Video Chat - 18th April 2022 - Mini-Training Companionships with Elders Wolff and Jian

The mission had three new Elders come in on Wednesday (13th Apr) including Elder Wolff, who knows Elder East from Canberra. 

• Two of the new Elders were assigned to go into the Adelaide City branch as Mandarin-speaking missionaries. The existing companionship in the City branch was going to be split with each Elder training one of the new missionaries.  Unfortunately, the City Branch Elders came down with Covid and so were unable to take on the new missionaries when they arrived.
•  Elder Wolff was going up to Darwin, and unfortunately for him, the airline kept canceling and changing his flights. 

The upshot was that Elder Wolff was companions with  Elder East from his arrival on Wednesday until his eventual flight up to Darwin on the Saturday. Meanwhile, the two Mandarin-speaking greenies were in a three-way companionship with Elder Ma’a during that time. Elder East said that he and Elder Wolff got along well. He did joke however that Elder Wolff did struggle to stay awake whilst having to just sit around during some of the long AP-related meetings that Elder East had to go to. He provided the following photo as proof.

After Elder Wolff flew up to Darwin on the Saturday, the three-way companionship with Elder Ma’a was broken up. One of the Mandarin-speaking greenies, Elder Jian, became Elder East’s temporary new companion. Elder Jian is from Sydney and his family comes from Hong Kong, however, he doesn’t know any Mandarin and is pretty much learning the language from scratch.

Elder East commented that they had a really good lesson on Saturday night (16th Apr). They’d received a referral from the Sister missionaries that Elder Wolf and East followed up on on Friday. They were asked to come back on Saturday, which Elder Jian & East did and were able to meet with the family (husband, wife, and sister). The family was Indian from a non-Christian background and the Elders had the opportunity to explain about Jesus Christ and the Plan of Salvation. The family had questions about karma which Elder East said they answered using the Book of Mormon. (Alma 41:15 perhaps? Galatians 6:7 is also relevant.) They invited the family to pray which the wife was willing to do. Elder East said that the Spirit was very strong during the lesson, which they helped the family to identify.

The following day on Easter Sunday the Elders had three people they have been meeting with at Church. Because a number of people were away over Easter, the Elders helped prepare and bless the sacrament. Later in the day, they were able to teach a lesson to one of their investigators.

Elder East commented that they were busy but in a good way. They were busy doing missionary work, not busy doing administrative work, which was making Elder East very happy.

Some other notes from our discussion:

• His workshops at the Zone Conferences during the previous week had gone well.
• There was a baptism on Saturday morning of somebody that Elder Reeves had helped teach when he was on his mission. Elder Reeves (now just Hamish) was able to join in and watch the baptism via Zoom.
• The Easter groceries we’d ordered for Elder East arrived on the Thursday after some initial issues from the delivery driver about where to find the mission office. Elder East said it was the perfect mix of junk vs healthy food.

•  The APs will be accompanying President Johansson up to Darwin next Thursday (22nd Apr) to assist with the Zone Conference for the NT missionaries.
•  The APs had planned to have an activity going Op Shopping with the two companionships in the district the previous P-Day (11th Apr). The Mission President had advised them not to go, so they didn't, even though the other two companionships still met up. Several days later, one of the companionships tested positive for covid and both companionships had to go into isolation.
• Elder Wolff was studying engineering at university before his mission. He suggested to Elder East that he might want to start off part-time at university when he gets back and not overload himself straight away.

Video Chat - 4th April 2022 - Teaching via Video to Mexico

It was back to a regular Monday P Day this week, so it was only 5 days since our last chat, with most of the discussion being on things happening back at home:

• Elder Reeves' Dad has said that he'd like to get baptized. As you'd expect, his family is excited.
• Elder Aiho has gotten engaged. He's been home from his mission for 5 months now.
• We chatted about how Elissa is having some problems at her work, and how I was still sick from Covid.
• They were studying the Passover in Seminary this week and so we talked about different historical versions of the Passover.
• We chatted about General Conference that had just been held with the announcement of 17 new temples being built.

A couple of quick notes from the mission field as well:

• The First Counselor in the Mission Presidency, Elder Raeside has been called as an Area Authority.
• Eight missionaries are coming into the AAM next week - five from New Zealand and 3 greenies. Elder Wolff from Canberra will be one of those greenies.

