Video Chat - 21st October 2020 - Starting To Get to Know the Members

Elder East was looking all spic'n'span on the video chat last P-day. Elder Aiho had given him a new haircut and he'd gone out and bought some new P-day clothing to wear for the warmer weather.

One of the main bits of news was the Tongan missionaries were starting to be repatriated back to Tonga. There were three that were leaving now, including one of the Elders and Sisters in his district. They're expecting the remaining Tongan missionaries to be repatriated next month. Add to that that a bunch of Aussies are due to go home next transfer, and the mission numbers look to be contracting again for a while. 

Elder East thinks that President Marquis may shut down Darwin again for a while. Because of its isolation, President is very picky as to which missionaries can go up there.  Elder East has commented that with the pandemic limitations a number of missionaries are struggling to stay focused at the moment. Elder East thinks going to Darwin would be interesting, but that they'd probably get lonely being so far away from any of the other missionaries. Transfers are in two weeks' time and he's hoping to stay in the Ward, although he does admit it would be interesting to see more of the area.

Tradeoffs went well on Thursday/Friday in the Firle area with Elder East spending his time with Elder Ma'a. Thet ended up doing some service work for an investigator. Mainly work around their garden - Elder East said it was pretty easy stuff. They also ended up going for dinner with a part-member family - the dad isn't a  member but comes long to church each Sunday. Elder East said they had nachos for dinner - good, but no-one can do nachos as well as Dad does :)

They enjoyed Stake Conference over last weekend. All of the missionaries from the zone were there, as well as many of the new members from Adelaide City Branch that Elder East knew. Apparently, the new members from the Branch don't have as much to do with the current missionaries at the moment. The missionaries are currently in the Branch are all Polynesian and there's a bit of a greater cultural difference to all of the new members.

Elder's East and Kennach are doing more contacting of the members in Prospect Ward. Not everybody is receptive to them, but they have four meals scheduled with member families this week and had two meals with members last week. They were scheduled to meet with the old Bishop's family on P-Day evening to have dinner with them and teach a lesson to his son who turned eight during the pandemic lockdown. On Friday they are scheduled to provide some service and then have a meal. 

Elder East says that working with the members reminds him of when we've had the missionaries over to our house, not just for meals, but also fellowshipping during lessons. Having been on his mission for a while now, he thinks that being a Ward Missionary would be a good calling to have back at home.

Even though Elder East's mission is self-funded, each missionary's funds are paid monthly to their home Church unit. This money is then allocated to the mission office to centrally pay for a number of things such as missionary accommodation, utilities and so on. This is particularly needed for all of the non-Australian missionaries who would otherwise have issues accessing their money from foreign banks and in various currencies, but it's also done for Aussies to make things easier for everyone. Missionaries are given an allocation of the funds back for groceries, and other personal use.  The mission assists all of the missionaries in opening up new bank accounts for them when they arrive in the mission field. This way they all get new debit cards from a local bank to access their missionary funds when they arrive in the mission field. This enables missionaries to pay for things locally regardless of where they're originally from. This last week they had issues with both the debit cards used by the missionaries for their groceries and their car's fuel card, so Elder East ended up paying for several items from his own personal funds, which is being reimbursed by the mission office.

Some quick notes about those whom they're teaching:

• They've taught a couple of lessons to a tradie named Cody that Elder East said is nice. 
• Tarvi is still on his break to "study"
• Edwards' TV died, which apparently is a positive as he tended to do a lot of gaming. He has good friends in the Ward and is in his new job.
• They did meet with the Tamil gentlemen again, but the language issues are proving difficult.
• They're no longer meeting with the argumentative Indian gentlemen. Missionaries are out there to share truths for those who are spiritually prepared, not to debate or argue.
• Elder East is getting a little frustrated as many of those whom they are teaching or spending time with aren't really progressing spiritually at the moment. 

Dot point notes about some of the other things we discussed:

• Elder East still has no love of driving in Adelaide.
• They've gone and joined up with some of the other Elders for basketball a couple of times for their daily exercise, but need to get into some exercise habits they can do as a companionship.
• The seminary classes were the highlight of Elder East's week. [I've written that up as a separate blog post].
• Most P-Days at the moment end up being volleyball at the chapel with the other missionaries whilst eating KFC brought by the Polynesian missionaries. They had planned on going out to Morialta Falls this P-Day but that fell through because of the Tongan missionaries getting ready to fly home.
• On Monday evening, they decided to pop down to the local Woolworth's after dinner to grab a mud cake. On the way, they witnessed a bad car accident at the traffic lights. They reckon that both cars in the accident would have been written off, but fortunately, no one seemed badly hurt. They didn't stay as other people were already assisting and emergency services were on their way.

