Video Chat - 24th January 2022 - Traveling Up To Broken Hill

Elder East called us later on P-Day (Mon 24th Jan) because he and Elder Evans had just driven up to Broken Hill with President Johanssen. They were investigating the area to see if it could support missionaries in the future. It was a 6-hour drive from Adelaide.

As usual, a quick recap of the past week. Tuesday of last week was spent in an all-day planning meeting with President Johanssen.

On Wednesday there were five new missionaries arriving - three Elders and two Sisters. Two of them had been serving in the Sydney Mission whilst waiting to get to Adelaide. The day was taken up with getting the new arrivals from the airport followed by the introduction of their trainers and the usual orientation activities. They had the Mount Barker and Alice Springs missionaries staying with them on Wednesday night.

On Thursday they had a meeting with President Johanssen and the Marion Stake leaders. They had the Mount Barker and Mount Gambier missionaries staying with them on Thursday.

On Friday was the Zone Conference for Moroni Zone, as well as interviews for the missionaries with President Johanssen, so again it was a busy day providing some training at the conference and assisting in managing the interviews. They had the Mount Gambier missionaries staying with them on the Friday night. 

Elder East joked that Saturday was their day of "rest". They ended up having to go and buy bulk lots of RATs for the mission

On Sunday they went to Church in Firle and now that they're looking after part of the ward, had Ward Mission Correlation with the Bishop and Ward Mission Leader. The latter part of the day was spent with President Johanssen in meetings about the mission's Facebook page.

In other quick notes from our chat:

• Lots of traveling coming up. After they get back from Broken Hill they'll be going to trade-off with the Victor Harbour missionaries, and then flying up to Alice Springs next weekend. Just after the next transfers they're due to drive out to Port lincoln and visit the members out there.
• Elder East has started a little hobby with his travels. He is getting a  small vial of sand from each of the locations he's visiting. He currently has some from Mildura and Broken Hill. We asked what Elder Evans thought of this idea ... he relayed the question to Elder Evans who replied "... interesting."
• The mission is slowly growing. They're now up to 50 missionaries in the AAM, and should be close to 70 by mid-year. 

Video Chat - 17th January 2022 - Guided By a Dream To Discover the Lost Records

It was a tired Elder East who spoke to on the P Day of 17th January. It was the middle of the transfer period, and they had six new missionaries coming in mid-transfer. Consequently, there were a lot of other moves on. Elder east had been up since 4am to help take a missionary to the airport for transfer up to Alice Springs.

President Johanssen is still contemplating driving up to Alice Springs at some point with the Elders. If they do this, they may stop at Coober Pedy on the way which will be an interesting place to visit. It would also be an interesting place to be stationed as a missionary.

They had Zone Conference for the Nephi Zone on Tuesday. Elder East said the APs didn't have to provide training for as long as planned, however, they did have to assist with the Mission President interviews. Apparently there was about 6-7 hours of work associated with those.

On Wednesday Elder East got to go through the Temple for the third time. He said that it was really nice. He sent through the following photos taken in the temple grounds.  He commented that there had been some renovations to the Temple since when he had first been there.

On Thursday he was able to go on trade-offs with Elder Reeves whilst Elder Evans went with his companion.

They had done a quick trip up to Mildura over the weekend. Driving up on the Saturday, staying Saturday night with the Mildura Elders and returning back on the Sunday. I didn't actually note what they had to drive up there for. :) The long driving over the preceding two days was potentially another factor in Elder East feeling rather tired.

The highlight for Elder East though was a dream he had on Sunday night. He'd mentioned several weeks ago how the online area book system had lost all of the investigator records for Darwin when some of the areas changed. Last Sunday night he dreamt about where the records were being stored in the system. He had a look at the online system at where the dream pointed him too, and came across a section he wasn't familiar with, but was unable to access. 

During the week, tech support contacted the mission office to talk them through how to possibly resolve the issue however the instructions from tech support were not making sense to them. Elder East became involved and recognised that the answer lay in his dream, and that he knew where the records were. Sure enough, upon looking at the dreamt of area that he found of previously they were able to use the instructions from tech support to access it. The area contained not just the missing records they were looking for, but even more. They were not only able to recover the 600 missing investigator records for the Darwin area but close to 2000 historical investigator records from around the mission that unknowingly had disappeared off the system over time. It took Elder East's dream guiding him to the appropriate area to find the records that had been lost. Elder East said that it gave him a real incentive to study up more on spiritual gifts. 

Video Chat - 10th January 2022 - Out of Isolation & More Christmas Conference Photos

Our chat with Elder East this week was whilst we were on holiday in Hobart, Tasmania. It was actually hard to get a time togetehr to talk as we were out of range on Bruny Island a lot of the day, and Elder East was busy. I don't have any notes from our chat in the evening, but there are a few things I remember. 

• We chatted about his older sister Jayde, who had caught Covid during the week.
• Elder East tested negative for covid and was now out of isolation.
• We'd asked him to say hello to Sister Jury in the AAM as she's friends with a family we know in Tasmania. Unfortunately, Sister Jury was currently isolating as covid positive.

The family Facebook group did put up a lot of photos earlier in the week from the Christmas Conference that included Elder East in them.

