Zone Leader

Dear Brother and Sister Maxfield,

 It is a pleasure to inform you that we have assigned your son, Elder Maxfield, to serve as a Zone Leader in the Madrid Este Zone. He will work closely with another Zone Leader. This calling carries with it many of the same duties as a District Leader; setting an example for the other missionaries through his study of the scriptures and the gospel, obedience, hard work, proselyting skills and other aspects of missionary work. Along with these duties, he will be given some additional responsibilities such as: teaching missionaries in the Zone through companion exchanges, visiting District Meetings, giving presentations in Zone Conferences and in Zone Training Meetings. He will also interview baptismal candidates, who have been taught by the District Leaders in his Zone.

The Assistants to the President and I are responsible for training the Zone Leaders in monthly councils. They will in turn train the members of their Zone. These responsibilities are in addition to his regular proselyting duties. We have confidence in your son, and know that he will grow and develop, and influence those around him as he serves in this capacity. We enjoy working with such a fine Elder in this great work.

 

Our best wishes to you,



President Kevin B. Pack

Spain Madrid Mission

Week 60 - Transfers and a new companion

Not much new this week, and my computer's being used so it'll be a
short, iPad-typed email. The Canada Dry in one of those pictures just
about made my companion's day. Great P-day last week, an excellent end
to the transfer.

Well. I had to say good bye to Elder Aussant this morning - he's
headed next door to Torrejon/Coslada. Super cool, he'll have a ward,
but be proselyting in another nipeighborhood that has no missionaries
- a commuting Elder. For my part, I'm getting Elder Wagner, from
Colorado. He's got about 5 months in the mission and he's coming from
Elder Maughn, my MTC buddy. We're looking at good things happening.

Elder Weiss got transferred to the office! He'll be in charge of
residency for all the missionaries, including myself cause I'm still
nice and illegal.... Lovely. But it's super cool to see my buddy I
trained getting opportunities like training and being in the office!
And I'll get to see him too at the mission Leadership council next
week. More on that when it occurs.

Well, we'll see about what happens this week and I'll tell you all
about it. These machines are just the worst for typing. Sorry about
the email's length. The work is true. The Lord calls his workers and
He knows where we are and what we need.

Love, Elder Maxfield.

Week 59 - Jesus the investigator - a lesson in patience

That´s right, this is the last week in the transfer... only 5 weeks ago I said good-bye to Oviedo. Well we had a great week. A couple random stories:

This week we had pizza nachos - an abomination designed to trap the unsuspecting. Imagine a very mediocre pizza with regular tortilla chips sprinkled around the edges and a bowl cooked into the middle of the dough with ballpark nacho cheese melted in the middle. It´s a pizza you can dip! And then Elder Aussant decided the best side dish would be.... French Fries. So it was pizza-nachos-frenchfries-grape soda lunch while listening to a Worldswide Leadership Conference on how to work with the Ward Council. But anyways, the whole dish was exactly what I said - an abomination.

Zone Leader Elder Nash, who was in the Islands with me came to the piso this morning for a piso check and we passed with "Excelente - 4/5". The leaders do it now, instead of the Matrimony missionary couples. We got more cleaning in the half hour that he was late than in the entire week before. I love piso inspections. Have you cleaned this toilet in the last six weeks? When was the last time this counter got wiped off? Dusting? HAH. Missionaries destroy apartments, even though I´m trying my hardest not to. We have very, very structured time and anything free I use dealing with the district´s latest crisis. 

We taught a lesson to Jesus last night about loving your neighbor. Well, originally the lesson was going to be about Jesus´ earthly ministry and the Apostacy, but he lost it when we told him to love your neighbor. 

"Well what if my neighbor´s a jerk? It´s impossible to love people like my neighbors. They play their music loud and are just all around annoying." 

"Well we can still try to love them. And if we ask God to help us develop charity, the pure love of Christ, we´ll realize that they are children of God as well."

"Bah. Responding like that never pays off. You end up appeasing like what happened with Hitler or even worse, you end up like Jesus - crucified."

And that was when I blew my top. I was ready to let him have it Elder Maxfield debate-style when I stopped, took a deep breath, and gave the time to Elder Aussant and Elder Schwartz. I calmed down and was able to love Jesus a little more. This guy never, ever progresses - but I´ve learned a lot about the gospel just by trying to teach it to someone so obstinate. We bear a lot of testimony, and that helps mine grow. 

