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.
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