Oh, and lastly, a photo I forgot to put up that was sent to us last P-day. It's of Elder East wearing the dinosaur apron that his Mum made for him and sent about 4 weeks ago.. (You can't see the dinosaurs because they're in the lining.)

Elder East Helps Teach Seminary

 Elder East's mum teaches Seminary. One of this week's lessons suggested getting some of the youth up and to imagine they were missionaries. She figured that what might be better was seeing if she could actually get Elder East and Elder Kennach to present that part of the lesson. 

She contacted the Mission Office with her request and details of the seminary lesson, and she received a same-day response advising "Your request meets with hearty approval!".

Elders East and Kennach were permitted to have a quick call with us on Saturday night (17th Oct)  to go through what was involved in preparing for the lesson. 

Elder East and Kennach successfully joined in on the Tuesday (20th Oct) seminary lessons - both the 6:30am lesson and the 5:30pm lesson. The main things they were asked to cover were: 

• Personally preparing to give priesthood ordinances
• Personally preparing to receive an ordinance
• The importance of priesthood authority (ie line of authority)

As usual, the morning class was a bit more subdued - everybody always looks half-asleep/half-dead in the morning class, but the afternoon class was more involved, even if they don't look it in the screenshot further down.

President Stuart, the Canberra Stake President, managed to poke his head in online whilst the afternoon seminary lesson was on.

Elder East enjoyed studying for the lessons and said the lessons and preparation were one of the highlights of the week. 

Virtual Mission Tour by Elder Kazuhiko Yamashita - Photos

The Adelaide Mission blog has updated with a post about the Virtual Mission Tour by Elder Kazuhiko Yamashita between the 6th and 9th October 2020. 

There aren't any close-up photos of Elder East in the post, but there are a number of large photos with him in, so have fun playing "Spot the Elder East".

Tues 6th Oct 2020 - 1st Mission Conference (Firle Chapel)

This was called "The Happy Companionship" role play.

Thurs 8th Oct 2020 - Mission Social Media Training: Brother Shawn Cates in Salt Lake City (via Zoom)

Thurs 8th Oct 2020 - 3rd Mission Conference (via Zoom)

Learning some origami from Sister Yamashita as an object lesson.

Fri 9th Oct 2020 - 4th Mission Conference (Firle Chapel)

Several photos of the missionaries doing role plays.

Elder Yamashita invited the missionaries to stand during the closing hymn (Called to Serve) and show their enthusiasm by fist-pumping. As you might be able to tell from Elder East's expression, fist-pumping isn't really an East family thing. :)

Video Chat - 14th October 2020 - All Mission Conference

It was back to the regular Wednesday P-Day this week and we caught up with Elder East for a video chat on Wednesday afternoon. The major event of course was the Mission Conference held last week that had Elder Kazuhiko Yamashita, the second counselor in the Area Presidency, joining in by Zoom from New Zealand. There were apparently 24 different sessions across the week for various groups, but only four that Elder East was involved in. 

On the Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, all of the Adelaide missionaries came to Firle chapel for training and instruction. On the Thursday all of the missionaries joined in via Zoom from their respective accommodation. Some of the themes covered during the sessions included helping to strengthen wards, and changes to how missionaries do finding (ie finding people who are interested/willing to learn about the Gospel of Jesus Christ.) Apparently getting out of bed on time was also stressed :)

At which point, a segway to the fact that we were sent the following picture from Elder Reeves' mum. Obviously, it was a tiring day when this was taken.

Elder Reeves' companion is friends with Elder Kennach, so we can suspect as to how the photo ended up with Elder Reeves' mum. 

Elder East advised that their district has merged with another district, so they now have 10 missionaries in the district, and Elder Kennach is no longer the District Leader. They are scheduled to go on trade-offs with the new District Leader Elder Le Moyne and his companion this coming Thursday. Trade-offs seem to be a regular, formal occurrence in the mission and are set to last for 24 hours (Noon to Noon). 

As much as the district has increased in size, they are mindful of how quickly the Samoan missionaries were repatriated and recognise that the Tongans could also go at any moment. This will keep the mission's number of missionaries quite low with the pandemic limiting the ability of missionaries to come out into the mission field. In addition, Elder East commented that they're going to lose a lot of missionaries at the next transfer as a number of missionaries complete their missions. He knows that one of the APs, their Zone Leader, and a bunch of the sisters are all due to go home. He thinks the mission numbers will be low for a while.

