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.