Elder East also shared that they ended up having a lesson last Wednesday with somebody whom Elder Ma'a had previously taught at the start of his mission. The person in question had moved back to Mexico in the meantime however he and Elder Ma'a reconnected via Facebook. Elder Ma'a and East taught him a lesson via video last Wednesday. He has committed to be baptised and the APs have referred him to the local missionaries in Mexico to continue his gospel lessons.

Even though there wasn't much mission news, Elder East did send us a bunch of photos. 

Given the missionaries, in the above photos photo, we're assuming that this was part of the "Leavers" meeting for those missionaries who were completing their missions last transfer.

We're presuming that this is Elder East's collection of dirt from various towns he's worked in during his mission.

Later in the day Elder East also went suit shopping as he needed a new suit. He contacted us for some feedback on the suits he was trying on. 

Video Chat - 8th February 2022 - Elder Reeves Goes Home

 We missed out on a call from Elder East on the Monday (7th Feb) but he received permission from President Johansson to give us a quick call the following evening.  The reason why he'd been unable to call us was that it was Transfers week. That meant that some missionaries were finishing up their missions and going home. This included Elder Reeves, who Elder East developed a friendship with before Elder East's mission. 

Elder Reeves had already started his mission in the Provo MTC before Covid hit but was brought back to Australia and reassigned to Adelaide.  They both ended up going into the AAM at the same time and quarantining together.

They had a final P Day activity on the Monday (7th Feb) before the "Leaver's Dinner" and testimony meeting in the evening. The APs were able to join in for the evening so Elder East got to spend some time farewelling Elder Reeves before he was taken to the Airport on Tuesday morning (8th Feb.) Elder East reckons that as much as Elder Reeves had enjoyed his service as a missionary, he was ready to go home.

Elder East mentioned that he'd spoken with President Johansson about whether he was going to extend his mission or not. He'd originally been leaning towards extending but advised that he's now thinking that he'll finish at his allotted time in June.

Looking back at what had happened over the previous week, Elder East said that planning for transfers had taken up a lot of their time. 

The previous P-Day Monday (31st Jan) they had flown back down from being in Alice Springs. One of the missionaries in Mildura ended up dislocating his shoulder. He ended up in hospital until midnight. Due to Covid regulations, his companion wasn't allowed into the hospital. 

Elders East and Evans drove out to Mildura on Tuesday. The Elder with the dislocated shoulder ended up getting a throat infection overnight, was unable to talk, and ended up back in hospital on Tuesday. His companion was put into isolation back in their flat, whilst the APs stayed in a hotel overnight.  

Having confirmed that the welfare of the Mildura Elders was going to be OK the APs drove back to Adelaide on Wednesday before having a Tech Council meeting later in the day.

All of Thursday was spent in meetings with President Johansson. 

On Friday there was a Missionary Leadership Council as well as a Missionary Coordination Council for the Stake which they went along to. The AAM Facebook page put up some photos from the MLC.

On Saturday he met up with the Stephensons who took Elders East and Evans out to lunch. The Stephensons are an American family we know who comes to Australia most summers to play cricket. Most of that time had been in Canberra but were in Adelaide this year. Nic is the youngest of the family and is getting ready to prepare for his mission in the next year or two, so Elder East was happy to oblige with mission preparation tips for him.

Some other quick notes from our chat:

• They have 8 new missionaries coming into the AAM tomorrow (Wed 9th Feb.)
• A Returned Missionary from the AAM just got engaged. He is the fifth returned missionary from the AAM that Elder East knows who has gotten engaged. Three RMs are already married and one even has a child on the way.

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 - 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

Video Chat - 1st November 2021 - His New Trainee, Companion Number 18, Elder Rea

The big news this week of course was Elder East picking up his new trainee, Elder Rea. I'll give a bit of a summary of Elder East's week as per usual.

The rest of his previous P-Day (Mon 24th Oct) was spent helping to open up Elder Reeves' new flat. Elder Reeves' area was being split and he was opening the new area with a new trainee as well. Elder East said that he was jealous that the new flat had a barbecue, although it did have a garage only accessible from a laneway, which wasn't so good. 

