He started out by saying that he might only show his mouth in the video. He had just gotten himself a haircut that he wasn’t happy with and didn't want to show his whole head. It was shorter on top than Mum usually does it, but it didn’t look too bad.
The first bit of conversation was about Mum’s car accident as we’d just gotten the news that Jelly Bean (her car) was being written off and that Mum was now driving around Danielle Devito (his car). Elder East did give Mum some little tips about his old car … like not locking the driver’s door when in the car as it doesn’t unlock from the inside and you have to then climb out the passenger’s side. (Note: Not sure why he didn’t just wind down the driver’s door window and open it that way.]
The major theme of the chat was that Elder East is having trouble adjusting to his new companion. There's nothing of a serious nature, just getting used to people who do things differently. Elder De Guzman likes to have three cooked meals a day, most with rice, whilst Elder East would typically just have an apple for breakfast and maybe a sandwich for lunch. It’s frustrating for Elder East in that in his view all of the cooked meals result in a lot of extra cleaning that needs to be done, and a lot of extra time traveling to and from their flat.
Their typical day consists of leaving the flat at 10am, traveling to the chapel by bus to work, bussing back to the flat for lunch, bussing back to the chapel for more work, and then bussing back in the evening.
At the chapel, they spend a lot of time calling through old investigators in the area books. They actually seem to be doing not too bad in that regard. He said that they had 3 appointments scheduled for that evening, had taught 2 lessons on Monday and 4 lessons on Tuesday. He'd taught a couple of the lessons with Elder Roberts as Elder De Guzman had been playing the piano whilst Elder East was making calls to investigators. We commented that he was teaching far more than we typically did on our missions.
They've only had a single meal with a member so far. He took them out to a claypot dinner in Chinatown. The one he had wanted to take them too wasn't available so they tried a different one, which ended up being a lot more expensive than he'd planned. The bill came to $140. The member had intended to pay for the missionaries, but he only had $100. Elder De Guzman didn't have any money, so Elder East ended up paying the other $40.
Elder East mentioned that he and Elder De Guzman need to work on how the training is going to operate. Elder De Guzman is very much of the opinion that Elder East will learn by doing things as he goes, whereas Elder East prefers to learn about how to do things beforehand before putting them into practice. They obviously need to work about how make Elder East's training more effective.
We talked about how the Adelaide Temple would be opening up so that he would be able to go the Temple for the first time (as opposed to just the baptistery.) We had asked the Mission President several months ago about whether we might be able to come over when that occurred to help assist. President Marquis was fine with that, but the shut borders mean that that's no longer an option. Instead, we've ordered the clothes he needs for the temple from the Sydney Distribution Centre. We did need some assistance from Sister Grant in the Mission Office who went and helped get some measurements from Elder East.
A few other minor points:
- Sister Abel from Stromlo Ward had an MTC companion who is about to transfer into the AAM, so she's been told to keep an eye out for Elder Seth.
- Elder East has bought some new, mission-rule-compliant plain socks to replace the picture socks that Mum had gotten for him.
- We talked about the kayaker who died earlier in the week down at Point Hut Crossing, just down the road from home.
- Elder East was planning to email Alex G, Grandma and Kendall R. We noted that we weren't a part of the list that was going to get an email.
No comments:
Post a Comment