We started out on P-Day last week letting Elder east know that friends of the family - Don and Tamara from Perth were on their way holidaying around Australia, and were currently in Darwin, wondering if they could take Elder east and his companion out for a meal. We passed on their number to Elder East and they ended up going out for lunch that day.
Don and Tamara told the Elders they could choose wherever they wanted to eat - money was no limit ... so the Elders chose .... Nandos. When queried by Mum as to why Nandos, it's because that's about the classiest place to eat in their area :) There isn't apparently much open in the way of high-class food establishments in Palmerston in the middle of the day. They then went out for dessert afterward.
Elder East said it was great catching up with them. We got some photos of their lunchtime together. Elder East said that this involved Elder Evans showing them some tricks on how to take selfies.
Last week they ended up doing trade-offs with the Darwin Elders over Thursday and Friday. Elder East said that he and one of the Darwin Elderws did service for a lady on the Friday morning and had an appointment with her again in the evening to be fed. They explained that they were on trade-offs and it would be a change in Elders in the evening. Elder east went back with Elder Evans in the evening for dinner. He said that the lady mustn't have realised that he was still the same missionary that came by in the morning as the lady was "talking smack" about the service they provided. [shrug]
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On the Saturday they had the farewell dinner with the Marquis' and the other missionaries. Apparently, all of the previous farewell dinners with the other zones during the week had had pizza for dinner. President marquis was apparently over pizza and wanted Thai, so he took them all out to a Thai restaurant for dinner. The photo of Sister Marquis and Elder east was of Sister Marquis holding up Elder East's squid dinner. Elder East commented that he's really going to miss the Marquis'.
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After the dinner, they had a Family Home Evening at the senior missionary couple's home. They had an activity where each person wrote something on a piece of paper, then folded the paper over. The next person then had to draw what the person had written. The paper was then folded again and the next person had to write what the last thing drawn was, and so on and so on. A bit like Chinese whispers but with writing and drawing. Elder east said it was fun, but he commented that his drawing skills weren't bad, whilst a lot of others struggled with the drawing part.
Elder East let us know that he'd received his 12 month "halfway there" package that we'd sent him. He said it was good, but some of the stuff was unusable as only part of a pair (eg gloves)... we pointed out that we'd send the other half of the missing stuff soon.
They had a good day on Tuesday. They had a lesson with a lady they had found during trade-offs who really enjoyed out. She was happy to have a copy of the Book of Mormon. They had a second lesson with her on Tuesday.
Also on Tuesday they had a follow-up lesson with an Indonesian lady who wanted them to also teach her family. He said that besides the ladys' daughter, her mother-in-law was also there. The mother-in-law was a Seventh Day Adventist and when she raised topics, the lady and the mother-in-law would debate things. he said that they sometimes got off track a bit, but it was still good to be able to have a discussion with them, especially where the lady was defending principles that the Elders were teaching.
Some minor dot points from our discussion:
- On Sunday they had between 30-40 at Church.
- After Sister Ip's greenie went back to Sydney, Sister Smith flew up from Adelaide to be Sister Ip's new companion. Sisters Hall and Degaris are now serving in Palmerston.
- We gave Elder East grief about wearing white socks with his suit, saying that it was a fashion faux pas.
- They visited a Filipino family in the ward. The family told them to come back later. When they did, the family had food for them to take away for dinner.