Video Chat - 23rd August 2021 - Family History Lockdown and New Companion Elder Roberts

With the Elders being in lockdown from the Monday afternoon until Thursday lunchtime it was a quieter week for the Elders. They finished going through trying to contact all of the members of Katherine Branch by phone. Elder East says that they only ended up having three people respond. One who wasn't interested, one who had moved down to Perth, and so they would help move their Church records down to their new ward, and the Kajma family. The Kajma family remembered our family from when we lived in Perth.

Also during the lockdown, Elder East had spent time working on some of his family history. We were able to help him out in linking up to his extended family in the Family Search application.

The big news however was transfers which was held on the P Day that we spoke. Whilst Elder east was staying in the NT, his companion, Elder Evans was transferred down to South Australia to reopen Victor Harbour and Elder Roberts was transferred up to Darwin to be Elder East's new companion. Elder Roberts is from Sydney and came into the AAM at the same time as Elder East. They were quarantined for 14 days together when they first arrived so already knew each other. Elder Nalesoni, one of Elder East's old companions, also happened to be part of those missionaries who quarantined together. He also transferred up to Darwin this transfers, so they now have 3 of that group of 5 missionaries who quarantined together, now serving up in Darwin.

Elder Roberts was excited to be up in Darwin, whilst Elder Evans was excited to be reopening a new area. Elder East said that President Johansson was moving missionaries out of some of the older areas to reopen areas closed during covid. Besides Victor Harbour, this has also included Alice Springs and Mt Gambier. The Port Pirie missionaries are also being encouraged to go out to Port Augusta and Whyalla, much in the same way that they're being encouraged to get down to Katherine one weekend.

Elder East commented that Elder Guzman, his trainer, was about to go home. he was disappointed that he wasn't going to be able to farewell him in person.

Other notes from the week included:

• The missionaries were coopted to sing a musical item at Church - I Love To See The Temple. They sang the first two verses in English, which Elder East said went well. The third verse was sung in Samoan, which he said went OK. The final verse was sung in Thai, which was "not OK." Apparently, the one missionary who knew how to speak Thai couldn't really sing in Thai.
• They helped teach the Missionary preparation class on Sunday evening. They had five youth from the two branches in attendance which they were happy with.
• They have several investigators who are doing well.
• They found a block of units that have a bunch of street cats. Elder East tried to befriend one, but he said that it's rather skittish.
• Speaking of cats, they went to give an administration to a Church member who was sick in hospital. He gave them money and a charge to feed his cats whilst he is in hospital. I'm pretty sure Elder East would be OK with that. 

Video Chat - 16th August 2021 - Lockdowns and Cane Toads

The immediate news from our chat with Elder East last P day was that Darwin was going into a snap lockdown for that Monday afternoon through to Thursday afternoon. The Elders had been out at the shops around 10:30am that morning and could see long lines at the shops. They joked that there must have been a lockdown coming. They got back to their car and sure enough, got a phone call letting them know that a lockdown was about to start. They had the job of letting the other missionaries in Darwin know the details.

There have been some changes in the other NT missionaries over the last week that have occurred out of the transfer cycle. An Elder had been transferred up to Darwin to stay with the Darwin Elders for 14 days in preparation for heading to the Perth mission. We're unsure how the lockdown will affect those plans noting that they were to try and make it easier for him to comply with WA's strict covid border regulations.

In addition, the Sister Missionaries in the Darwin branch have moved down to Adelaide.

Transfers is scheduled to occur next week (Mon 23rd Aug), but Elder East isn't sure how many changes will occur on that day. There were some new missionaries due to come into the mission, but they've been pushed back by three weeks. he speculated whether maybe some were from overseas as they had a New Zealander arrive last transfer.

A quick coverage of happenings through the previous week:

• President Johansson called them on Tuesday night and spoke to them about getting down to work with the less active families in Katherine one weekend. They are about 60-70 members in the branch but they are spread around hundreds of kilometers. The Elders started working their way through calling member's phone numbers, but of the first 20 or so they called, they didn't have anybody answer their calls.
• They had trade-offs on Thursday and Friday with the Darwin Elders, however, the other Elders weren't well. One had an injured foot whilst the other was feeling sick, so it was a fairly quiet time.
• On Sunday evening they helped with the Missionary Preparation devotional. Elder East said the evening went well. They had about 10 youth in attendance, including some Zooming in from Alice Springs.
• They also had a lesson with a young man (19YO) on Sunday. They'd tried catching up with his Dad earlier in the week - but he'd said it wasn't a good time - they were about to start a D&D session with mates. Elder East would have been in his element. They enjoyed the lesson with his son on Sunday - seeing someone learning about the Gospel for the first time.
• They have also been spending time with a part-member family (couple and son) who have been to Church, had a lesson and come along to the branch sports night as well. 

The final event of note relates to the only photo we got from Elder East this week. He explained that they helped catch a cane toad in a lady's yard during the week. The only problem was what to do with it once they caught it. They didn't want to kill it themselves even though it's a dangerous pest, so they ended up putting it securely in the lady's rubbish bin where it would be assumed to die and then be disposed of.

