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

January 21, 2013

G'Day!

Thanks once again for a wonderful e-mail this week! I look forward to each P-Day when I get to read it. Now that I'm able to e-mail on the usual day I'll hopefully be able to include more detail then last time. This past week was great and these first two weeks in Geelong literally feel like a few days. It amazes me that the time on the mission continues to go faster and faster even when it was already flying by! Just means you have to make every moment count! So in this Geelong area that we're in there wasn't very many investigators or less-active members that were in the teaching pool, so we haven't been teaching many lessons, just a lot of contacting and finding. We spent the first couple of days (an hour or two each day) organizing the teaching records for the area from the Area Book. We finally got all of it sorted out nicely, and after removing some of the records from back in the Joseph Smith era we were able to get a good, large list of former investigators (people who'd been taught either a bit or a lot but either stopped investigating the church or weren't progressing) to go and try to contact again. So in these first two weeks when we haven't been in Members' homes for meals or in a lesson, we've been walking around contacting these people. It was something that I'd never tried to do before in Pakenham but we felt impressed that we should do a lot of it here. We've decided that we want to contact all of the former investigators (and there's well over 100) before we start just normally tracting. We've actually seen so many miracles and blessings as we've done so and gotten quite a few new contacts and investigators to go and teach. Most of the former investigators we were going to contact had moved but out of the first 10 or so that we tried to visit, about 6 of the people now living there seemed very prepared to hear the gospel. So that's been a big blessing and has increased our teaching pool for the area. Almost all of the former investigators that still do live in the same place have also said that we can come back to teach them as well, which is fantastic as well. We've also been using a pattern of contacting that I remember learning from President Lifferth a while back where he talked about if you go and try to contact a less-active member or a former investigator and they aren't home or have moved, don't just rush on to the next person on the list, but tract the house to the left, the house to the right, the one across the street, or even the whole street because their must be some reason Heavenly Father wants us to go to that certain area. As we've applied that idea we've seen a lot of great blessings come and we've met some really great people as well. Something that has also really helped me in my missionary work was something that Elder Pearson mentioned at the conference last week. He was talking about how everyone is on a level between 1 and 7 of how prepared they are to receive the Gospel, with 7 being completely ready and 1 being quite hostile. He was talking about how as a missionary you shouldn't try and make every 1 that you see become a level 7 right away, it's not often achievable. He said that every person that we meet though that is like a 1 or 2 or 3, we should recognize that they aren't ready for the Gospel but before leaving them we should just do or say something to help make them a level higher for the next time they see missionaries (by just being really friendly or saying something like "if you ever need anything at all, service or help, just ask the missionaries and we'll help you right away). That was something that really opened my eyes because so far on the mission as I've assumed myself and seen a few other missionaries do I've wanted every person that we meet to become a new investigator to the church even if they want nothing to do with it. But that's helped me realize that I need to focus and think about more of the bigger and long term picture than just the immediate one. I think that's helped us a lot since he said that. So in Geelong, the main investigator we have is named Joe who is the partner (soon to be husband in March) of a less-active member named Camilla. They're the nicest couple and are really receptive to the things we've told them and what they've learned since they've been coming to church the past few weeks before I got here. Camilla is actually the daughter of the former 2nd counselor in the bishopric of the Pakenham ward so I'd actually met them 1 Sunday before when they visited family in the ward there! Small world! But we'll start teaching them the missionary lessons this coming Wednesday and Joe seems very prepared to hear the Gospel so I'm sure we'll see a lot of blessings and miracles there. Yesterday (Sunday) we had a big multi-stake conference because they were also creating a new stake on this side of Melbourne as well! So Elder Pearson as well as Elder Ireedin (not sure if that's the right spelling) of the 70 were there to preside (unfortunately they were at a different stake center so it was just broadcast to ours (the Wyndam stake center) and gave some wonderful talks. Elder Pearson's main point of his talk (he was the last speaker) was that with the hard and difficult times that are in the future for the church and its members, the only thing that will keep us from faltering is by 'clinging' to the Iron Rod (from Lehi's dream) or the Book of Mormon "Every day, Every day, Every day." I found that to be very enlightening and I think it helped a lot of the members there. My favorite line that he said which I think might be one of the best I've heard from a talk was "I can't imagine Moroni having any sympathy for anyone in our day saying we weren't able to read the scriptures because we just didn't have time to get around to it, when records were hidden and protected, the best blood was spilt, and the Prophet Joseph Smith and his brother Hyrum gave their lives so that we could have this to read every day, every day, every day. I just can't think of any excuse that would cause him to feel that way." I found that to be so profound! But anyway, my time is running out for this week, but I'm glad I was able to include a bit more this time around! I hope that you have a wonderful week ahead and that Heavenly Father continues to bless you! I love you and I'll talk to you again soon!

Love,

Elder Hopkins

January 15, 2013

G'Day!

