Video Chat - 4th August 2021 - Lots of Changes: Social Media, P Day Change and More

Another quick update from Elder East this week but he advised of some big changes within the mission, including:

• This would be the last P Day on a Wednesday. As of next week, the mission will be changing to having P Days on Mondays.
• Missionaries will no longer be able to go to the Temple except at the start and end of their missions. Due to the Adelaide temple being closed under Covid restrictions for much of the time he was in Adelaide, Elder East has only been to the Adelaide temple once so far. 
• The Darwin missionaries were going to trial doorknocking in the evenings, which was something that hasn't been done for a while.
• The hours of the standard day for the Darwin missionaries have been aligned to the standard 6:30am to 10:30pm day in Adeliade and most other missions. In Darwin it had previously been 6am to 10pm.
• The AAM would be becoming a social media mission. The missionaries would now have access to Facebook. Elder East spent some time making a more missionary-orientated profile for his Facebook account during the week. 

Elder East also let us know about some of the things that had happened during the week. 

On Friday Zone Conference was held down in Adelaide so the Darwin missionaries joined in via Zoom. Elder East and Evans provided training on resolving concerns and asking inspired questions as a part of one of the sessions.

On Saturday they provided 3-4 hours of service to different people along with the sister missionaries. At one home they helped move rocks in a garden. At another home, they mowed a backyard. They discovered however that there was broken glass in the long grass, so had to be careful of that.

Church on Sunday coincided with a Young Men's Camp that was being held so the numbers at Church were low.

On Tuesday Elder East was sick with a cold. It happened to coincide with it being Elder Evans' birthday, so Elder East took him out to McDonald's for lunch.

Elder East mentioned that they were given some donuts as well. I didn't note when, but ti was important enough for them to document via photo :)

A couple of final observations from Elder East. He commented that being able to use Facebook is a big thing for many of the missionaries. He says that he likes being able to befriend other missionaries, but he finds Facebook too much of a distraction. 

They are still doing a lot of teaching - helping a lot of people with concerns. They had a lesson scheduled for 5pm that P Day.