Video Chat - 7th July 2021 - Coming Out of Lockdown

It was only a quick call with Elder East this week. The Covid lockdown finished for the Darwin and Palmerston areas on Friday, however, they still weren't able to hold Church last Sunday, and many things were still very quiet. They are expecting Church to be held this coming Sunday (11th July). In fact, Elder East has a speaking assignment.

The main piece of news was that they met with their new mission president - President Johansson.  I realised that I didn't note what day it was and whether it was in person or via Zoom. Elder East said that all of the missionaries were together at the Darwin chapel. They held a group meeting with President Johansson between 11am to Noon, then lunch between Noon and 1pm, then followed by interviews with each of the individual missionaries. Of the 8 missionaries, Elder East was last to be interviewed, so he was there until 4:30pm. [Note: Elissa advised after I published this that the meetings and interviews were via Zoom/]

With President Johansson allowing districts and zones to get together each P Day the Darwin and Palmerston missionaries were doing a bunch of activities together including a chip lunch, an Amazing race activity involving photos, and a spicy noodle eating challenge. 

A few quick dot points from the discussion:

• President Johansson mentioned that he's been instructed not to transfer missionaries too often at the moment, so Elder East may spend a while in the Northern Territory.
• We did send Elder East some English Samoan vocabulary documents however he says that he probably needs an actual dictionary as he has lots of words, but needs to be able to understand participles.
• If Elder East doesn't get transferred during the next transfers (scheduled for 12-13th July) we'll arrange to send him some money so he and his companion can go to Aquascene on the 21st July P Day. Aquascene features large fish that come in at high tide to be hand-fed. I remember going there as a kid back in 1981.

Video Chat - 30th June 2021 - Lockdown and Change Over of Mission Presidents

The last week was a tale of two halves for the missionaries in the Northern Territory. Elders East and Evans had been tracting and teaching between Thursday and Saturday, and had some people who were going to come along to Church on Sunday. Unfortunately, they then got the message on Sunday morning that due to Covid concerns in the community that Church meetings were being canceled. The whole Darwin and Palmerston region received only 90 minutes notice that the government was implementing a several-day lockdown starting at 1pm on the Sunday afternoon.

Elder East said that there was then a mad rush on the shops. They were able to head over to a member's home to have sacrament before the lockdown and saw that the nearby shopping centre car parks were full with many people now parking on the surrounding roads. People were trying to get into the shops to buy stuff before the lockdown started.

Since the lockdown started, Elder East has been able to call upon his experience from earlier in his mission by conducting a lot of missionary work and lessons via phone calls and Zoom. Only three of the missionaries in the NT have experience in doing missionary work during a lockdown so he's providing training to the Zone about how to adjust their missionary work. He said that one of the things to focus on is that when using technology for lessons, the lessons need to be a lot shorter and more succinct than what you would do when teaching in person.

They've been having success calling and teaching during the lockdown period, and on Tuesday even managed to teach a lesson to a lady down in Alice Springs. She was in Palmerston pre-lockdown and was visiting friends who were tracted out by the Elders. She was receptive and they were able to exchange contact details and then subsequently arrange to teach her remotely.

Elder East says that he'd like to get out to see more of the remote areas in the Northern Territory. He commented that there is meant to be a branch in Katherine, but that everybody there is currently less-active. He says that he'd love to go down and help reactivate 5 or 6 people to help get the branch going again and then do missionary work in the area.

President Marquis broadcast a farewell on Sunday evening to the mission via Zoom. He was conducting a several day handover with the new president starting 28th June, and flying out on the 1st July.. President Johansson, the new mission president, arrived in the mission on Monday and called Elders East and Evans on Tuesday evening. Elder East described him as "pretty chill". He was calling just to say hello and to let them know that he's hoping to come up soon and to visit them in the NT. Given the current lockdown, he may need to do his official "meet & greet" via Zoom. 

A couple of final dot point notes from our chat:

• For P-Day during lockdown, the NT missionaries tried doing some games via Zoom.
• They had some issues with their grocery shopping earlier in the day. They tried using the self-checkouts at the shops, however, the system has issues with the Bank of America debit cards that they are issued with. 
• Elder East asked if we could send through some English-Samoan dictionaries or documents to help him understand some of the Samoan language he's trying to teach himself. He's said before that Samoan is kind of like an unofficial second language of the mission. 
• We got to see a bit of the view from their flat as Elder East went out onto their balcony at one point whilst talking with us. 

Elder East Goes Into Lockdown

Due to a case of the Delta variant of Corvid-19 in Darwin, both Darwin and Palmerston were put into a full 48-hour lockdown at 1pm last Sunday (27th June 2021.) We sent a one-line message to him checking to make sure he was aware he was meant to be in lockdown. We got a thumbs up response.

Following additional advice, the lockdown was extended on Monday by another 72 hours until 1pm on Friday 2nd July. Elissa sent him a copy of the updated information to keep him in the loop/ Elder East's response to the news of the extended lockdown was the crying emoji ...

Elder East usually has his video chat with us via the wifi at the Chapel on P-Day (Wednesday), so we're unsure if we'll get much of a chat with him this coming P-Day. It might just be a text conversation.