Video Chat - 30th August 2021 - Darwin Cracker Night and Combined Branch Trivia Night

Elder East told us a bit more about his new companion, Elder Roberts, who is "cool.". He's from Sydney with a Maori background. His home area has been heavily hit by Covid. Elder Roberts likes playing basketball and also has a particular affinity with a racing arcade game, but hasn't found it yet in Palmerston. Much to Elder East's relief, Elder Roberts knows how to play MTG :)

The previous evening was "Cracker Night" in the NT, with Elder East commenting that there were a number of people letting off fireworks in the surrounding streets and another 2 or 3 groups in open space areas. He said that they went down to a jetty on a nearby river that has views of Darwin. they were hoping to catch some views of some larger public displays being put on in Darwin.  There happened to be a family and young kids that were setting off fireworks down there as well. The fireworks were meant to finish by 11pm, but Elder East said that they went late into the night.

Elder East sent us a bunch of short videos of the fireworks. I joined 4 of them together that feature slow-mo shots he took, and the other is at normal speed.

With the Sisters being transferred out of their Branch, the Elders had a busy week this past week. They were following up on a lot of the people who the Sisters had been teaching or helping and had a lot of teaching appointments. At one point they had 8 lessons scheduled for a single day. (Three ended up not occurring, but they still taught 5 lessons in a day.) Elder East says that they've met lots of cool and crazy ("nice crazy") people. 

The Elders took part in a combined activity night on Friday that was put on by the two Darwin branches - a trivia night.  They were on a table with some of the kids from the branches. Early on in the evening, they were coming first. However, the answers were being done via an online tool which started lagging for them after a while and their answers weren't registering. 

They haven't progressed their plans to go down to Katherine for a weekend yet. It will probably need to wait until things quiet down a bit. They did have a member from Katherine join the recent online broadcasts, but that member's contact details aren't available in the ward list.

President has let the Elders know that he may fly them down to Alice Springs to be able to do trade-offs with the missionaries that recently transferred in there. They are also considering flying the NT missionaries down for the Christmas Conference in December, borders allowing.

The Elders have a busy week ahead:

• Assisting with the Missionary Preparation class being held on Sunday nights;
• They are now participating in Branch Council meetings held on Thursday evenings.
• Zone Conference was scheduled for the coming Friday (3rd Sep). Zone Conferences were now going to be held separately rather than jointly, so it would just be the NT missionaries in the Zone Conference. President Johansson was planning to fly up for Zone Conference (border restrictions allowing.) This will be Elder East's first chance to meet him in person.
• There is a Disability Convention coming up that they will be helping at.

Some other minor dot point trivia from Elder East during the discussion:

• He was trying out new wireless headphones for the call - they weren't very good sound wise
• He has a spreadsheet where he keeps track of those missioanries coming into and leaving the mission.
• He is trying to practice some of his piano playing - he played High On The Mountain Top for us. He's a bit rusty, but we could recognise the tune.
• I let him know to expect a possible package during the week - I told him it was a half-eaten chocolate bar.