On Tuesday Elders East and Reeves went to the combined Adelaide Zones' Conference. Elder Reeves was providing the music (piano) for the conference so it was otherwise fairly quiet for Elder East. He said it was good with the missionaries doing a breakdown of D&C section 4. He did lament however that conference post-lunch sessions are always hard as they "digest" after lunch. 

Elder East said that he caught up with some of his previous companions at the conference - Elder Davey & Evans as well as Elder Stiles - the other missionary from Canberra.

On Wednesday the new trainees arrived during the afternoon. Elder East has been assigned Elder Rea from Mount Marrow, near Ipswich in Queensland. Elder Rea was originally assigned to the Wellington New Zealand Mission but will be serving in the AAM until the respective boundaries open up and missionaries from Australia can travel to New Zealand. Elder Rea is young - only 18 - and is the third of six children. He has two older brothers that are both on missions at the moment as well, and two younger sisters and a younger brother. Prior to coming on his mission Elder Rea was doing a carpentry apprenticeship. When we asked Elder East what type of carpentry he said "furniture, heritage stuff". Elder Rea is very tall - six foot two. Elder East describes Elder Rea as a "real country boy."

After orientation for the trainees on Wednesday afternoon, President Johansson took them all out to dinner at a nearby restaurant. It turned out to be a more expensive restaurant than President Johansson was expecting, but he decided they'd stay and told the missionaries to order what they wanted.  Elder East ordered a $65 rack of ribs. He reckoned it was the best meal he's had since Christmas dinner last year. 

The Elders all spent the night at Elder Reeves' new flat again before joining in a District Council on Thursday morning. Elders East & Rea then drove up to Port Lincoln and got Elder Rea settled in.

On Friday they went out to several appointments and taught several lessons.

On Saturday they went and provided some service at a member's home doing gardening. The family then gave them lunch and the Elders also taught a lesson. Afterwards, Elder Rea had his first taste of tracting which Elder East said that he enjoyed. 

On Sunday after Church, they attended a barbecue that was put on by some of the members. 

They have a referral from a Bishop in Melbourne from somebody in one of the country towns who is interested in being taught and getting baptised. They have to try and work out how they can teach them, and how the members can help support them as the person is 3.5 hours away from the missionaries in the Eyre Peninsula and an hour away from the nearest members.

Elder East says that Elder Rea is doing well after his first few days in the mission field.

Other notes from our discussion:

• Elder Rea went to school with one of the missionaries in the AAM.
• Elder Rea reckons that Elder East must be cheating at a card game they've played together :)
• They have four dinners and two lunches scheduled with members for the coming week.
• On Thursday nights they will often get leftover bakery products from one of the sisters from the branch who works in a bakery.
• Elder East has had a quick message from Elder Haycock since he returned home to say that he's doing OK. 
• Elder East reckons that he's getting into "Christmas mode" - whatever that may mean :)
• President Johansson is looking at reintroducing some of the rules around when and how missionaries can get together for social gatherings. He'd previously removed the rules in place from President Marquis. I think Elder East is kind of happy to see some of them being reintroduced.

Video Chat - 25th October 2021 - Companion Number 17 ... Elder Burgess

It was only a brief chat this week ... as Elder East was once again preparing for a new companion. To see his full companionship list see the Companionship Page on this blog. Elder East had spent the previous week as companions with Elder Burgess from the Gold Coast. 

On Monday  Elders East & Aiho drove down to Adelaide where they stayed overnight for a District Council on Tuesday morning, at which point Elder Burgess then went with Elder East back up to Point Pirie on Tuesday afternoon. 

Elder East said that he and Elder Burgess provided a lot of service to people in Port Pirie during the week. This included going to Sister Harrison, the older Sister who feeds them in the branch, as well as heading out to the town of Gladstone to help clean up a backyard for somebody there. 

Elder East had identified that Gladstone is where one of our relatives was meant to be buried, so they visited the town graveyard whilst out there. They were unable to find our relative's grave though. He did comment that there were unmarked graves there though, so we might need to do some additional research to find out more details. 

