Elder East clarified that his companion is Elder De Guzman. In the AAM blog, the photos of the new missionaries and their trainers had Elder East listed as being with Elder Narag. He doesn't know Elder Narag at all. Elder De Guzman is from the Philippines and has been out for about eight months (he came into the field in Dec 2019.) English isn't his first language so there are sometimes some communication issues but they're getting along fine. Elder De Guzman has been Zone Leader for the past 4 months. Elder East says that Elder De Guzman is a good cook.
Their flat is a single-story apartment in the suburb of Evandale and is quite old and rundown. Apparently, they enter their flat via the backdoor because they're worried that if they use the front door it will break.
They don't have a car or bike at all and rely on public transport to get around. He said that isn't bad, although kind of awkward when trying to bring back groceries.
The City Branch area used to have eight missionary companionships, however because of the reduction in missionaries associated with the pandemic, it's now just them and one other companionship. The other companionship is Elder Baraat and Elder Roberts. Elder Baraat is Elder De Guzman's previous companion who is from Mongolia and who's been out for 28 months now because he can't go home. Elder Roberts is the Maori elder who was in quarantine with Elder East.
They're doing most of their work by going through the old area books - which is handy as they have 4 area books to be able to use. Because of the pandemic, missionaries are unable to do much in the way of public contacting, and can't just visit members uninvited. They only had just over 20 members at Church on Sunday - by the sounds of it, a lot of the ward list are international students that haven't been able to return because of the pandemic, or which they've lost contact with, so working with members may be rather limited.
They had however already managed to teach two discussions - one over the phone, and one in person. Another consequence of the pandemic is that they do most of their teaching appointments at the chapel, so they are regularly there.
Elder East commented that he preferred the discussion they taught over the phone rather than the one in person. He's still lacking a lot of confidence in his teaching skills and ability to work with other Elders whilst teaching. They apparently had another two teaching appointments after dinner on P-Day, so it sounds like they're at last getting good opportunities to teach.
There were two photos from Elder East that I didn't include in the email post, and they were of the derposaurs at Morialta Falls on their first day out of quarantine with President Marquis. I've merged the two photos together to produce the following image.
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