Thanks so much for the e-mail this week! I loved reading it and appreciated all your notes. First of all, hopefully you weren't too worried when you didn't receive an e-mail yesterday. Remember when I told you last week that we'd be having a meeting with Elder Pearson of the 70? Well for our side of the mission that happened to be on Monday, while the other side of the mission was on Tuesday. So we left our flat at 6:30 a.m. and didn't return until 7 p.m.! So unfortunately there was no possible way for me to e-mail you yesterday, however, I'm using the extra little bit of time we get each week to e-mail you a quick letter today. So since I don't have much time at all to write I'll have to just fly through everything. First of all, the news you're all waiting for, my new area is in the Geelong area. Since you probably aren't familiar with Melbourne's geography, Geelong is about an hour or two outside of Melbourne city on the west side of it. So quite a big change from Pakenham about the same distance from the city but on the east side. Geelong is also quite a large city, comparable a bit to San Francisco, because our area goes ride up the beach! Pretty cool since I haven't seen a beach since we've been in California. And also, the situation has now gone from bikes to no bikes, haha. So my companion and I have just been walking around and using public transport (buses), although our area is quite large. However, the Geelong area actually has 4 Elders in the ward, so two different areas, north and south, and we're in the south Geelong area. The other Elders have a car though so we sometimes catch rides with them to appointments. Next big news is regarding my new companion! His name is Elder Rua (Roo-ah) and he is from Tahiti! This is only his second transfer in the mission so I'm his follow-up trainer since his 1st companion finished his mission last transfer. So that's pretty exciting to be working with a missionary still fresh in the field. His English is also really, really good considering he never spoke it before the mission and ended up only getting 3 weeks in the MTC to learn, so that's one miracle he's experienced. He's also really funny, his personality is like the exact same as my roommate Michael from BYU so we get along really well with having fun but also working really hard. Our area isn't nearly as big of a teaching pool as Pakenham had become, so there's a lot of room for progress and improvement. However, we've already seen a lot of success by organizing all the teaching records from past missionaries and trying to find some new investigators to add to our list. The Geelong ward is actually the biggest ward on paper in all of Victoria, however, the attendance is quite low, so there's heaps of less-actives and inactives throughout the ward list. So that's one of the goals Elder Rua and I have, to go through the ward list and try to visit all the members on it in our part of Geelong and see if we can find some less-actives who are ready to come back and live the Gospel again. My birthday on Thursday went well, it wasn't much different than any other day but I did enjoy opening your package with all of the goodies! That definitely helped make it a great day! Elder Pearson at the conference was also incredible! I'd never heard him speak before but after hearing him talk with us I want to hear him every General Conference! He was such a wise and powerful teacher and the spirit was so strong each time he spoke. The blessing he gave all of us at the end with his testimony was also really special and powerful. The room was so quiet as he was speaking then that you literally could hear no sound at all during the breaks in his speech. I loved the opportunity to hear a general authority speak in person and so close. That was definitely a highlight for the week. Well sorry I don't have much time to talk this week, I tried to include all the main things that I could think of quickly. Thanks for the e-mail again and for all of your love and support! I will definitely talk to you next Monday (Sunday for you) for sure, so I will talk to you again then! Have a wonderful week, love you!

Love,

Elder Hopkins

January 7, 2013

G'Day!

Thanks heaps for the fantastic e-mail this week, it was so great to read it! The weather has been quite the opposite here, with several really hot days and another one that was almost 110 degrees! It was a really great week though and we were able to accomplish so many things! Well first off I guess I should let you know about the transfer news! Elder Hirata..............will be staying in Pakenham! And Elder Hopkins........will be leaving Pakenham! My 7 1/2 month reign in Pakenham is ended, haha. So obviously since I've been here for so long and since it was also my first area I'm going to be a quite sad to leave but I know there's still a lot of exciting things ahead and it certainly will be interesting getting used to a new area. Elder Hirata will actually be training a new missionary in Pakenham (they told him early because he has to pack a little day bag to stay up at the place where they bring all the new missionaries. So that should be interesting, hopefully he'll do alright! I'll find out tomorrow who my new companion is as well as my new area so unfortunately you'll have to wait for a whole week in suspense before I can let you know where I am. It's been so busy the past 3 days (including today) because we've just been rushing around from house to house non-stop so I can say goodbye to all of the members, less-actives, and investigators I've become close with. I've been able to see most of the people that I'd hoped to and just have a few more to see today. My last week in Pakenham was really good though and we accomplished a lot! New Years was pretty normal for us as we did our countdown at 10:30 because we still had to keep the same schedule. It should be a great new year though and I hope it brings a lot of success and blessings. It already has brought some big blessings as the highlight of the week was we were able to set a baptismal date with Rodney for March 2nd! That was a huge blessing to be able to do that and his wife really helped a massive amount in making him feel comfortable with the date and bearing her testimony, so it went really well and hopefully Elder Hirata and his new companion will be able to help him reach that date, as well as Joan reaching hers! It was really a testimony builder for me going around and visiting all of the people that I've taught a lot in my time here in Pakenham because I heard all of them talk about the impact I and my 2 companions (Elder Rafferty and Elder Hirata) had had on them. I think as a missionary sometimes you don't feel like you're making too big of an impact in lives but just kind of 'doing your job' but hearing those people say what they did it made me realize the effect I have, and anyone has, on people as a missionary and representative of Jesus Christ. So I'm sorry that I'm going to have to cut it really short this week, but things have just been really, really busy. I look forward to tomorrow though to finding out my new area and new companion and I will work hard just the same in the new area and hope to see heaps of success! Thanks so much for all of your immense love and support for me, it means so much and has helped me get to where I am right now. I hope that you have a wonderful and fun week ahead and that you have a fantastic new year as well! I love you and I'll talk to you again soon!

Love,

Elder Hopkins

Elder Hopkins and Elder Hirata with Jaynielee and Mathew Gloster (children who recently were baptized), with Bishop Smith in the middle.

 Elder Hopkins with Barry and Joan Willmott.

Elder Hopkins with Jocelyn, a less-active member.