Video Chat - 30th March 2022 - Mini-training of Elders Tu'itavake and Rogers

P-Day had been moved to a Wednesday (30th Mar) this week, so it was a Wednesday afternoon video chat for us. It had been a busy week+ for the APs. The previous Tuesday had been Transfers, with all of the usual work involved with ensuring the missionaries ended up at their new assignments. 

On Wednesday (23rd Mar) morning they picked up a new missionary from the airport, Elder Tu'itavake. Unfortunately, his trainer had to get tested for Covid and had to go into isolation. They had to pick up another new Sister from the airport on Wednesday evening. 

Elder Tu'itavake stayed with the APs until Friday when Orientation was held for the three new missionaries arriving this transfer. Elder East said that they took Elder Tu'itavake out tracting on Thursday as well as following up on previous lessons. He said that they had a good time with him during their "Mini-training" session.

On Friday morning they picked up the third new missionary from the airport - Elder Rogers. The rest of Friday was taken up with the orientation of the three new missionaries. 

Elder Rogers would also be staying with the APs over the weekend. The significant thing about Elder Rogers is that he was flying in from the USA. He's actually an Aussie, but living in the USA. Still, he was the first missionary to come out to the AAM from America since the Covid border restrictions had been relaxed.

Elder East commented that the missionaries with international assignments were now getting ready to travel. The AAM has missionaries preparing to reassign to missions in Japan, Italy, and Chile. They're also expecting those originally called to New Zealand missions to be leaving in May, as well as start receiving missionaries from New Zealand.

They had several missionaries recently leave for their assignments in the Perth mission. Don & Tamara, friends of the family are currently serving as a missionary couple in the Australia Perth Mission were quizzing the new arrivals from the AAM to find out if they knew Elder east. The answers of course were "yea". (Technically they actually asked if the missionaries knew Elder Yates, before realizing their mistake and correcting it to Elder East.)

On Monday (28th Mar)  they had a District Council, as well as providing service. I had a note that they provided service at a hospital, and then another note that President Johansson joined them as they did 2½ hours of service working on ladders, but I hadn't noted if they were part of the same service activity. Either way, President Johansson bought them dinner afterward and they all sat in the car eating dinner at an ocean lookout.

On Tuesday (29th Mar) the Elders had three teaching appointments with members, although one ended up canceling. 

The next two days (Thurs 31st Mar and Fri 1st Apr) were going to be Zone Conferences. The APs had been asked by President Johansson to change the way they train during these Conferences. President wants the APs to focus on doing this training by the Spirit, running it more as a workshop rather than "teaching a sermon". Elder East is a bit nervous about how well he'll do.

Video Chat - 14th March 2022 - They Didn't Lose A Mission Car

It was only 4 days from our last chat with Elder East on the previous Thursday, so there wasn't a lot of news to share. He did share with us that Elder Ma'a's original mission call was to the Ivory Coast in Africa.

Also, earlier in the day the Zone had a farewell party for Sister Ip who was finishing her mission the following week. The APs helped with the decorations which had a "yellow" theme. 

The APs went to Firle Ward on Sunday after which they had a Mission Correlation Meeting. Elder East sent us a photo with the Travers family in Firle Ward, who are related to the Travers that we know.

Elder East also sent us a picture of Elder Rea and himself on trade-offs.

Later on Sunday the APs had a 5-hour meeting with President Johansson to go through transfers for the following week. Even though transfers are meant to be every six weeks, the pandemic is still resulting in missionaries arriving "mid-transfer" so they're really happening almost every three weeks.

Elder East noted that he only has two "full" transfers left.

Commenting on the recent conferences during Elder Nattress's visit, he said that they felt bigger than normal. The mission is growing. He doesn't really know the missionaries well outside of his zone, but he knows of everybody - that's part of the role of being AP.

Elder East also told us a funny story about the mission tour. With all of the missionaries from country areas and the NT down in Adelaide, the mission office provided some additional cars for missionaries to get around. After the tour finished and missionaries went back to their area, the office Elders advised that they were a car short. They'd given out 3 but only had 2 come back. The APs were sure that they'd gotten back the cars they'd given out. Elder East went and did a check where they stored the cars that aren't in use, and sure enough, the missing car was parked there and wasn't missing. This story was especially funny given both of Elder East's sisters have accidentally lost vehicles in the past that turned out not to be lost

Video Chat - 21st February 2022 - The NT With President Johansson & Elder Nattress

 Much of our chat this week was about the APs trip up to the Northern Territory the previous week.

The APs flew up to Alice Springs on Wednesday and had trade-offs with the missionaries in the afternoon. President Johansson and Elder Nattress (First Counselor in the Area Presidency) flew up to Alice Springs on Thursday and took some personal time to head out to Uluru and Segway around the rock before returning to Alice Springs. This gave them a long amount of time to do some one-on-one counseling/training together as well as getting to see a famous tourist sight. 

On Friday they had a meeting with the Alice Springs missionaries as well as a Fireside in the evening for members and investigators. They had four investigators come along to the Fireside in the evening. 

