't been progressing much lately, Ellen because her Pastor told her she is only allowed to be baptized once in her life which caused some doubt and confusion with her, and Jobe just because he's been very busy with work and school. We did see him last week though and he is still reading, which is good, and we plan on inviting him to be baptized this coming week when we see him. We will try and especially encourage all our investigators to attend church this week because President and Sister Maxwell are coming to speak in our ward as part of our 40 Day Fast program. The program is going pretty well so far, all the members have people or activities they've committed to act upon and the follow-up is just starting with them so hopefully the fruits of their labors will start to show. We are still in sort of the same position as last week with a majority of our investigators: we are teaching them once or twice a week, they are reading and praying (if they are able to read English), but they are having a hard time attending church and aren't ready to accept dates for baptism. We had the idea though just last night to try and organize some sort of interfaith activity with the Chin Baptist church and our church. Whether its a big BBQ/picnic or some other activity, it would be a great help for both sides. On our side it would help the members have opportunities to become friends with them and learn more about them and their culture. And on their side it would help them have more English-speaking friends (most of them have none) and they would feel more comfortable with the church. So we will talk to Bishop about it this week and see how he feels about it. This month is also Temple month for us which is always a great experience. But anyway, that is essentially all that is new here at the moment, we are still as busy as ever and hope to continue to keep the momentum up this transfer. Also, on a cool little side note, in Burma they just recently received the first set of young proselyting missionaries and they already are having some good success! So that is great that the church will hopefully start growing more there. I hope you continue to see many blessings at home as well and that you have a great week! I love you heaps and I'll talk to you again soon!

 

Love,

 

Elder Hopkins

March 3, 2014

G'day!

 

Thanks for the e-mail this week! Just in response to some things from your e-mail, Sister Burton is better now and they are back to working in the area, which is great, so thanks for your prayers on their behalf. And that's great that you've made some progress on the line of authority, that will definitely be cool to look at when it's ready. And a big thanks to everyone else who sent an e-mail this week! I loved hearing from you all and greatly appreciate your love and support! This past week was really good for us. Our strengths have always been being able to be busy with a lot of teaching appointments and new investigators, but our weakness has been having people commit or accept a day to prepare for baptism. All of them have a sincere desire to find truth and also find out if the church is true, the only problem is that they can't read the Book of Mormon. There are several of the Burmese investigators we have who are capable of reading it and understanding most of what they read, but the majority of them can't read English, which obviously makes it difficult in a quest to find if it's true. However, the ones who do understand English say they feel good and feel the Spirit as they read it, so we hope they will be able to act on those feelings and promptings. But I know that the Spirit can cross all barriers, including language barriers, since Mary was baptized and has been active ever since even though her English wasn't too great. So we hope that we will be able to see some miracles soon with some of our investigators. The Sudanese family we're teaching is going really well though. They were able to come to church for all 3 hours this Sunday and really enjoyed it! They've been fellowshipped by the members very well and they'll be at church again next Sunday. We hope to talk more about baptism with them this coming week. We also had Zone Conference this past week which was great as always. We had visiting and speaking to us Elder and Sister Taylor who are the Pacific Area Mental Health advisors. They talked about how to have good relationships with our companions and other things relating towards maintaining good physical and mental health during our missions, which are things that they don't often cover or talk about. Since the age change and there being younger missionaries in the field, there apparently have been a lot of problems with emotional and mental stress in the missionaries, so Elder and Sister Taylor have been going and speaking to the 18 missions they cover in the area. Also this past week the 40 day fast has started and it has gone average so far. We had 3 of the 6 families signed up first actually fast, so 50% success rate isn't exactly desired, so we hope that the rest of the members make a more concerted effort throughout this week. Well unfortunately the computers this week don't have as much time as usual because they're reserved for some other activity so I will have to make this shorter than normal. But everything is going well and we are loving the work! Hard to believe it's already the last week of the transfer, so we will continue to work hard this week and find out Saturday night if there are any changes. Thanks for all you do and I hope you have a great week this week as well! I love you heaps and I'll talk to you next week!

 

Love,

 

Elder Hopkins

February 24, 2014

G'day!