One of the new missionaries in Elder East's zone is Sister Hall. She was the MTC companion of Georgia Abel, from Elder East's home ward. Sister Abel had told Sister Hall to keep an eye out for Elder East when she got to Adelaide and to say hi. 

They are usually teaching a lesson each day, but they still have days where they don't get to teach at all. They have most of their appointments on Saturdays and Sundays. They'll usually have 3 or 4 scheduled each day of the weekend, but several usually cancel and they'll end up only teaching two.

Some updates on those with whom they are sharing the Gospel with:

• Tarvi - they had a good meeting with him last week where Elder East had felt that they'd connected, but he's decided he needs to do more study of the Book of Mormon. He's asked for a couple of months time to study before starting lessons again.
• Fonzie - the older gentleman they'd done service before a while ago keeps canceling their appointments.
• Edward - an investigator who has just gotten himself a job at one of the Universities. This will enable him to get a car and get himself to Church. He was previously scheduled to be baptised before the pandemic. They are meeting with him each Sunday, and apparently, he has friends in the Ward.
• Kylie - there was some confusion between the Elders and the Adelaide City Branch sisters (Thom & Ip) as to who was meant to be teaching Kylie, so they're now working together to assist her. Elder East said that it was a good opportunity to get to know the Sisters a bit better.
• After going into the city for Elder East to vote they ended catching up teaching a gentleman who lives in his car. Elder east felt that he "connected" with him, talking about why he went on his mission. They ended up giving him a Book of Mormon, but were unable to set up another appointment to teach him.
• They had rung an elderly lady and set up an appointment to go around and teach. Her son rang back the next day telling them not to come around as she has dementia and doesn't understand what is going on. I offered that it might have been a good opportunity to offer to still come around and help in any way. Even if you can't teach, there are always opportunities to provide service and help others.
• They taught a Tamil gentleman in his room in a shared house. It sounded like the house was fairly crowded, and Elder East said there were no lights in the corridors. Sounds a bit like one of those dodgy slumlord houses. The gentleman himself was nice but his English wasn't strong, so it was difficult to get concepts across well.

Dot point list of other things we discussed during the chat:

• Last Friday, Elder East managed to get in to the South Australian Electoral Commission in the CBD to vote in the upcoming ACT election.
• Adelaide is starting to get warm - up into the low thirties. Elder East doesn't have any short-sleeved shirts, but he's just rolling up his sleeves. It'll probably be another 7-8 months before his good winter jacket gets used again.
• They have Stake Conference coming up this next weekend where a new Stake Presidency is being called. Numbers at Stake Conference are limited due to the pandemic, however, the missionaries have received a specific invite to attend.
• Elder East has been cooking a lot of sausages and crepes. Apparently, he and his companion are now "over" crepes.
• Elder East had his first sit down meal in a member family's home from the Ward he's serving in. The Ward Mission Leader had them over and they had a roast meal for the missionaries. No complaints from Elder East there. They even got sent home with the leftovers.
• They're due to have interviews with the Mission President again soon. Seth enjoyed his time with President Marquis last time.
• Elder East recently received letters to Grandma, Alex G and John Larkin.
• Elder Aihoa (Elder East's Twelth Cousin) poked his head in on the call and said hello to us.

Inspirational Message - A Piano's Purpose

This post doesn't have anything to do directly with Elder East's mission, apart from being in support of the message that he shares as a missionary. I saw it today and thought I'd like to share it. It's a beautiful piece called "A Piano's Purpose".

Video Chat - 5th October 2020 - Twelfth Cousins and Inspirational Packages

 P-Day was held on Monday this week as the rest of the week was booked out for mission conference activities. Elder Kazuhiko Yamashita, the second counselor in the Area Presidency would be joining the mission throughout the week (albeit remotely by Zoom from Auckland due to Covid) for sessions on Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday.  He would also be joining a missionary companionship for their companionship study, a district for their district meeting as well as joining in to help teach an investigator. I think Elder East is a bit nervous that he'll be chosen for one of these.