On Saturday they flew up to Darwin. Elder East sent us the following message:

But truthfully I had this really great experience on Saturday.

We had just flown into Darwin and we had gotten the Elders to the chapel to meet Elder Nattress. We went to get lunch for everyone to bring back and then had a meeting with him.

During the meeting I was about to fall asleep. I just felt so dead and I remember thinking that straight after this meeting when I go with the Elders I'm gonna go nap.

But I was also like I gotta help these Elders and be an example and so I said a prayer and was like "hey if you need me to do something up here can you please give me the strength to do it, but if not can I please get some rest."

At the end of the meeting President turns to us APs and says he's gonna need us for a bunch of things and almost Immediately I felt wide awake and full of energy and felt like that the rest of the day.

So it was pretty simple but for me, it was a really clear cause and effect of God helping me in that moment that I loved.

After helping out President, they went out tracting in the heavy rain with the Darwin missionaries and got a return appointment. On the Saturday evening, there was meant to be a Leadership Dinner with President Johansson and Elder Nattress, and the local priesthood leaders. Unfortunately, of the local leaders, three had covid, two were away and of the others, only one was able to make it. 

On Sunday there was a combined Church meeting for both the Darwin and Palmerston Branches. The APs were acting as greeters. They were getting worried when with several minutes before Church was due to start both President Johnasson and Elder Nattress hadn't arrived yet, and as noted most of the other local leaders were away, in isolation or otherwise indisposed. Fortunately, they arrived right at the 9am start time. 

There was a lunch put on after Church finished and Elder East was able to catch up with a number of members from Palmerston Branch who he knew. The Stubbs, who have recently moved from Canberra to Darwin also happened to recognise him. They sent the following photo to the Canberra Stake Facebook group. 

On Sunday afternoon they went out to visit some of the former investigators from when Elder East was in the area. The only person who they managed to catch up with though was Sister King - again, another former Canberra member who had recently moved up to Darwin. The Kings hadn't been to Church in a  while so Elder East was happy to get a return appointment with them for the Palmerston missionaries.

They then tracted a complex of six houses. From those six houses, there was no answer from two, they taught a lesson at one and got three return appointments from the others. They were happy to be successful with the tracting as the NT missionaries had been saying that they don't see any success tracting, however, Elders East & Evans taught or got return appointments every time they went out tracting in the NT during the week.

They ended up flying back down to Adelaide on the P Day Monday, so our video chat was in the evening. 

Some other quick notes from our chat:

• Elder East managed to get some sand for his "collection" from one of the Darwin beaches.
• He bought himself a souvenir tie in Darwin.
• We sent him some PDFed university course guides to read on the plane on the flight back to help him make a decision about whether he needs to apply for university before he finishes his mission in June. We confirmed that his return date was the 15th June - about 5 days earlier than we'd previously thought.
• Elder East said that It has been really good being with Elder Nattress - he's a very nice, and spiritual, man. The whole trip has been really tiring though - even President Johansson is super tired.
• He commented about how being an Assistant to the President has been hard, but he's never felt unfulfilled. He feels that he's doing really well, both spiritually and emotionally.
• Here's a photo of a baby thorny devil that they found during their time in Alice Springs.

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 - 16th December 2021 - Post Mildura Visit

It was a delayed video chat this week as P Day had been moved from Monday to Thursday due to mission events. It was also a relatively quick chat. Even P days are busy for the Assistants. 

Elder East focused on letting us know about his and Elder Evans's trip to Mildura the previous weekend (Fri 10th - Sun 12th Dec.) He said that the trip was really great. President Johansson decided that he wasn't going to go up as originally planned, however, the Elders felt impressed that they should still go.

They left Adelaide at 9am on the Friday morning and then drove up to Berri where they had lunch. They then headed over the border into Victoria. They said that there wasn't anybody manning the border - a big change from the recent hard border restrictions during the pandemic. 

They went and turned up at the home of Naomi, a recent convert they've been teaching online. She was surprised to see them. She'd been told that they were no longer coming up when President Johansson had canceled his travel for the weekend. She was pleasantly surprised to see them and be taught in person during the afternoon. 

On Friday afternoon they ended up teaching an investigator and pastors from her Fijian church that were holding a prayer group. They had dinner with the group and were able to teach about the restoration of the gospel which Elder East said went well. 

On Saturday they did some flat inspections of missionary flats that were not currently in use. They were checking to see what needed to be done if the areas were reopened. Elder East was surprised to find a box of Magic the Gathering cards in one of the flats. It was part of various items left behind by missionaries when the pandemic started and the foreign missionaries all departed back to their home countries.

Later in the day they were invited to join in the missionary homecoming of Sister Halalova, who was returning from her mission. She'd finished her mission in Elder East's home ward. Elder East said that the homecoming was all done in Tongan.

On Sunday they attended Mildura Ward. Elder east said that it's only a small Ward - probably not more than 40 people in attendance. The Sacrament program included a testimony from Naomi, a talk from Elder Evans, and a homecoming talk from Sister Halalova. They headed back to Adelaide on Sunday afternoon after Church.