 

As always, I loved the e-mail this week! So many exciting things happening, if you see Ryan again sometime soon tell him congratulations and I'm very excited for him because he will have so many great experiences. That's great that there are so many missionaries out at the moment in our ward and the other wards, there is always a need for more serving! Tell Alyssa happy 10th birthday for me! And thanks for the suggestion about BYU, I will remember that for this Sunday. Hard to believe there is only 2 weeks left in this transfer and after that there are only 2 transfers left on my mission. The time just melts away so fast the closer you get to the end, which is sad, but you just have to continue to work hard and make the most of it! Thanks heaps also for looking up the lineage for me, hopefully they are able to get the correct information without too much difficulty. So each week is a great week in Mooroolbark and the past one was no exception to that. We continue to see many blessings. We did have a few disappointing things this week though, one of them being church attendance. We had 8 people who were confirmed to come to church with members to pick them up but within the last 24 hours before church 6 of them cancelled for various reasons, so we were a bit sad about that especially since the talks were really great in Sacrament. It always seems to be the case that the very best Sacrament meetings for your investigators are the ones when nobody shows up haha. But we hope they will all be there next Sunday. The Pencostal teacher agreed to come check out our church next Sunday as well which will be very interesting to see what he thinks, especially since it's testimony meeting-a.k.a. the scariest sacrament meeting for missionaries hahaha. Ellen wasn't able to come to church either yesterday which means her baptismal date will have to be changed, which is unfortunate but hopefully it won't have to be pushed back very far. We were fasting on Sunday for all the investigators we currently have who are seriously reading and praying about the Book of Mormon at this present time that they can receive and recognize their answers to the truthfulness of it. So we hope this week we will be able to see some fruits from that fast. One really good thing that happened this past week was with the Sudanese family I mentioned last week. The daughter, Monica, was able to go to young women's on Tuesday and had a really great time! All the young women really made her feel welcome and a part of the group and Monica is excited to continue to be involved in the Young Women's program, so we look forward to continuing to see their family progress. Also on Tuesday we had a really great experience with the weekly splits with the ward. We were trying to contact some people on the ward list who we didn't know and most of them had moved house. However, we met one man named Adam who was at the correct address. He is an awesome guy! We talked with him for about 30 minutes and found out he's been less-active in the church for about 15 years but still remembers a lot about it. He said even though he wasn't attending church he was still praying and reading the scriptures. After talking he said he was happy for us to start visiting him on a fairly regular basis and that he felt sometime in the near future he would be ready to come back to church again. So that was a pretty good miracle for us this past week! Another cool thing this past weekend was that on Saturday it was the Chin (a state from Burma--Elder Suan and all the Burmese people we are teaching are from the Chin state) National Day. So all the Chin people from Australia came down to celebrate the anniversary of the national day, and it just happened to be a few minutes from where we live! So it was perfect timing for Elder Suan to be here. We got permission to go to the national day festival and were able to meet a lot of people, so it was a great opportunity. So everything is continuing to progress here which is good, and we are excited for the 40-Day Fast which starts tomorrow which we know will keep us very busy and bring heaps of miracles to the area and ward. Thanks for you support and love and e-mails! They always help a lot! I hope you have a great week this week and I'll talk to you again soon! Love you heaps!

 

Love,

 

Elder Hopkins

February 17, 2014

G'day!

 

