Every day is different but at the same time just like the day before. All four of us live in the same piso (THAT is a party) and we go to the gym, have breakfast, study, and then head over to the office. Elder Weiss is the only one with a European Driver´s license, so he´s the one driving around Madrid and parallel parking EVERYWHERE. It´s pretty scary. Nobody in this entire country knows how to drive. We´ve almost been in three or four accidents because of completely oblivious drivers. We jam out to MoTab and EFY music as we get fat and white in the office. I´ve been here for two weeks, and I think I´ve walked less than in one day in Alcalá. Let´s see. The three minutes from the piso to the car. Parking, to the elevator, to the office, work til 6, to the car, to the lessons, home. Maybe 1km all day? Yep. Fat and white Elder Maxfield will be the one coming back to America.
As for the day-to-day stuff. Well, I talk to Oscar about all the cars. (you´ll never guess which missionaries crash the cars the most - the APs. Their car is so scratched up that day 1 I was told to only repair it when absolutely necessary.) I call Spain´s biggest water, light, and gas companies to set up what I call direct-robbing services. I´m not sure if it´s a thing in America, but here it´s common practice to sign a paper giving access to the Power guys to suck money out of your account without your consent every time. Like, instead of billpay, where I say direct deposit on this day - they just suck it out and send you a bill later saying"you paid this much. have a great day!" The other day I whipped out a bill that said, "Three weeks ago we took from you 3,000€ for gas. Buenos Días!" And there´s basically no way to do anything but just eat it... oh well. Man, these emails are going to start getting boring.
We´re also starting a practice called the Hold List. I call it the Blacklist. If you make an oficinista mad by not doing what he asks (or in my case, not cleaning your apartments. In Elder Weiss´case, not sending him your residency info), we cut off your money until you do what we want. People don´t send in Baptismal Records? Stop all their cash. Folks react much quicker to a lack of money than a lack of home teachers or calling for their new convert..... As Grandma Frazier would say, "Stupid Missionary."
Our ward here is also amazing. They all have a serious desire to work. The bishop, the ward mission leader, and the Elders´ Quorum President are all brand new and want to see success. That´s really nice to have. Elder Weiss and I went to go deliver a cake as a favor the other night, and just as a surprise the members said, "No, stay and share it with us." Really just good people. We celebrated a member´s birthday the other day - she´s been baptized since the 70s and is a temple worker pretty much every day. I love seeing people like that.
OH! The other week, we had stake conference. It was excellent. And guess who just happened to show up? All my friends from the Canary Islands!! I thought for sure I´d never see them ever again, and there they were. What made it cooler - they recognized me. My name not so much, (they all called me Más Fiel, which means most faithful, cause Maxfield was just too hard.) but they all said, holy cow, and remembered the time I had spent in Telde. Pte. Deniz, Pte. Gonzalez, Manuel Leon, Doli, everyone´s kids - it was so cool. The only one missing was Carlos Castro, the Uruguayan mission leader.
We don´t have hardly any inverstigators, so that´s no fun. But I made some cool spreadsheets, so I guess that´s also nice. We say in the office that maybe your purpose is not, "invite others to come unto Christ" but rather "Do x, y, z, etc. SO THAT everyone else can invite others to come unto Christ."
Elder Maxfield
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