The rest of the week had involved lots of Missionary Coordination Meetings with the various Stakes and arranging of travel. The Mission would be having its Christmas conference the following day (Friday 17th Dec), so they were arranging travel down to Adelaide for the missionaries in the Northern Territory. What was making things difficult is that the pandemic-related border restrictions were being changed. There was concern if they brought the Northern Territory missionaries down to Adelaide, would they then have to quarantine for 2 weeks before being allowed back into the NT.

We spoke briefly about some mission announcements of people from back home. Arie Wolff - one of the YSA from back in Canberra had just announced his call to the AAM. Emma Davison, a family friend has received her call to Auckland.

Video Chat - 11th October 2021 - Elder Haycock Comes and Goes

It was a busy week for Elder East. He flew down to Adelaide for transfers on Tuesday morning (5th Oct). knowing that his trainee wasn't arriving straight away. He would go out to join Elders Brown and Burgess in Tea Tree Gully Ward. It would turn out that his trainee, Elder Haycock, from Perth, would be arriving the following day.

Wednesday was Elder East's grandmother's funeral, and he had permission from President Johannson to join in watching the broadcast of the funeral service and burial. Elder Haycock's flight arrived whilst the funeral was on, so Elder East didn't go to meet him at the airport. They then spent the rest of Wednesday doing training and admin with Elder Haycock, staying overnight in Adelaide with Elder Reeves and his companion.

On Thursday they then drove up to Port Pirie and spent the day cleaning up the missionary flat from the previous Elders as well as unpacking and setting up their own stuff.

On Friday they started to focus on more training for Elder Haycock, including watching a bunch of videos that are part of the training. To do this they went to the chapel to be able to use the internet connection for the video streaming. After finishing in the evening they went back to their flat, and as they were trying to get into their flat, the front door key broke. OK ... time to call the mission office to find out if there's a spare key. Unfortunately Elder East realised his phone only had a 3% charge left before it would go flat. 

They did manage to get in touch with the mission office but had to spend Friday night in a motel with nothing but the clothes on their backs. On Friday morning they then had to drive halfway down to Adelaide to meet up with the APs who had a spare key to their flat at the mission office. 

Whilst all of this was going on, Elder Haycock had received a call to let him know that his elderly father had been admitted to hospital. His parents are not overly active in the Gospel and his Mum, who is from the Philippines has little in the way of a local support network. She was asking that Elder Haycock come home from his mission for support. 

The Elders went to the chapel for the Saturday evening broadcast of general conference. During the evening  Elder Haycock was able to contact his father who also requested that he come home to help. Elder Haycock spoke to President Johansson and then his Bishop and Stake President back in Perth. He made the decision that he would head back home to assist even though he wanted to be staying out in the mission field. 

On Sunday morning they went to the general conference broadcast and managed to catch up with Craig, a gentleman who describes himself as a "professional investigator." They were invited along with Craig to a member's house for lunch. She was an older lady who has a reputation for unusual food recipes from old cookbooks. Elder East advised that lunch included such things as curried bananas and a salad made from rockmelon, capsicum, onions and marshmallows. 

After their meal, they spent Sunday afternoon repacking their bags and then heading down to Adelaide. They had dinner with the Port Pirie branch president in Kadina, a town about an hour south of Port Pirie on the way to Adelaide. After dinner, they were able to teach a lesson to the Branch President's family before making their way down to Adelaide to stay with the Playford Elder's overnight.

Now, on P Day, Elder East was with other missionaries at a P Day activity in Fremont Park. Elder Haycock would be flying home on Tuesday (12th Oct). Both Elders East and Haycock said that they knew that it was sad for him to be returning home after having just arrived but they knew it was the right decision. As the entire situation unfolded, Elder East said that things just kept "happening" but he felt calm and OK about how things were progressing. Elder Haycock wanted to stay out in the mission field but wanted to be able to return and help as well. He is wanting to return back to the mission field when he can. 

My personal opinion is that sometimes we shouldn't second guess the Lord. Maybe Elder Haycock will get the chance to return quickly and enjoy a full two-year mission. Maybe all that the Lord required from Elder Haycock was to prepare and show that he was ready to serve a mission. Having shown his willingness to do so, maybe the Lord knows that his responsibilities now lay with looking after his parents for a long time. Maybe his service will fall as a mixture between the two. As long as we try and seek Heavenly Father's will for us and try to align ourselves to it, we will be an instrument in the Lord's hands to help others in His way.

A few other tidbits of information about Elder Haycock:

• He plays gridiron competitively back in Perth. He had been planning to go to the USA to play gridiron before Covid hit. 
• Elder Haycock knew both Holly Olde and Connor Dowe, people that Elder East knew from Perth
• Elder Haycock and Elder East both attended FSY in Perth in 2018. They were in different groups, but did know some of the same people from FSY.
• Elder East says that Elder Haycock was really into cars.
• Even though they only served together a short time, they got on really well, and Elder East would love to catch up with Elder Haycock back in Perth after both of their missions are finished.

Video Chat - 23rd June 2021 - Nandos: The Fanciest Place to Eat In Palmerston!

 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]

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'.

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.