Video Chat - 02nd December 2020 - Lots of Trade-Offs

No district BBQs on P-Day this week, but some of the district did go bowling ... but we weren't sent any photos. It was a busy week for them.

They had two lots of trade-offs during the week. Elder East says that he quite enjoys doing trade-offs. On Thursday and Friday they traded off with Elder Brown and Elder Reeves. Elder East was with Elder Brown, the mission's newest trainee in their area whilst Elder Tukukino went up to Elder Reeves' area. Over the Sunday and Monday they then had trade-offs with Elder Nalesoni and his companion. Elder Nalesoni was Elder East's companion during their initial quarantine period. 

Elder East says that Elder Nalesoni is a lot less reserved than when he first came into the mission field but still isn't overly confident, but that it was good to see him starting to open up more. Elder East also commented that Elder Brown is a bit of a games enthusiast and had a couple of small card games to play in the evening before bedtime - Fort and Here To Slay. Elder East is usually up for a game at any time.

They have another trade-off scheduled for the coming week (Thursday and Friday) with the Elders in the Onkaparinga Ward. He did also say they were having trade-offs with the Sister Missionaries on Monday, but I'm going to assume that he was joking.

Elder East said that they got to give a lot of service during the last week including to an elderly lady who has cancer. They spent time working in her garden with some of her friends.

Elder East commented that they are struggling with their own investigators - not many of them are progressing spiritually at this time. They did have one gentleman at Church but have some concerns about his progression and note that there are a lot of people with mental health concerns in the area.

Elder East asked if Mum knew an Elder Varcoe on her mission. She didn't, but I did. Turns out he has passed away and that his widow has remarried and is in their Ward. They had dinner with the family during the week - it's a large blended family with 8 kids. One of Elder Varcoe's sons is currently preparing to go on his mission.

Elder East and Mum talked about the study that Elder East is doing. He finished the Book of Mormon again about a month ago and has been focusing on a lot of General Conference talks - mainly President Nelson's talks, as well as bits and pieces from the Book of Mormon. He says that he's also trying to do some study around mental health too given the prevalence in the area. 

Some other minor points from the discussion:

• He got a haircut again this P-Day. Fast-growing hair is a family curse.
• Mum is trying to convince Elder East for him and his companion to go and get a Santa photo together. Elder East doesn't sound too keen on the idea.
• For Christmas, Elder East would like a new short-sleeve button-up shirt or a tie. It sounds like Mum might end up getting him a Hawaiian shirt. Apparently, his preference is for a dark base but with bright colours - perhaps floral.
• Transfers are in two weeks. He would prefer to remain in his companionship and area, but if things did change, he'd like to have one of the newer missionaries as a companion rather than being the young one.
• We found out about the package that he had been working on on P-Days to send to Kendal.

Video Chat - 25th November 2020 - Photos!

 Elder East had a good P-Day last Wednesday with a District BBQ near Hallett Cove. That's already been written up as a separate blog entry.

We chatted a bit about the partial pandemic lockdown that they undertook the previous week. Elder East commented that when he was in his previous area that they had done a number of activities in other areas (trade-offs etc) near where the outbreak was, but fortunately it was several weeks before the outbreak occurred.

Elder says that he’s getting the hang of being a District Leader. They had a District Council last Tuesday. The themes were “Enduring to the End & Diligence” – hoping to help keep several missionaries focused who are due to go home next transfer. He thinks he’s adjusted to missionary life – he’s starting to have dreams about being a missionary.

They are getting fed a lot by the Ward and have a lot of food. They had lunch and dinner appointments for the coming Thursday and dinner for Friday.

They are finding it more difficult to teach people in Marion. He says that they are getting contacts, but not teaching many lessons and few people are progressing and keeping commitments. They did get to give a chapel tour to an investigator after Church on Sunday. He commented that they've encountered a lot more individuals involved with drug use and those who he simply describes as "weird" in the area. They are spending their time working through their Area Book. They had been referred to 2 families that the Sister Missionaries had been teaching. When contacted, however, one was only interested in receiving service, and not in being taught, whilst the other one got angry with them. 

Elder East commented that some of the missionary technology is a bit frustrating. The Area Book is now an application, compared to the old paper books that used to be kept. Apparently, it doesn't have the same functionality that some other missions have and is a bit frustrating to use. He commented that the missionary email system is a bit unreliable as well.

Elder East was a bit disappointed he got told off by the Mission President on Tuesday. Missionaries aren’t meant to go into the CBD itself (Rundle Mall & surrounding areas.) They had asked the APs for permission to go there as an investigator had arranged to meet there for a lesson. The lesson ended up falling through at the last minute, and they ended up going to an ATM before leaving the city. Obviously, somebody had seen the Elders in the city and told the Mission President. Elder East was also told that he shouldn’t be using the chapel computer for some artwork he was doing.

They have a trade off with Elder Reeves and Elder Brown coming up during the week. Elder Brown will come down and join Elder East in his area whilst Elder Tukukino will join Elder Reeves.