Today we got a once-in-a-lifetime P-Day moved to Tuesday to go see some SUPER cool stuff. Not sure if I´ll get the pictures on, but we saw Roman ruins from about 50 AD and after we´re done writing we´ll be headed to see Miguel Cervantes´ old home and the Alcalá archaeological museum. I´ve seen cool museums in the past, but let´s be real - known history from America (excluding the Book of Mormon) pales in comparision to what they´ve dug up over here. I´m really happy Elder Aussant is as big of a nerd as I am.

The Sister Training Leaders chewed me out because their investigator failed the baptismal interview. Apparantly their faith in my ability to receive revelation about the man´s progress was contingent upon his passing the interview.... Vaya headache. 

We had a great experience on Sunday - an investigator came to church! Her name is Maria and she works interna - which means 24/7 living in the house of an old Spanish woman and taking care of her every need. And the elderly woman hates leaving the house and being with people, but for Maria to leave the house and come to church she needs to bring Consolación with her. Now you see why it´s a problem. But they both got up, found a ride, came to church, BROUGHT AN INTERESTED AMIGO, and the elderly woman loved it! I found her after church just hanging out with the other semi-lucid relief society sisters, chatting about Spain and tortillas and the crisis. Completely comfortable. I´m really grateful to the Lord for making that happen. 

We got a reference from the bishop to go visit a menos activa who was assigned to the sisters - but they haven´t seen her in four months and kinda gave up. Understandable - our time is precious. But, we found her on the first try, and on the second, and her husband is interested in coming back to church! She´s from Nagasaki, so I told her how much Emily loved Japan. Always a good "in". I can´t tell you how many people I´ve struck a chord with because my dad was in Trujillo around 1990. Just throw in "Inka Cola" "Kui" "Montón de arroz" and boom - instant friendship. 

That´s a brief sketch of the week. Life is good, I am healthy, and the Lord blesses his missionaries. He really does communicate to us. 

Elder Maxfield

Week 58 - Sr. Missionaries, Temples, and Keepin' it real

We had a great week this week! I am one of the luckiest missionaries alive - I have spent thus far the entire mission with Senior couples right around. The ones living here in Alcalá are Elder and Sister Schwartz. They made us an excellent dinner on Sunday, and we always ask them about their work. They´re Family Search missionaries, spending time in old Spanish archives taking pictures of old books for people´s reasearch. How cool is that? Tonight we´re taking Elder Schwartz to a lesson in English, because he doesn´t speak any Spanish, and he´s going to talk about family history. I´m really excited. We talked about the eldery in the church on Sunday, and President Benson really had a point -  we can learn a lot from our Grandmas and Grandpas. If only I had more time to write them letters...

Not sure if I mentioned this already, but we had an interesting schedule change a few weeks ago. We leave piso an hour earlier and do comp study during MedioDía, which is tough because we hardly have mediodía at all anyways. Makes for an even more overall feeling of being tired - a tough schedule with 10 miles of walking per day, and then we take away the hour we had for dinner. It´s beginning to take its toll :)

We had two intercambios last week, which just made the whole week fly by. One of our miracles came from my second day here in Alcalá, when we accidentally found a menos activa who hadn´t been to church in years. Well, we have now had a couple of great lessons and then her 18 year old daughter went to the JAS activity and had a great time! We´re feeling good about the member work because now the members aren´t just involved - they´re committed to the salvation of these people and won´t give up if things don´t go well. That´s a problem I´ve seen a lot, just a lack of persistence and giving up on people who don´t progress the way we want. What a pity to think so blindly, as the bishop would say. (And yes, he woke us up 30m early this morning with a text saying, "Buenos días, campeones.")

We had a great district meeting on Wednesday last week, and we´ve got a great zone training coming up. And then, we´ve got the TEMPLE!! That´s right, for the first time in a year, I´ll be going to do a temple session. 10 days. And I´ve got some seriouls struggles with being a District Leader. My district is acting up, as I expected at the beginning of the transfer. I did my best to see them plainly at the beginning and some people really surprised me. They can do a lot without But some of the things I was told might happen, did happen. And that just causes a huge dolor de cabeza. I have learned a lot about relying on the Lord. I simply cannot solve these problems. But, as I look for what HE wants and what HE thinks, the revelatory answers just become bright and clear. I know that I can do a lot - I have. But I couldn´t do this without his help. The Atonement is REAL! And who would´ve thought I realized that working with other missionaries of all people? :) They´re not suppossed to be the ones giving me headaches.