Thanks for the e-mail! Glad that everything is going well for you. In answer to your e-mail, that was me with the BYU password thing but I figured it out and now I'm just waiting for President Maxwell to do his part of it. Thanks for letting me know about the classes, that seems so early to sign up! But I will think of what to take, and be sure to mention about my desire to study film and what classes will help with that. Thanks heaps! Oh and also a suggestion for looking at classes and deciding which to choose, use the website ratemyprofessor.com (or net?) which gives reviews of each professor in different aspects. I used that before in choosing my teachers for each class and it made a huge difference! Also, I had a quick request, I meant to send it several weeks ago but I keep forgetting about it. I was wondering if you could send a list of my line of authority because I don't have one with me and I thought it would be something good to have. And this past week I did get your package, thank you so much! I still have to send thank you cards to everyone else from back in Christmas time, I've written most of them but my attention span stopped there with them haha so I just need to go buy stamps and send them off. Anyway, this past week was so good! We saw so many miracles and were very blessed. One miracle was with our investigator Ellen. She already has a baptismal date for March 1st but we talked about it with her more this week and her desire continues to increase to be baptized then. She said she understands she would have to devote herself to the Gospel because she knows it is true and not still be tied up with everything in her other church. The only potential obstacle now is just since she is 17 we have to get parent's permission, but we have faith that the Lord will bless us to be able to get that. So we are excited to see her progress to being baptized. Also, another huge miracle with Jobe came this past week as well. Kind of in two parts--the first part being on Friday. We hadn't seen him since church and we called him up to set up a time to see him either that day or the next day. While we were talking to him he said, "So is someone coming to pick me up again for church on Sunday? I will be waiting." So that was awesome to hear that he was excited to come to church again, because often we have to remind and prod investigators several times to come to church haha. Anyway, part 2 of the miracle came on Sunday when we were in our Sunday School class. We were talking to Jobe and he told us basically how in the past week he had received a testimony of the Book of Mormon and knew it was the word of God. He said how when he reads the Bible he always gains knowledge and said he feels it gives him more power, but when he's been reading from the Book of Mormon the Spirit comes in very strong and touches him deep in his heart, more powerful than he's had before. So that was awesome! And it gets even more miraculous because he told us after our church he was going to go to his other church that he's been going to and tell all of them about the Book of Mormon and that they should read it and come to church! So he is a legend and it's amazing to see the conversion he is already experiencing. So next Sunday at church we are going to give him heaps of copies of the Book of Mormon to give out to people. We also had a similar experience after church in a lesson with the teacher in a Pentecostal church. After we shared with him the Plan of Salvation it got him thinking a lot, especially about the 3 kingdoms of glory and he said that during the week (we meet with him each Sunday) he would study about it more and pray to receive confirmation about it. He told us that after he knew that it was in fact true and from God that he would then teach it to his class at his church. So we hope and pray that both he and Jobe are successful in their efforts and that we see a big surge of conversions to the Gospel here. We are continuing to be extremely busy, which is good, and are almost to the point where we can't see everyone in one week. So the Lord is blessing us so generously at the moment, and we just hope we can continue to work hard enough to deserve the blessings. This past week we also had 2 exchanges which are always good. On one of the exchanges, Elder Snyder (the other missionary) and I were thinking of what we could do between 10 and 11 a.m., which is always a difficult time to work in something effective. Elder Suan and I had received a referral the day before from a member who had met a Sudanese family who had just moved into the area. So Elder Snyder and I decided to try and contact them. We managed to see them at their house and set up a time to have a lesson with them that afternoon at the member's home who met them. So we ended up having the lesson and it went really well! The member family was really great at testifying and showing love to this family. They were really keen to come check out the church here since they were looking for a local church to go to anyway, and one of the daughters (age 14) was also interested in coming to Young Women activities as well. So that was another great miracle for this past week. On Tuesday nights we had splits with the ward as usual and had some really good visits as well. You might or might not remember me mentioning it at the beginning of my transfer with Elder Lau, but there was a less-active member from Zimbabwe that we met who was going on holiday for quite a few weeks and who asked us to visit him when we got back. So we finally got to see him again with a member who knows him well (who happens to be a councillor in the bishopric) and he really wants to work back into the Gospel and have lessons in the future. His wife is not a member of the church so he was very keen to bring his family to like some activities or even have her go to some Relief Society activities where she can meet some great people in a casual environment. So we look forward to working with him further throughout the coming weeks. Well I think that is unfortunately all the time I have to write today, but hopefully it's enough to read haha. Everything is going great and Elder Suan is getting accustomed well! As always thanks for your love and support which helps immensely. Just another small request, I just remembered, one of the sisters in the ward, Sister Burton, is extremely ill and has been for 2 weeks now, so if you could include her health in a few prayers I'm sure it will be a big help as well. Well I love you heaps and I'll talk to you again soon! Have a great week!

 

Love,

 

Elder Hopkins

February 10, 2014

G'day!

 