A few more random notes of things that were discussed:

• He joked he needs a new shirt. Every P-Day he wears his same favourite casual button-up shirt.
• He received the package we’d sent with a Lego advent calendar for him and a chocolate advent calendar for Elder Tukukino. Elder East was a bit concerned about how to transport the Lego after Christmas.
• He still hasn’t encountered any friendly cats.
• Elder East and Elissa worked out that one of the missionaries in Darwin is the brother of a missionary currently serving in Red HillW ard
• He got to briefly meet Elder Reeves' parents via Elder Reeves' video chat on P-day.
• Several missionaries have been transferred from the AAM to the Perth Mission now that the borders have opened. With other coming transfers, he believes the mission may be down to 33 missionaries by transfers.
• He spent the last P-Day trying to get together a package to send to Kendall but didn’t get it finished. 

We complained to Elder East that he never takes any photos, so he ended up sending a bunch of photos through to us whilst chatting. We don't know the context of all of them, but here are those he sent through.

Apparently the photo below is the view from one of the member's homes that they had a meal appointment at.

P-Day Barbecue at Hallett Cove - 25th November 2020

In a shocking development, Elder East actually sent us through a bunch of photos on P-day last week. In fact, he sent through more photos today than I think he's sent the rest of his mission put together. :)

Some of the photos were from earlier in the day where the missionaries in the Marion District had a barbecue at a point overlooking Hallet Cove.  Hallett Cove is a southern coastal suburb of Adelaide and features a conservation park with a boardwalk along the coast. Today was a day for them to socialize out in the open together amongst some scenery. They had a good selection of barbecued food to choose from, sausages, bacon, eggs and chicken. No vegetables I note.

It looks like the barbecue itself was held at the Heron Way Reserve, a newly renovated area at the southern end of Hallett Cove. Elder East didn't send any photos of it, but here are some from the web.

Further up from the Reserve was the boardwalk which heads past a feature called The Sugarloaf. Again, unsure if they actually walked the boardwalk or not, but here are photos from the web of what it looks like.

Here are the related photos we got from Elder East. Ones of both him and Elder Tukukino staring off into the ocean across Hallett Cove. I'm presuming these must have been taken before the P-Day - probably when they realised it would be a good location for a District P-Day activity and then sought permission from the APs. Then there are a couple of photos of the Marion District on the P-Day itself. Elder East said they enjoyed themselves, but he was a bit suburnt.

Zone Conference Photos - 14th November 2020

Posting up some of the recent photos from the mission blog that include Elder East. These are from the Zone Conference held on the 14th November 2020. Enjoy playing 'Spot the Elder East".

Video Chat 18th November 2020 - Preparing For Lockdown

 Again it was only a short chat with Elder East last P-Day, but this time it was due to the pandemic. We exchanged messages in the morning to arrange a time for our video chat - Elder East was going to be doing some service (shifting bricks for an investigator), so he wasn't going to be available to chat at the usual time.

By the time we did speak to Elder East in the afternoon, things had all changed. In the preceding couple of days, there had been a Coronavirus outbreak in Adelaide and the government was proposing restrictions. The district had originally planned a barbecue for P-Day, however because of the Coronavirus concerns the missionaries were told not to have any get-togethers with other missionaries, so they had to cancel their barbecue. 

By the time we spoke in the afternoon, it had been announced that all of Adelaide was being put into a week-long lockdown and all of the Elder's plans had been thrown into disarray. They needed to change a number of appointments, and ensure they had everything they needed for a week inside their flat.

Elder East had two major concerns - his investigators, and the missionaries who were due to finish their mission and go home. They did also have three member meals/appointments scheduled for the week.

He mentioned two investigators that he was particularly cognisant of - one was a member referral, whilst the other was a self-referral from Facebook, a "Christian" who was wanting to come to a Church. They would miss out on teaching them face-to-face. 

Re the missionaries getting ready to leave, one is meant to be heading home to Queensland on 15th Dec, whilst the other is due to head home to the Philippines on 8th Dec. They were unsure how this lockdown would affect them, but the concern was they may not be allowed to leave as they were in a "hotspot" and would therefore miss getting home for Christmas.  Zone Conference had been held the previous Friday, and those missionaries had given their "farewell" testimonies at the meeting. Now they were unsure if they'd be leaving.

Elder East did also mention that he wasn't sure how lockdown would affect their phone usage. Missionaries normally have a 30GB data allowance on their phone each month, however, Elder East currently only has 2GB/month at the moment. He'll have to be judicious with his phone usage.

The rest of the time was catching Elder East up with happenings at home, as well as encouraging him to see if he could get the packages waiting for him at the Mission Office. We'd sent through 2 packages last week to the mission office for him, and the tracking said that they'd been delivered. We figured they'd be handy for him to have during lockdown.

I'll also note that Elder Tukukino did happen to poke his head in for a quick hello and chat to us as well.

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.

Transfer Photos - 2nd August 2020

The AAM blog put up a number of posts with photos about the transfers that just occurred. I went through and pulled out a couple of photos that included Elder East, which are shown below.

The first image is of the announcement of transfers via Zoom. Play spot the Elder East.

The next two are from the transfers day itself.

President Marquis commented that as of this transfer there are now only 47 missionaries left in the mission (13 Sisters, 34 Elders). Of those, 7 are non-proselyting "member" missionaries, waiting on the next repatriation flight to Tonga. A side effect of the pandemic.