Video Call - 6th June 2022 - Farewell P-Day Celebration

 It was Elder East's last P Day with the other missionaries. The following P Day he would be heading into the mission home and getting ready to go home. His Zone had an activity day as a farewell for him and a birthday celebration for Elder Burgess. 

Elder East did try calling us from the activity but there was so much noise we couldn't hear what he was saying. We ended up cutting the call short, with Elder East letting us know that he'd try calling us later in the day. Unfortunately, that didn't eventuate. 

The little we did hear him say was that it had been a hectic week, and that President Johansson had been in the Northern Territory for most of it. 

Later in the day we did see a video from one of the other missionaries from Canberra who was serving in the AAM. The video had footage from their P Day activity. I've tried to grab some screenshots of the video below with some added commentary. 

The first shot is of Elder East getting an egg splattered on his head. They appeared to be playing some sort of game where the losers got wet or got hit with eggs. This egg hit was a sneak attack though ;)

Photo of the missionaries having lunch. You'll notice that Elder East has changed out of his wet/egg-splattered clothes. 

Trying to eat a donut suspended from a string without using your hands.

Elder Ma'a and Sister Malu have been making banners as a farewell gift for some of the missionaries as they complete their missions. This si Elder East's banner.

The banner can also be used as a cape apparently ...

Singing 'God Be With You 'Til We Meet Again."

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 - 20th September 2021 - Trade-offs In Alice Springs

Our weekly video chat with Elder East was delayed as the Elders were still in Alice Springs on trade-offs for P Day. President Johansson, who had joined the Elders in Alice Springs, had decided to have the Elders stay the day and spend P Day with him as they toured some of the nearby tourist sights around Alice. 

It had been a busy week for them. On Tuesday and Wednesday they'd crammed in as many lessons and catchups with people as possible, knowing they'd be away for the rest of the week. 

They spent Wednesday night in the old Sister Missionary's flat in Darwin as they had to be up by 4AM on Thursday to get out to the airport for a 6AM flight. It was a 2 hour flight. Elder East said that they got to see the sunrise over Alice Springs as they arrived which was pretty. 

On Thursday Elder East was on trade-offs with Elder Beaumont-Tafua who had previously served with in Onkaparinga Ward. On Friday he spent the day with Elder Maher. President Johansson flew in on the Friday morning and spent some time talking with Elders East and Maher at the missionary's flat after arriving. Elder East mentioned that his favourite event during thre trade-offs was a lesson he taught with Elder Maher to a family on the Friday where they helped teach their 9YO daughter about the Gospel. They also had dinner with President Johansson on the Friday night.

He said that they did a lot of member work as Alice Springs is a reasonable-sized branch.  The branch is mainly made up of Polynesian and American members and there are a lot of part-member families. The members of the branch are excited at having missionaries back in the branch.

On Saturday he said that they got a free lunch at a canteen at the local netball stadium that is run by members of the branch. Elder East and Elder Roberts went out tracting together on the Saturday. They invited several people to Church and were able to get a couple of return appointments for the Alice Springs missionaries.

On Sunday President Johnasson was the main speaker in the branch Sacrament meeting and then took a combined second-hour class. They then all joined in with the missionary preparation class during the afternoon. On the Sunday evening there was a large get-together of about 8 member families (over 30 people)  and all of the missionaries for dinner. The missionaries shared a small lesson/message at the get together.

On the Monday P Day, President Johansson had been contemplating whether to try and take the Elders out to Uluru, but it's a 10-11 hour round trip, so they ended up visiting some locations closer to town. They went out to the West MacDonnell National Park and visited Standley Chasm and Simpson's Gap. On the drive out to the National Park they encountered a Thorny Devil on the road that had to shoo off.  Elder East bought himself a cap from the visitor's centre so that he didn't get sunburnt during the day. He enjoyed the visit and commented that Standley Chasm reminded him of The Narrows in Zion National Park. After the sightseeing, the Elders then had an activity going ten pin bowling back in town. Elders East and Roberts would then be flying back to Darwin on Tuesday morning (21st Sep.)

Besides helping out the Alice Springs missionaries and providing training, part of the purpose of the trade-offs was to assess if Alce Springs has sufficient work for additional missionaries to be assigned to the branch. Elder East noted that President Johansson is opening up and focussing on some areas that haven't had much missionary contact in a while. It's possible that Adrwin may be receiving more missionaries in the future.

Some other dot point notes from our chat:

• They have a lunch appointment with Elder East's Uncle Ross scheduled for Tuesday (21st Sep) as he's currently visiting Darwin. 
• Elder East is due to have his second Covid vaccination on Thursday (23rd Sep).
• There was talk about whether to maybe have a future Zone Conference held in Alice Springs.
• President asked Elder East if he'd like to train. Elder East commented that technically he was a trainer of Elder Davey, although it was a three-way companionship and Elder East was transferred out after only 3 weeks. Elder east reckons that training in Alce Springs would be great. 
• They already have a busy week scheduled ahead of them for when they get back to Darwin.
• Elders East and Roberts are thinking of buying and splitting up a Magic the Gathering card collection from one of the people they know in Palmerston.

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.

Farewell Dinner With the Marquis' - 19th June 2021

Elder east told us that the Marquis' would be coming up last Saturday to have a farewell dinner and Family Home evening with the missionaries in the Darwin Zone. The AAM blog updated the following day with photos of the evening. As usual, I've gone through and pulled out the photos with Elder East in them. First a couple of photos from the dinner.

Then several photos of the Family Home Evening. We have no idea what's up with Elder East wearing white socks.

Zone Activity - Pre-Christmas River Cruise

 Again, we managed to grab some of the photos from the AAM website of the River Cruise activity that the Adelaide missionaries went on on the 23rd December. The missionaries met up at one of the Adelaide chapels and then drove in convoy up to Murray Bridge. There, President Marquis had arranged a cruise along the Murray River aboard the Captain Proud paddleboat.

Unfortunately, it looks like whoever was the photographer for the cruise had a mishap part way through and got something on their camera lens. The rest of the photos of the cruise have a bad smear in the middle of the photos. I tried to clean up the shots as much as I could, but there's not a lot could do. Still, we get to see more of Elder East's experiences on the cruise, even if they are blurry.

Unsure if the following photo has a smear on the lens or if Elder East is speaking to a hologram of Elder Reeves.