Speaking about Elder Burgess Elder East said that they talked a lot and that Elder East helped Elder Burgess out. He says that Elder Burgess has good factual knowledge but little experience teaching or role-playing, so it sounds like this companionship was an opportunity to provide an extended training experience for Elder Burgess. Elder East commented that they did get the opportunity to teach a lesson to a new member in the Branch.  

Following their shortened week together, they got the call on Saturday that Elder East would be receiving one of the new trainees arriving the next Wednesday (27th Oct) and that Elder Burgess would be transferred up to Darwin. 

They drove down to Adelaide to stay at the Playford Elders flat so that Elder Burgess could fly out on Monday to Darwin. In the meantime, Elder East would be companions with Elder Reeves for the 2 days until his trainee arrived. Elder Reeves' area is being split and he is also getting a new trainee on Wednesday too.

Elder East and Reeves had developed a friendship before Elder East's mission started, and their Mums have become friends. They were both excited to hear that their sons would be serving together, even if only for a couple of days. Elder East said that Elder Reeves didn't count as a proper companion though - it's just a temporary companionship. They had spent some time that P Day afternoon driving through some of the Barossa Valley that makes up the Playford Elder's area.

On Tuesday (26th Oct) they will be having a combined Zone Conference for the Adelaide Zones, and then picking up their trainees on Wednesday. 

A few other quick notes from our discussion:

• Elder East discovered that he'd incurred a speeding fine back in Darwin (45km/h in a 40km/h zone), so had to arrange to pay for that. 
• We had planned on going to WA before he started his mission, however, Covid-19 caused that trip to be canceled. We will likely plan for a trip to WA next year after he returns home. 
• Elder East got to see his Mum hand-feeding wild cockatoos on the balcony back home.

Video Chat - 11th November 2020 - Excited About Marion Ward

Elder East took a break from the Elders learning a dance on P-day to video chat with us last Wednesday. (I didn't catch why they were learning a dance - not the type of thing missionaries usually do. Maybe it was something more like a haka or similar given the high proportion of Polynesians in the mission,) The district had originally planned to be playing ultimate frisbee, but the weather had turned bad.

Elder East is quite excited in his new ward - Marion Ward. The ward seems strong - they had around 150 at church the preceding week and Elder East says that their Ward Mission Leader is "amazing". The Ward Mission Leader is a returned missionary from Germany and apparently has a number of plans for missionary work in the ward.

Elder East said that Sacrament meeting itself was really good. He got to bear his testimony as a part of the meeting. They even had one of their investigators turn up to the chapel; ... unfortunately 30 minutes after Sacrament had ended, but they still managed to end up teaching them. Elder East says they have a lot of lessons lined up in the coming week.

They had two meal appointments during the week. :) Neither of them had cats. :( The first dinner appointment was with the second counselor in the Stake Presidency and his family. The counselor remembers a Sister Travers serving in the ward, but there were two Sister Travers serving in the AAM when Dannielle was there, so unsure if it was Sister Dannielle Travers or not.

The other meal was with the Davisons - the Elder's Quorum President and his family. It turns out there was a connection there too - they're related to the Davisons that we know in Sydney. 

Elder East held his first District Council meeting last week, which he had been stressing about. He said that it went short, and he didn't actually do very much, but hopefully it has helped break any concerns he had about having to run meetings in a leadership position.

I asked about how he was handling the nightly calls with companionships in the district, but apparently, he doesn't need to call them, it's just a text message of what's happened throughout the day. Again, not quite as stressful as he thought it would be. He says that Elder Brown, the brand new greenie being trained by Elder Reeves is stressed but doing well. Elder Easts says that Elder Brown comes from a game playing family, so they've got some common interests that they share.

On a personal note, we let him know that there were two packages coming his way. The first containing some Magic The Gathering cards that he was after for P-days, and the second containing advent calendars (and treats) for him and his companion. We asked if there was anything he wants for Christmas. He replied that he'd be interested in some nice P-Day clothes - he didn't take much in the way of non-proselyting clothing. We may end up getting him some vouchers to clothing stores given the difficulty in getting the correct size remotely. We'll see.

And on a side note, it was no real surprise to see that Elder East and Elder Reeves appeared to be hanging out together on P-Day. They seem to have formed a good friendship.