Video Chat - 28th February 2022 - Visiting Robinvale Branch

It was only a brief chat with Elder East on P Day (28th Feb).  The previous Monday they had flown back from the Northern Territory.  The following week was spent sorting out transfers and the upcoming Mission Conference. 

Elder East advised that they are changing the way they do transfers. They will no longer be announcing all of the changes beforehand, simply advising missionaries whether to get ready to be transferred or not. We asked Elder East if he was being affected by transfers but he wouldn't let us know.

He let us know that during the week he refilmed a video with Elder McCarthy about the Spirit World. Apparently there were issues with the quality of the first take. The video now has to be edited and gotten ready to put up on social media.

On Saturday morning they provided some service to a member in Firle Ward who is getting ready to move by shifting a load of bricks in their yard.

Later on Saturday they drove up to Mildura. They would be spending the rest of the weekend there to help assist with a devotional being put on by President Johansson on the Sunday evening. 

On Sunday they went to Church in Robinvale - a town about 90km east of  Mildura. Elder East said that it's meant to be an English-speaking branch, but most of the meeting was in Tongan. The one-hour Sacrament meeting also went for nearly two hours.

They had dinner with the Mildura Bishop before the devotional on Sunday evening and drove back to Adelaide on the P Day we chatted. Elder East ends up doing a lot of traveling on P Days. 

Some other quick dot points from our conversation:

• Five new missionaries are coming into the AAm during the next mid-transfer cycle. Four of them are reassignments of missionaries meant to be heading to New Zealand. There's a family friend in Sydney who's meant to be heading to New Zealand in April, however, she's currently scheduled to go to the AAM if unable to go to New Zealand. She probably doesn't know that yet though.
• There are three Missionary Leadership Councils coming up followed by a Mission Tour by Elder Nattress from the Area Presidency the following week. Consequently, P Day on the 7th March has been rescheduled to Thurs 10th March. 
• Elder East had forgotten to tell uis that he'd been able to attend the Adelaide Temple the previous week. The Mission Leadership Council had been invited to go along with the Johanssons to the temple.
• Elder East is currently thinking that he'll focus on doing a general science degree at ANU when he returns from his mission.

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 - 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 - 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.