One advantage of the P-Day moving to Monday was that it was a public holiday in Canberra, so we were all home, as well as having Kendal Reeves staying with us as well. Kendal and Jewel had spent the long weekend together, roller-skating,  doing touristy stuff, and having fun. Elder East was able to thank Kendal in person for the package she'd sent to him. A box full of inspirational quotes with chocolates and other small treats. He brought one along with him for the video chat and was trying to guess what treat it had inside. (It was Skittles :)) He sent us this photo of the package in the evening.

One of the first bits of news that Elder East was happy to announce was that he and Elder Aiho, one of the other missionaries in the district, are related. FamilySearch has a feature where you can find other Familysearch users nearby who are related to you. It turns out that Elder Aiho, who is from French Polynesia, and Elder East are twelfth cousins. They share common ancestors from back in the 17th Century. Elder East pointed out that all of the Samoans in the mission had done this and discovered that they were all related - no big surprise there.

We got a rundown of the shortened week since our last P-Day chat. On Thursday they had District Council, although the APs and Sisters had to Zoom in to the meeting. On Saturday they helped the missionaries in Fulham Gardens to move out of and clean their flat. Elder East suspects that Sisters are about to move into that flat. 

At Church on Sunday the Prospect Ward Bishopric were released and a new Bishopric called. Considering that the current Stake Presidency is also being released at Stake Conference in 2 weeks, there's certainly a lot of change in leadership going on for the members of Prospect Ward at the moment. There were only 47 in attendance on Sunday. The Elders had the opportunity to accompany a member to provide the sacrament to an elderly sister after Church.

Both the old and new Bishop have said they plan to have the missionaries over to their homes. The old Bishop has a son who turned 8 during the lockdown and is planning on getting the missionaries to teach him to help prepare for his baptism. Given the very sparse opportunities to go to member's homes so far on his mission, hopefully, they will get to work with the members soon.

Elder Kennach poked his head into the chat at one point. We asked Elder East to tell us a bit more about his companion. He'd mentioned before about how Elder Kennach is an artist. Elder Kennach likes drawing and is interested in doing design after his mission. He came to his mission straight from high school, and last Sunday was his 8 month mark on his mission. Although he's from Samoa, he has family in both Samoa and New Zealand, although many of them aren't active at Church. Elder Kennach's father passed away several years ago. He's now the "last Samoan" in the AAM after the rest were repatriated the previous week. Elder East that prior to that, Samoan was the second language of the mission, and he'd picked up a few words of it.

Some quick notes re investigators:

• They're trying to work with Edward, a long term investigator in the area to come along to Church.
• They had an Indian man pretend to be a Hindu, but in reality was a Christian just pretending so that he could then try and argue with the missionaries.
• The 17-year-old girl who's been coming to Church is having family problems. Her parents are separated and her Dad doesn't want her to get baptised, but she's continuing to come along and is going to Young Women's as well.
• They taught an investigator (Tarui?) last P-day afternoon. They've had another appointment with him since then. He's enthusiastic and the Elders are hoping to see him at least twice per week.

Some other dot point notes from the chat:

• Both Elder Beaumont-Tahu and Sister Hatch are from Queensland and were taught their missionary preparation lessons by John Larkin - the former Canberran Stake President who taught Elder East some of his missionary preparation lessons in 2019.
• We spoke about how there had recently been some obedience issues with some missionaries in other areas of the mission. Some missionaries are obviously struggling with the limitations caused by the pandemic.
• Elder East reckons Adelaide has a drinking problem - he reckons that there are lots of drive-thru liquor stores everywhere.
• He's getting more used to driving again, but he still doesn't like the Adelaide roads. They're too busy for him.
• He was having a bad hair day - it was "obeying gravity" for a change.
• The Elders now have a key to their chapel.
• He was heading off later today to go to the SA Electoral Commission in the city so that he could cast an absentee vote for the upcoming ACT election.
• Elder East is doing a lot of cooking - with dishes such as a mango chicken curry with naan bread on Saturday night and gourmet sausages with grilled onion & capsicum another night.

Video Chat - 30th September 2020 - First Impressions of the Prospect Area

We got to catch up for our video chat early on Wednesday morning as both Mum & Jewel were at home for school holidays. Elder East chatted a bit about his new area. It covers a large area - the Ward had three companionships pre-pandemic. Technically he was already covering the area when Elder Kennach was transferred into Adelaide City Branch to form their three-way companionship. 

The Prospect Ward is reasonably close to the city and is an expensive area - typical inner-city gentrified suburbia. Unfortunately, their flat hasn't been gentrified. It's considered one of the worst in the mission an old flat with a small, poorly stocked kitchen that has a laundry trough for a sink.

