Serving In Spain

Monday, January 12, 2015

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.

Monday, January 5, 2015

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.

Monday, December 29, 2014

Week 21, Dec 29 - The Purple Lady

Well, here´s the weekly letter - it definitely feels more natural communicating like this instead of through skype. It was defenitely weird to see all of you instead of just read. But it was so cool! All the missionaries were definitely a little homesick afterwords, including me. But that changed after a good solid night of contacting and getting rejected every single time :) It´s funny - Contacting is that activity that seems to get most missionaries down about life - but I always feel really good about it. In fact, after most boring meetings (don´t tell anyone I said that - but they do exist) I am really, really excited to go street contacting. We don´t have a lot of success during the holidays - the whole country seems to be infected with a dangerous deadly disease called "prisa". And here, that´ll last at least until the 6th, because Christmas starts on the noche buena (Christmas eve) continues through the 26th, then New Years Eve and New Years, and then Reyes Magos on the 6th. I know I might be a Spanish scrooge, but I do NOT like Reyes Magos - it has seriously gotten in the way of proselyting.

There´s not much that´s happened since we talked last - Except for one experience. We were visiting menos activos with Christmas letters around one of the sketchier parts of town called Las Remudas. We knocked a door, expecting just to drop off the letter, and a woman probably Grandma Maxfield´s age opened the door. Instead of just asking for the letter and calling it good, she invited us in. First, she was wearing all purple. Like those lady jackets and pant suits - all purple. Purple earrings. Purple necklace. Purple shirt underneath the lady purple pant suit. Then we walked in. ALL OF THE WALLS WERE PURPLE. And the rug was purple. And the Christmas tree was purple. And the Christmas decorations were purple themed. The dog was wearing a purple bow and collar. She offered us water and a pastry, served on purple dishes and the pastry had purple frosting. The couch was purple. The lightbulbs in the lamps were purple. The kitchen table was purple. Even the knife she used to cut the pastry was purple. There was modern art on the wall, the kind that Dad likes with the simple squares and lines - and they were differing shades of purple. And the dog´s name was violet. (al final, she didn´t really want us there - just too nice to tell us to leave. She wouldn´t even let us share He is the Gift, and EVERYONE likes that. Sad, because she really liked the church when she was involved.)

Well, I´ll take this little time I´ve got left to say that I am grateful for Christmas - it is the best time to reflect upon what we´re giving away as missionaries - the hope that comes from Jesus Christ.

Adios, hasta Enero 2015!

Elder Stewart Maxfield.