Elder East seemed to be happy and to have had another positive week. They attended a multi-stake fireside on Sunday evening and had two of their investigators come along for the evening. The first one was the young lady who was recently scheduled for baptism. Elder East said that they found out that her mother turns out to be a less-active member of the Church. The other investigator who came along was somebody who they weren't actually teaching at the time. Not sure if that will change now.
The AAM blog had a write-up about the fireside which included a few photos with Elder East in them, so let's play "Where's Elder East?"
Edler East says that he's enjoying being a Zone Leader. He is enjoying helping people and wants to get better in his service. Their companionship had training with the APs on "Model Exchanges" during the week. This was to help Elder East as a new Zone Leader to learn how to be more effective when doing exchanges with other companionships. There are plans for him to exchange with all of the other companionships in the Zone in the coming week.
He mentioned that the APs said that missionaries shouldn't have pictures of girlfriends/boyfriends up in their flats. Elder East thinks this was in response to him having a picture of Kendal up on his study desk.
One of the APs, Elder Rogers was due to go home on Friday - it was out of cycle so that he would be able to start at university. We briefly chatted with Elder East about his post-mission plans. We know that it's still a long way away, and don't want to distract him from his mission focus, but just wondered if he's had any inspiration whilst out. Elder East says that he's feeling less certain about heading down the sciences path as careers in science tend to be more limited than other areas.
Elder East says that it's setting in that Elder Taua is heading home in less than 4 weeks. Elder Taua's had to deal with arranging his travel home as well as details for his final Temple visit on top of giving a "farewell" testimony at Zone Conference. Elder Taua joked that they're trying to make him trunky.
After almost leaving last month Elder Lwin is not on the list of missionaries going home next transfer. Given the issues around getting a flight back to Myanmar and the military coup in the country his ability to get home is becoming even further uncertain. Elder East says that missionaries are joking that if the Myanmar problems continue, Elder Lwin will beat Elder Batar's record of being out for nearly 29 months.
Elder East commented that Elder Kennach's companion has gone home for medical reasons, so he's been put in a three-way companionship with Elder Nalesoni and Elder Aiho. That means three of Elder East's old companions are now all serving together. We joked that they're all probably comparing notes about what it was like being his companion.
Some additional dot points about things we discussed:
- Even though the Adelaide temple has reopened, it's unlikely missionaries will get the opportunity to go except for this arriving or going home. They are working on trying to get recent converts to attend the temple though.
- They're not getting many member meals in the ward.; They did get a roast meal with an investigator family whose children they are currently teaching.
- The ward has a lot of missionary things in place - a ward mission leader, missionary correlation, and so on, but he'd like to see things a little less administrative and a bit more spiritually focussed.
- He's currently studying 3rd Nephi in his personal studies.
- Elder East has started putting on a lot of weight. He and Elder Taua are eating a lot of takeaway/junk food.
- Elder East managed to scratch the side of their car down a gate as they were leaving their ward missionary correlation meeting.
- Elder East has always had to put up with us complaining before his mission that his smiles never looked natural. We talked about some of the "photo faces" that certain missionaries always seem to have in mission photos. Sister Matenga always seems to have a smirk/lopsided smile. Sister Anderson always has her eyes shut. Elder Nalesoni always looks serious and like he's frowning. Elder East did point out that he does actually have one photo of Elder Naelsoni smiling :)
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