Elder Stew.

P.S. Don´t read that like I´m depressed or cynical or angry. I´m doing great. Just frustrated every once in a while. 

At Zone Conference

Week 57 - Life is good - Good Comp, Great Bishop, Good Investigator, Great Mission President's wife

t´s been a great week! 

I gotta start out with this - Obispo. He just gets better and better. We have an excellent relationship with him, and twice this week he woke us up with text messages saying, "Buenos dias, campeones" and "Animo con el día". It´s good to know that Obispo will back us up, because he´s such a huge part of the ward. Also it´s good to have him around because the hermanas seem to be at our throats these last couple days. More on that if it becomes necessary. I´m doing my best to be a good leader, but it´s tough work. Seriously exhausting some days. 

This week we had an interesting lesson with a man named Jesus. He´s an old spaniard and, like many, makes agonizingly slow progress. He faithfully reads and prays and comes to FHE, but getting him to change 30-year old habits is like hammering nails with a pumpkin. (Joseph Smith made a smiliar comparison, and I thought it was great.) The other day we spent an hour teaching about prayer. Firstly, I had a GREAT experience testifying about this. I´m haven´t always been the best pray-er, and I never seem to get answers to my prayers like anyone else I read about or meet. But, as we taught the lesson, I really felt the spirit and need for constantly improving our personal prayers from one phrase from a talk. "If you were to record your personal prayers, what would they say about your relationship with your Father?" I thought about that. The whole purpose of life is to "know the only true God and Jesus Christ", and we do that through prayer. We realized Jesus´ progression would be improved if he understood who God was a little better. 

Sometimes I´ve had it up to here with this guy, and this time topped everything. About halfway through the lesson, he goes, "About 3 months ago, I decided that an improvised prayer was too hard. So I wrote down a prayer with the most important things, and that´s what I always use. And that´s better than your way, because this way I hit everything and I don´t struggle for lack of words or ideas." We teach this lesson in English, which is really tough for me (I´ve actually started praying for the gift of tongues in my own language now..) and so sometimes my words are super fuerte cause Spanish is just different. I said, "Jesus, you are missing the entire point of prayer." And we explained how prayer is a conversation, and he goes, "You realize, in a conversation there´s two parts. Prayer is only one man talking." Oh, that comment made my day. It was a good lesson, but we´ll see if nos hizo caso. 

In other news, we had an EXCELLENT Zone Conference last week. Sister Pack is a true Southern woman, and she is just solid. I´ve decided to start calling her the "Presidenta" because she just knows what´s up. She gave a great message about being a "full-purpose missionary" - that is, understanding the BIG picture and working towards it. I´ve noticed that it´s easy to get bogged down in the details, but she was looking for us to step up. Oh, and then we finished off watching "Conocer a Los Mormones". Excellent.

We also had an intercambio, I was with Elder Peña de Ilo, Peru. (Ben´s mission). He´s a convert of two years now and he´s been on his mission for one of those. My favorite part was when we went to the Ecuadorian member´s house and as the conversation died down, I looked at Elder Peña and then the member and said, "So.... what do the Ecuadorians think of the Peruvians?" And he says, looking straight at Elder Peña, "Son las róbatierras. Y tambien, una vez intenté pedir un bocadillo de gallina, pero me dijeron que no se come carne peruana." And then the Chileans and Argentines in the group started in and we just had an excellent Latin American discussion. "Son todos contra Chile!" "¡¿Que va?! Son todos contra Peru!" Great dinner :)

The work is going great. I am so lucky to be here, and I´m happy with all my progression. What Elder Bednar said is true - A little more weight on the back makes for more spiritual traction. (Actually, we´re sharing that with Jesus tonight.) I´m learning a lot, BECAUSE OF (not despite) the stress of what imperfect, learning people sometimes do. My companion is such a great worker and we do great in all we do. We had really no period of adjusting beyond day 1 - we just fell into rythym and things are getting done. I love working with Elder Aussant. This work is true, and I am one lucky guy.