Video Chat - 3rd January 2022 - Covid Hits the Mission

Catching up with my notes of chats with Elder East so there will be several weeks' worth of chats being posted up in a short period of time. We were away for a holiday in Tasmania as well as having a  week in isolation, so it's been a month since I've posted. This particular entry was from when we chatted on Monday 3rd January and covers the previous week. 

The big event this week was Transfers ... and of covid hitting the mission. The previous Tuesday (28th Dec) was Transfers, which included three Elders going home of whom two had been Elder East's companions. (Elders Roberts and Read.) On the Monday evening, there was the traditional Family Home Evening for those leaving at the Mission President's home. Normally the APs would be invited too, but Covid restrictions meant it was limited and they weren't able to attend. 

On Tuesday when they took the leaving missionaries to the airport they discovered that Sister Hall's flight had been canceled and this hadn't been passed on to the mission. So, it was now a case of urgently trying to rebook a flight for her to be able to get home.

On Wednesday they had their new missionaries arrive to be picked up at the airport ... well at least some of them did. Travelers are meant to have a negative Covid test within 48 hours of going into South Australia.  The Covid test for one of the missionaries due to fly in had come back positive. They had another two who were due to come in but their Covid test results hadn't come back in time. 

In the latter part of the week, one of the missionaries was feeling unwell and subsequently returned a positive Covid result. That particular missionary companionship had had lunch with four other missionary companionships after transfers on Tuesday. Those companionships all went into isolation. The APs were required to go and help provide some food drop-offs for those companionships. 

Eventually, all of the mission were asked to isolate as a precaution. Elder East commented that as a part of his responsibilities he'd effectively had contact with every single missionary in the mission during the previous week.

On Saturday (New Years Day) he and Elder Evans went to get Covid tested, waiting two hours before being told that the centre was now full and that they'd missed the cut off. They eventually managed to get tested on Sunday. As of our chat, they were both still in isolation and waiting for their test results to come back. 

Some other notes from our chat:

• Elder East was in a video released by the mission on Social media during the week (Fri 31st Jan.) It featured several people in the Temple grounds talking about New Year's resolutions to be baptised and to attend the temple. Elder East commented to us that he didn't know they were going to film a video and he was in his "everything else needs to be washed" clothes at the time. 

• Missionaries went out to Mildura during this transfer. Subsequently, the APs missionary responsibility has changed from Mildura to the northern half of Firle Ward.
• The AAM started up a private Facebook group during the week for family and friends of AAM missionaries to hear news of what's going on in the mission. "Australia Adelaide Mission - President Johansson"
• Cyclone Seth was causing damage on Australia's eastern coast. Elder's East's mum told him to stop it and get back to SA. 

• They are having problems with their computer system that acts as the area books for missionaries. With the reorganization of several areas, the details of their teaching contacts have disappeared from the system. They are contacting support in Utah for help to try and find out what's wrong.  
• Elder East sent us through some photos of one of their meetings earlier in the week. 

Video Chat - 20th/25th/27th December 2021 - A Very Mission Christmas

 We've had a number of chats with Elder East since our last recorded P-day chat (Thurs 16th Dec). They have generally been brief, and I haven't always been in a situation to be able to take notes of what was discussed. I'll combine them all into this single post. It will include our video chats from P day (Mon 20th Dec), two calls on Christmas day (a short one in the morning and a longer one in the evening) and a brief call on P-day Mon 27th Dec.

One of the big events that happened recently was the Mission Christmas Conference on Fri 17th Dec. Elder East conducted the meeting, whilst President Johansson of course provided training. There were meant to be talks from other members of the Mission Presidency, however they ended up not being able to attend so the APs and Sister Johanssen were all invited to share their testimonies.

The Christmas conference made a lot of work for the APs as the Darwin and Alice Springs missionaries were flown down and had to be picked up from the airport, as well as being housed, transported and looked after.  After the Christmas conference they had to take the NT missionaries to be Covid tested due to restrictions around crossing the NT/SA border. Both Elder East and Elder Evans had to be Covid tested too as a part of returning from their trip across the border to Mildura the previous weekend.

The second major event that had occurred recently was the announcement at the Christmas Conference that the mission structure would be reducing from 4 Zones to 2 Zones. Elder East said that they were holding a meeting on the evening of the 20th Dec to finalise all of the details. Between those changes and transfers which were coming up on the 27th Dec, there was a lot of time being spent with President Johansson doing organisational administration.

On Christmas Day itself, the APs joined in with the 14 missionaries from Marion Zone at a meal put on by a member out in Murray Bridge. Elder East said that the member traditionally put on a large meal for missionaries at Christmas time. Elder East was able to catch up with some old companions as well as Elder Reeves at the Christmas Day function.

Elder Reeves had gotten Elder East some Lego as a Christmas present. Elder East had bought Elder Reeves an electric guitar as a Christmas present (more I think from a humorous POV.) Elder east said that he'd been in a second-hand store and picked up a new suit, shoes and wallet in the store and then found the electric guitar for $20. He didn't know how good the guitar was but wanted to get it for Elder Reeves anyway.

Elder East commented that he's putting on too much weight as an AP due to all of the bad eating habits of an AP lifestyle. He reckoned that the inability to plan long term and the constantly changing demands for their time are the biggest challenge of being an AP. He reckons that he'd love to have a "proper" P-day for once as an AP