The ward still has very low attendance even though pandemic restrictions are being relaxed. They only had about 40 members at Church last Sunday, and Elder East lamented they won't get to see much of the members over the coming weeks. They have General Conference broadcast and then Stake Conference in two consecutive weeks. Elder East got to assist with passing the Sacrament last week.

Elder East is the designated driver for the car in their area - his first driving since he's been in the mission field. He's not particularly fond of driving in Adelaide. His main concern is that there is a lot of street parking in his area which ends up making a lot of the smaller roads practically one lane. In addition, a lot of the main roads have central barriers that prevent cars from being able to cross traffic to turn down side streets, so it's often difficult to find where to turn. He's also not liking driving their automatic car - he prefers driving manuals.

Unfortunately, the Elders don't have a chapel key, so they have to teach either outside of the chapel or at the investigator's home - which many people are reluctant to do in the pandemic situation.

They got to have lunch with a recent convert last week. Just a simple rotisserie chicken and chips, but given the scarcity of member feeds, it was definitely appreciated. They've been unable to get in contact with the Ward Mission Leader and there doesn't appear to be a roster for feeding the missionaries. He did think that they were scheduled for dinner with an investigator that evening though.

Some notes about investigators:

• Their investigator, Katherine, back in the Adelaide City Branch isn't responding back to contact from the new Elders. Elder East is concerned about her as she took a while to get comfortable with missionaries and was progressing with them but now seems to have taken a step back.
• There is a previous missionary contact in Prospect who is actually an anti-Mormon who tries to bash with the missionaries and rile them up. Other missionaries made the mistake of contacting him as he'd appeared as an investigator in the flat book and setting up an appointment which Elder East and Kennach went to. As expected, nothing positive came from it, but they know to mark him down as not being a legitimate investigator. 
• There is a 17-year-old girl who has been coming along to Church with a YSA member. They have a lesson scheduled to teach her but they need to contact her family to get the OK to do so, seeing as she's still considered a minor. 
• They're working with the Prospect investigator they'd been teaching whilst in Adelaide City Branch to get him along to church and teach him more lessons.
• They taught a lesson over the phone to somebody who was couch-surfing in Darwin at the time. (For those not familiar with Australian geography, that's about 300kms/1900miles away from Adelaide.)
• They ended up talking with an excommunicated member for a while but were unable to help her with a desire to return.

 Other dot point notes from the conversation:

• His companion, Elder Kennach is a bit of an artist
• Of the nine Samoans in the Mission, eight of them were repatriated back to Samoa on Transfer Day last week, hence the late minute transfer changes. The only Samoan still remaining is Elder Kennach, his companion. The others were either missionaries who'd served elsewhere who were using the AAM as a stop off as they couldn't get home or those who'sd already served most of their missions in the AAM. 
• Transfers have ended up being very fluid in the current pandemic environment as missionaries continue to come and go to missions outside of the normal transfer cycle.
• There are still a lot of three-way companionships in the mission.
• Some of the American Elders play Magic The Gathering on P-Days, so Seth was interested in getting one of his MTG decks sent over for use on P-Day.
• He is currently studying the 2020 April General Conference talks.
• Their money came through the previous evening so they finally had money to go and restock the flat with food. It had all been moved out when the area closed during the previous transfer.
• P-Day next week will be held on Monday as there will be a Conference with a General Authority on Wednesday.
• They had trade-offs with another companionship (Elder Aiho, and Elder Beaumont-Tafua) on Monday and Tuesday and slept at the other Elder's flat on the Monday and Tuesday nights.
• They had some basketball practice with the other companionship as their allotted exercise time on Tuesday. Elder East commented that the two other Elders played on basketball teams at home, whilst Elder Kennach is very sporty. I think he was implying that he didn't do very well against them.  
• Having run out of things they should/could do, the four Elders ended up having a game of Phase 10 late on Tuesday evening. My thoughts are that it must be hard with all of the pandemic related restrictions they have. Back in our day, if you had any free time, you would just go finding or try working with members. Practically all finding methods such as tracting, street contacting and so on are not allowed at the moment. They've already rung back through old investigators in their area books several times - which is currently their main method of finding. They're currently not allowed to visit member's homes without the members inviting them over first. It must be hard when you've done all you can and there's nothing more you're allowed to do because of the restrictions.

Elder East also sent through a photo of the soccer game they played with some of the members two P-Days ago.

We're looking forward to catching up with him again on Monday.