Thanks for the e-mail this week! And also a big thanks to everyone else who has sent little notes the past 2 or so weeks, they make my day! I'm grateful for all the support throughout my mission that has helped make it the incredible experience it has been. This past week was really good as most weeks are. Elder Suan and I have unofficially become the Burmese speaking missionaries for the Mooroolbark ward haha. The sister missionaries are teaching most of the English speaking families and investigators right now because 1) a lot of them are females, and they have a bit of an advantage on us with connecting and relating to them and 2) we are luckily extremely busy already with all the investigators and Burmese that we are teaching that we don't have time to teach all the others too. Mooroolbark has been such a great experience for me because basically ever since I got here and was serving with Elder Afele and Elder Wood, we've been having anywhere between 15 and 24 lessons every week so we've been blessed to be very busy. And since with Elder Suan being a new, language-learning missionary that's 2 extra hours of study every morning which makes our schedules even more packed. It's been good with Elder Suan because he's a great teacher and is able to help the Burmese people understand more by frequently explaining to them things in their own language, but of course I'm not just a fly on the wall but still am teaching just as I normally would. As I said before the Burmese people are mostly Baptist and it's very difficult for them to change even if they know the church is true because if they do the entire Burmese community, including their own family, shuns them. Which if you remember is what happened with Mary and her family, but she is so strong so she stayed true to what she knew. So most of them that we teach understand and accept what we teach, but the progress towards conversion and baptism could be a longer one than normal because it's a hard decision to choose to be on your own, which is unfortunate that that is how it is. There's one investigator we're teaching though who's name is Jobe (Joe-bee) who seems very interested in the gospel. He was at church yesterday for the first time and really enjoyed it and the members were very good at introducing themselves and making him feel welcome. What helps him to be much closer towards conversion and baptism is that he isn't regularly attending a Baptist church (some other church) and he doesn't live with parents who he relies on for financial support. So if he were to join, he wouldn't have to go through as much difficulties of being 'on his own.' And of course in saying all of these things I'm in no way saying anything bad about the Baptist church specifically or the Burmese people, it's just a part of their culture that they stick to the family's way or they stick to their own way. So because of Jobe's situation at the moment we feel he could be prepared for baptism very soon. The biggest difference maker for our investigators and for any investigators I think is when they make the effort to come to church on a consistent basis so they have the opportunity to feel the Spirit and see the restored gospel in action, so Jobe and several others have already made that step and because of that they are the ones who start progressing more and have more of a desire to learn. Also, at church, the Sacrament program was an introduction to the 40-Day fast program starting on the 25th of February as a way of informing all the members about it and helping them to be excited for it. So the first speaker was one of the sister missionaries, Sister Baker, and she talked about what the program was and what the members' responsibility was. I was the second speaker and talked about fasting, what it is and the blessing that we receive from it. And then Bishop Beckwith spoke last about the law of the harvest and about aligning our will with the Lord's will. It all turned out really well and all the members are very enthusiastic and optimistic about the program and in just the first day of signing up families we've covered 24 of the days (with a lot of them having 2 families on a day), so everyone is very willing to be involved. We know it will bring so many miracles and strengthen the ward and it's members. So everything is continuing to progress in Mooroolbark and it's only the 3rd week of the transfer, so we know the rest of it will be very busy for us! I hope you have a wonderful week this week and continue to see many miracles of your own! I love you heaps and I'll talk to you again soon!

 

Love,

 

Elder Hopkins

February 3, 2014

G'Day!

 

Thanks heaps for the e-mail this week! Sorry I'm e-mailing later than usual this week, we've been busy with so many things. So anyway it's been an interesting week! Tuesday morning I woke up and just started throwing up heaps! Great way to start the week and the e-mail. I felt so sick the whole day and the following day wasn't much better. So I missed transfer meeting and I also missed the meeting where we are assigned with our new missionaries, which I was sad about, but I needed to recover unfortunately. However, I'm all better now which is good! Elder Lau went to an area called Morrabin. My new companion is the man! My whole e-mail could be written about him haha. So his name is Elder Suan and he is the perfect missionary for this area because he is from Burma! So he's an answer to prayers for sure and will have a great impact on the people here since there are so many Burmese people. All the members were so excited to meet him on Sunday and Bishop Beckwith was especially excited since they all know about the Burmese people in Mooroolbark as well. So Elder Suan converted to the church 3 years ago from the Baptist church and is currently 21 years old. There are 5 brothers and 1 sister and his parents, but only he and 4 other brothers are members. His brother (who's currently a branch president there) is the one who invited him to church and he later met with some senior missionaries. There are no proselyting missionaries aloud in Burma so those are the only missionaries that can go there. He is a part of the only branch in all of Burma which has between 30-40 active members, and he is only about the 12th missionary from Burma to ever serve and the first ever in this mission! So it's a massive honor and responsibility to be serving with him. I've never felt so overwhelmed with responsibility to a companion before since I am obviously showing him the basics of being a missionary, teaching him English (which is pretty good but still has a lot of improvment room), and teaching him a lot about the Gospel as well because he still doesn't know too much about it but the most important thing is that he knows it's the true church. His life goal is to be able to translate the Book of Mormon, and many other church materials, into Burmese since they don't have it in their language yet. So he is awesome and has a really bright future. He's very hard-working and already very good at talking to people and teaching the Gospel. It's been a big blessing thus far because most of the Burmese people we've been teaching here speak limited English but he's able to talk to them in their own language and thus answer their questions better and teach them more powerfully. On his first full proselyting day in the mission field he gave away 4 copies of the Book of Mormon to Burmese families so he's doing great! We know there will be heaps of miracles this transfer as he helps the Burmese people come to a greater knowledge of the truth of the restored Gospel. Our investigators that we have are continuing to progress well and Ellen was able to come to church for the first time this week and stayed for all 3 hours! So that was awesome to see and she really loved it and is excited to come again. We are starting the 40 day fast 2 Sundays from now which will bring many more miracles as well! So exciting things are happening in Mooroolbark as always. Well since I started later I also have to finish sooner, but hopefully this is enough for this week. I love the work and everything is going great! Thanks for all that you've done for me and continue to do for me on my mission. I love you heaps and I'll talk to you again soon!

 

Love,

 

Elder Hopkins