Week 25, Jan 26 - Walking and Knocking

Hey hello! Telde is still Telde. Although, it´s gotten really really cold recently. The temperature, which is USUALLY a nice, balmy 72, suddenly dropped to a horrid and frigid 70. The island is in a crisis. 

We had some really cool experiences this week. We have been doing a lot of door knocking and a lot of contacting. One guy slammed the door so fast he locked his dog out. But we had one really cool lesson. One of our investigators, Fran, has LOADS of questions about more iffy doctrine - things like the law of chastity and coffee. He said that we´re super strange and that coffee, "brightens the world and makes me feel good." (Sidenote - marijuana smokers I´ve met have used his exact words. Trust God, folks.) He said, "The world says it´s fine. So therefore it is." And then my companion bore a beautiful testimony about how he knew that Joseph Smith was a prophet - and that means this is true. And then I shared how "God´s ways are higher than ours" (Isiah 50-someting...) and I trusted in the Lord more than I trusted in the world. The lesson ended in Fran, for the first time I´ve seen, positively and completely accepting a commitment. He said that he would completely drop coffee to show God he was ready for an answer, but he wasn´t sure if he could make it to church. (typical.) AND THEN HE SHOWED UP. That was an answer to some very fervent prayers - now we just need to give him a date.

Last week, for P-day, we went to the mall. (Companion´s idea... It was so-so.) But I did find some cheap, not bad looking and durable ties. 1€ each. So naturally I bought 15. And this week, we went to play soccer in Las Palmas with all 10 missionaries on the island. Elder Bartholomew (Bart), who was with me in the CCM, is now in the islands! We had a lot of fun in the CCM, and now I get to see him again, so that´s pretty cool. We let some onlookers join in, including one guy who played while smoking. Good times. I played using my Torres jersey I got for christmas (Thanks Dad.)

We teach English classes, which are VERY fun. It´s a great way to introduce people to Mormons, cause members come, and they see we don´t have horns or tails. We teach a basic class, where we sing the alphabet song and I play the piano (Maren, Emma, Squid - continue with the piano. It´s a useful skill that now I have to teach myself in the mission. How do you even read the bass clef anyways.... Here, the ward pianists are a 15 year old girl, a 12 year old girl, and a 10 year old girl. Sound familiar?) In the intermediate class, we teach things like the English imperfect and pronunciatation. And in the advanced class, the students present opinions and defend themselves on topics like "Who would win in a fight - Pirates or Ninjas?" We have a very good time, and there´s two families who come who have (cross your fingers) some potential! No lessons yet, but 

I´m not sure what else to say without being boring. We do a lot of finding because we haven´t gotten any references. So we wander streets and knock doors. And finally we found one person. (oh. also everyone is out of town.) A family, YES! And they said no, and we asked if they could at least visit this website and the wife responded like a wookiee, almost yelling "NO TENEMOS TIEMPO NI GANAS." (Insert appropriate Chewbacca noise.) I am very grateful for my excellent shoes and excellent socks, because I think we easily do 10 miles a day. IT´S AWESOME!

I think I´ll close by saying I love it here! I´ll bet, the way transfers work out, I´ve only got February and then I leave March 2nd, so I´m definitely trying to make the most of it. 

Hasta luego!

Elder Stew.

Week 24, Jan 19 - Pondering the Old Testament

Well the news is in - I´m staying the entire winter in a place that doesn´t know winter. The Lord really does bless His missionaries. In fact, my whole district stayed. I don´t have a whole lot of time to write this week, because we´re working on the piso - we´ve got some IKEA furniture to build. The other stuff broke because missionaries are not nice to appartments - it´s a miracle that any landlord ever joined the church. I want everybody to know that I am healthy and happy here in Telde - and that life as a missionary is awesome.

