The AAM blog has updated with photos of the transfer announcements and transfers held on the 17th and 19th April respectively. As usual, I've gone through and pilled out the photos that have Elder East in them, so it's time for our regular game of "find Elder East".
We got to have a longer chat with Elder East this week, which was good. The big news of course was transfers, with Elder East staying in the area but Elder Beaumont-Tafua being transferred out and Elder Brown being transferred in.
Elder Brown was actually born in Canberra, but was raised in Brisbane – his family was only in Canberra for a short time. He is the second oldest of six kids. Prior to his mission he was doing professional cleaning. He was called to the AAM and has been out for around 6 months now. He’s a fan of games and brought several small ones out on his mission. Elders East & Brown are joint Zone Leaders over the Zone, although Elder East lamented that with the changes, there are now only 9 missionaries in the zone at the moment.
Elder East was disappointed at some of the other changes at transfers. They lost the Sister missionaries from Christies Beach. Sister Matenga was due to go home, whilst two other Sisters also went home, one unexpectedly. (Sister Hatch injured her knee and only had several months to go on her mission, so was released to recover.) That leaves only two companions of Sister Missionaries in Adelaide. Elder East says that he likes being around Sisters so it’s not as much of a “boys club” as being around Elders all of the time. The Christies Beach Sisters were working well and being productive. Elders East & Brown will now pick up the work being done by the Sisters as well as remotely covering Mount Gambier.
Elder East commented that President Ellis (Marion Stake President) is trying to get missionaries to Kangaroo Island. There is a couple there who are interested in being baptised, but need to be taught and married first. Elder East says that they may be taking on Kangaroo Island remotely.
There will be a “mid-transfer” mini-transfer on May 12th, as there will be 5 new missionaries coming in then, out of sync to the normal transfer cycle. This means that there could still be a lot more changes in only a couple of weeks. Elder East is actually kind of disappointed that he didn’t get to Darwin as he thinks it will close soon, so he’s unlikely to serve there. He’s ended up enjoying seeing all of the different areas in Adelaide, but would like to see more outside of Adelaide itself.
Some dot point notes from the rest of our discussion:
We got a quick text from Elder East on Monday. Elder East is staying for another transfer in Onkaparinga Ward, but his companion, Elder Beaumont-Tafua has been transferred out. His new companion is Elder Brown. We know that Elder Brown has previously spoken about Elder Brown from trade-offs that he's had with him. We know that Elder Brown brought out some small tabletop games on his mission, so I suspect this will be a very geeky companionship. :)
Elder East had originally commented that he wouldn't mind being transferred up to Darwin or training, so we'll see if those things happen in the future, but for now, he and Elder Brown are joint Zone Leaders.
We only had a 3-4 minute chat this week whilst Elder East was a passenger during a drive, and most of the time was talking about what was happening at home. Elder East did mention that they had been following up on a very old investigator from their records. At the address, they discovered that the person no longer lived there ... but a family who had attended one of the Ward Friday night sport's nights did.
Our video chat was supplemented with some messaging, but again, it was mainly Elder East finding out about things back at home. He did send us the following video:
With so many recent chats, there wasn't a lot to note from our weekly video chat with Elder East last P-Day. His sister Jayde was up from Melbourne with her girlfriend Eleanor, so there was a bit of time as Elder East and Jayde caught up on the basics of what's happening in their lives. We figured that we'd let them do the majority of the chat this week. Jayde is at university and has changed her degree back to Urban Design. She's currently doing work on GIS (geographic information system) mapping, which she thinks Elder East might be interested in.
Elder East noted that Monday week (19th April) is the next date for transfers. Elder East would like to stay in the area but thinks he'll be transferred. We discussed whether he might go to Darwin, but he thinks that Darwin my close to missionaries soon. They need senior missionary couples to keep things going in Darwin and country areas, and they are running out of senior couples as existing couples finish their missions.
If Darwin does close it would result in the eight missionaries up there coming back down into Adelaide, potentially opening up more areas.
We asked about whether they might open up more of the country areas for missionaries. Elder East reckons that his current area is one of the most country areas in Adelaide, that's even if he is only two minutes from the beach. He then showed us the view towards the beach from their window.
Elder East commented that with the border restrictions relaxing, they may get an influx of new missionaries, especially with the plans for an Australia-New Zealand travel bubble.
There was an Easter Devotional on the evening of Easter Sunday. Once again, there were some photos put up on the AAM blog that included Elder East. Elders East and Beaumont-Tafua attended along with one of their investigators.
We had a surprise short video call from Elder East on Easter Sunday afternoon. Dannielle Grant, a family friend was there when he called. Dannielle served in the Adelaide Mission and was in the same ward as Elder East is currently serving in about 6½ years ago. They chatted about the Ellis family, a member family that they both got along well with.
Elder East said that they were given Easter Eggs by two different families, as well as Easter packages from Grandma, the Reeves and us. He had been trying to eat more healthily before the packages arrived. :)
A couple of quick dot point updates:
The AAM put up a blog entry about their Missionary Leadership Council that was held via Zoom on the 2nd April. As usual, here's a repost of the photos from the blog post that featured Elder East.
It was only a quick chat again this P-Day, but Elder East did send through a bunch of photos later in the day.
They had Zone Conference on the previous Thursday which Elder East said was really good. The fact that he didn't have to run part of it was probably one of the positives. :) He said that there was training from President Marquis and the APs on lots of little things, such as motivation, baptism, driving, and so on.
He specifically mentioned the driving instruction as several historical incidents were raised in the training, including the missionary car crash in New Caledonia back in 2019 that resulted in a death. We already knew about this accident as we knew the driver - Jacob Hable. The Hable family had lived in Canberra for several years and we keep in touch via social media. Elder Hable was serving in the Vanuatu Port Vila Mission near the end of the mission when the car crash occurred during heavy rain. I've included a couple of photos below that the Hable family shared from the accident.
Elder East also spoke to us about being "Dear Johnned" several weeks ago. Although they were only ever writing as "friends", it was fairly obvious that both Elder East and his friend had emotions for each other, so her advice that she was now dating somebody was hard emotionally for Elder East. Still, he recognises that his focus at the moment is on serving the Lord and being a missionary.
Below are the photos that he sent us for this week, along with commentary where provided. The first photo from Wed 24th March is "with Nick, Rob, Sophie, and Cruise (the dog) We're teaching the kids. Their family is really big into 8ball and they also have a pet snake."
The third photo [Fri 26th March] is "at sports night (held every Friday) ft Elder Levi (he is leaving this transfer to his original assignment of Perth) and some members."
Elder East commented that he's making a lot of friends with missionaries who are from Brisbane, so he's thinking of Brisbane as a possible place to move to for university after his mission, as he now has a number of friends from there. He currently thinks that after returning in June next year that he'll spend the second half of 2022 working before starting university at the start of 2023.
Maybe he can find a course and becoming a Certified Professional Urban Hipster Tongmaster ...
