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:
- Elder East has broken out his big winter jacket to wear – he reckons it’s been cold over the last couple of weeks. He commented that it doesn’t tend to rain heavily in Adelaide though.
- Missionaries in the AAM will soon be allowed to go to the Adelaide temple.
- Elder East has now been companion with 3 of the 5 other Zone Leaders and Elder Kennach, who is the new AP.
- They were having a District P-Day today and were going to be playing some games together.
- With Elder East’s birthday coming up, he was buying up ingredients to try and make the family’s chili recipe.
- We ordered and sent through tickets for he and his companion to attend the local ANZAC Day Dawn Service
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