I decided to start the Old Testament. I just finished Deuteronomy. And I´m really glad you taught Gospel Doctrine and that we talked about it sometimes because I see SO many cool things in that very confusing Mosaic law.  I highlighted every time it said, "A male without blemish" for obvious reasons. And then you find verses like Joshua 7:10 that you can tell your companion to look up when he´s napping instead of doing something productive. And, I found this little nugget this morning. Read what Moses says to give courage to Joshua. (Last couple chapters of Deuterononmy). And then you read what Jehovah says to give courage to Joshua. (Joshua ch. 1) And then (this is where I applied it) realize that Jehovah´s words aren´t really His - they´re Moses´. (of course, they could be His that He gave to Moses, but that´s another thing.) 

I see it as Jehovah quoting Moses. And He´s speaking peace to Joshua´s soul in a way that made for some cool verses. But even more than that - He´s speaking peace to Joshua´s soul in a way that, to Joshua, means A LOT. He´s speaking peace to Joshua in a way that only Joshua would recognize as significant. And really, that´s what He does for all of us. He talks to all of us in ways that other people might perceive as, "Oh, that´s pretty cool." But for us, it means the world. 

Love,

Elder Stew

Week 23, Jan 12 - Christmas Comes and other Stewart Fun

Christmas Finally Arrives, January 8, 2015

Friendly Dog Attach

Nose in a map, wonder who he inherited that from?

No Idea #1?

Practicing for his pose on stage I suppose

Thumbs up #1

Thumbs up #2

No idea #2?

Bugs Bunny pealing a prickly pear

Thumbs Up #3

Week 23, Jan 12 - Pictures, Telde Zone, Companion (Elder Norrell)

He can sing?

Week 23, Jan 12 - Pictures Food

Goofy Spanish Holiday Pastry & Crownd

Week 23, Jan 23 - Pictures of Telde, the dessert, the beach, the mountains, the green

Week 23, Jan 12 - Los Reyes Magos

Well it was another week here in paradise. Dad, I want you to know that I started off today in my nice, first world shower with almost uncomfortably hot water. And then a cockroach fell on my head and I had to kill it with a spoon while naked.

This week started off with a nice four days of tri-panionship. Elder Sarango is Zone Leader, and he goes to Zone Meeting once a month. These tri-panionship days have happened 4 times now, but this was the first time with Elder Norrell and Elder Nash. Elder Sarango leaves, we stay and spend part of our time in Telde and part in Vecindario while he goes to Madrid and then to another island for intercambios. We stayed in Telde for Monday, with nobody to meet with and EVERYBODY on the streets, because it was the day before Reyes. And nobody wanted to talk, because they wanted to watch the parade or go shopping. We were very tempted, being in tri-panionship, to go and buy Reyes Magos costumes and see if we got more contacts, but that´s against the rules. Tuesday was very similar, because everyone was home and sleeping and forgetting the whole reason the Reyes Magos existed. So not a whole lot of teaching happened in Telde this past week. 

But I think I loaded up some pictures of what happened Tuesday night... We bought a Roscón de Reyes, the traditional food of January 6th. It´s a big giant sweet bread doughnut with nata on the inside and prizes - the guy who gets the haba (some sort of nut) has to pay, and the guy who gets the king "será coronado con gran alegría". I didn´t get either. Kinda like Christmas cake Russian Roulette. And we bought one made for 8-10 people and ate the whole thing. My companion probably ate 45% of the Roscón, and we all regretted it when we next needed to use the toilet. 

At Zone Meeting, we found out that our new Mission Presidents would be the Packs, from Mississippi. They´ll get here in July, a little before my halfway mark.We alsofinished this year with 496 baptisms in the mission, 4 away from our goal.... We were very close. President Jackson is looking through all the paperwork to see if he found any that were overlooked. We also have transfers this upcoming week. I don´t think I´ll leave, but it´s a definite possibility. I shouldn´t be saying that I want to stay, but.... I really like it here. And there´s so much more stuff to do. 

Our investigator, Juan, decided the other day to give us Christmas gifts. He gave us shoe polish, cologne, and a tie. Obviously we have a bad shoes, bad smell, and bad taste in ties. I was actually really surprised to see someone non mormon know EXACTLY what missionaries can use. The only thing he forgot was peanut butter. 

Well that´s it for the week! Today we´re headed to knock a building with 114 apartments, a size unheard of here in Telde. Sadly, there will probably be a couple rejections. But that is just fine - D&C 84:85 says "Iré delante de vuestra faz. Estaré a vuestra diestra y a vuestra siniestra, y mi Espíritu estará en vuestro corazón, y mis ángeles alrededor de vosotros, para sosteneros." Every missionary´s favorite scripture - and I´ll add that sometimes He´s buoying us up through loving family and friends that have sent M&Ms, Peanut butter, Reeses, ties, cards, letters, notes, and lots of other amazing American christmas presents that makes missionaries work with a little spring in their step. 

Love, Elder Stew.

Week 22, Jan 5 - And the work continues

Not much has happened in the last week. Holidays aren´t very nice to missionary work, because people never remember the Christ in Christmas - and as a result are obsessed with themselves and buying and sales and parties and have way too much prisa to talk with us. We´ve spent a lot of time contacting. But a couple cool things have happened:

We took directions from two midgets, which later turned out to be incorrect.

A crazy Cuban woman got our phone number (which isn´t very hard - we give it to everyone) and now she keeps calling us and yelling about how she has our book and then . .  . I´m not sure. Not even the native speakers understand her. She has called from 3 different phone numbers trying to get in contact with us, every time yelling frantically and unintelligably

We´ve contacted several Nigerians, which is always fun because they have deep voices and cool accents and really, REALLY spicy food (Elder Norrell got some serious acid reflex/heartburn). But then you have to learn how to give a lesson in English, and THAT is hard - I have to talk about the gospel only in Spanish or Spanglish now, which I didn´t think would happen. 

In relation to a menos activo who said continuosly he´d come to church but never did, the ward mission leader told us, "Ese hombre . . tiene más palabras y menos acción que un diccionario." That was funny. 

Juan (more on him later) came to an English class wanting to learn how to pronounce some words for a song he´s been learning. And, upon realizing that Elder Norrell has a very deep voice, he decided that for English class they´d sing together. (I´m very grateful Juan was our only student that night.) Long story short, now I can´t get Elvis Presley´s "Can´t help falling in love" out of my head. 

The ward mission leader was released, put back in as Elders quorum president, and now we have counselors in the Branch Presidency for the first time in two years! But also no ward mission leader for the forseeable future. In a branch of 40 attending members, there´s not a lot of priesthood leadership. Both the Branch President and one of his counselors have only been active for 2ish years. We´re very, very close to an apostasy - thank heavens for the Manual. Apparently it used to be worse - things like the Branch President paying members, using tithing and fast offerings, so that they´d come to church on Sundays. Another Mission Leader quote - "Casi nadie sabe la locura que era ésta rama."

We´ve signed up more than 25 people for English class . . more stories on that when it starts. 

We met someone named William Guerras, who told us how evil religion was for causing wars, and how we were just nutcases trying convert everyone and his 20 dollars per month paid to the UN did more than all of us put together. How ironic. 

We have a progressing investigator named Juan - his brother is a menos activo and really, Juan´s been the only real member reference we´ve gotten. He´s been coming to church for the past 2 months and yesterday, he shared in the Principios de Evangelio class (taught by Hermana Doli, the Stake President´s maquina wife) that he´s pretty sure that joining the church is in his future - and we´re going to try and give him a fecha this coiming Friday! We´ve tried in the past, but always gotten lukewarm answers - a couple prayers from home sure couldn´t hurt - It´s sure not going to be us that convinces him he wants to be baptized.

And, for a spiritual thought, I challenge everyone who reads this letter to find a copy of "Remember Lot´s Wife" by Elder Holland. I think it´s a BYU speech because that´s what my copy says, but I have no idea what that means. I assume if you google it you´ll find it. It´s a great talk to read during January. 

Love, Elder Maxfield

P.S. Thank you in advance for any mail/packages that were sent - It all comes this week on Thursday.