Elder Stew

Week 56 - August 31 - typing on an ipad - short letter

We usually use the computers, but short email because I'm on the iPad
today. I can't thumb peck  long emails on these things. They turn out
like that letter dad dictated to me.

As for the new comp, he is great. He is a great worker. He's from
Canada, which makes my fifth companion not from Utah. He's really
diligent, which is always wonderful to have - if there's anything
taxing, it's inconsistency. We're having a lot of success here, and
we're really trying to prep the area because we both get the feeling
some big changes are headed next transfer, and we want the area to be
stable.

We met lots of members last week, which was really fun. In this ward
is a stake patriarch, several born-in-the church RMs, and a former
Seventy. Very different from my last two branches. The bishop even
quoted PME to us the other day! We randomly met a woman who had been
less active for years thanks to her husband our first week here. And
Saturday, by a passing-by miracle, we found her again! She is going
through a really hard time and understood that the church could give
her and her kids some stability, because her life is all up in the air
right now as she's divorcing her husband. Instead of something I
usually do, Elder Aussant helped me to just listen a little more and
be a little less fuerte in the commitment invitation. And they
committed to come to church after a little, and they came! And we
followed obispo's excellent instructions and made them to sit up
front, far away from where the apostate excommunicated man sits. And
the great thing about this ward is that there was a strong YW group
who could help the young daughter feel welcome! What an excellent way
to start off. I see serious things happening!

More stuff occurred, but it seriously takes forever to type. Know
we're happy, healthy, working hard, building testimony, and declaring
repentance.

Elder Stew.

Week 55 - August 24 - Wow! A Real church building with a functioning Bishopric and Elder's Quorum

Is GREAT! It´s very different, but I love it. 

First big difference. THERE´S A REAL LIFE CHAPEL! I haven´t seen one of those for a year. Pictures coming. It´s one of the oldest church buildings in all of Spain, because apparently there was an American air base once upon a time. In Telde and Oviedo, we were in little bajos, and now there´s a parking lot and futbol field. In church on Sunday there were nearly 100 people! And a pianist who wasn´t a missionary and a bishopric! With functioning counselors! The only problem is to learn everyone´s name, and I´ve decided to give myself 3 more weeks to do it. On Sunday we filled up about 3/4 of the ward. And in Spain, the whole country takes the month of August off. Anything that isn´t a convenience store or a restaurant is closed - mechanics, post offices (half day), hardware stores, all non-essential things are shut down until the country wakes up again. This means that, come September, those empty seats are going to fill by themselves and I´ll have to learn everyone´s name again. 

On Sunday, the Bishop (more on him in a sec) got up and said, "We will now hear from the new missionaries in our ward. They can come up and introduce themselves now." With about 30seconds notice, I got up while the hermanas stay seated (I got chivalry comments later on:) What´s great about studying the gospel every day is that I had no lack of ammunition - it was just odd to be standing in front of what was a large group of people. I shared Moroni 10:4-5 and Ether 4:11 In my old areas, I could count endowed members on my two hands - here, we had a high priests group AND an Elders´ quorum. In my old areas, the Branch Presidents had 2 and 11 years of activity in the church. Here, there was an entire bishopric of men who had been serving in priesthood leadership positions for their entire lives. Not a good or a bad thing - just a wild change. 

The bishop here is a spiritual giant. Day 1 he looked at me and said, "Thank you for sharing such nice scriptures about the Book of Mormon - we needed that. Your first job here is to meet me. Why haven´t you done that yet?" I told him that he had stolen my chance, and we had all the missionaries in for a nice talk. He told us that he was determined to give us the most work we could possibly imagine - that it would be coming out of our ears (a saying I didn´t know translated into Spanish.) He promised meetings and references and my favorite part was that he said, "And if I don´t like your work or if I don´t like how prepared your investigators are, I´ll tell you. I once told a missionary in all seriousness, "Tengo ganas de verte ir." " He really expects a lot of us and expects to work a lot with us, which is nice because I do not like working independant of the ward one bit. He´s also really funny - Being Valenciano, he speaks spanish really fast and pretty clear, and working in the MTC, he tries to make himself very expressive in his gestures and language. I met him there and he was one of the first people I could understand. 

Well, that´s all for the week. Pictures coming if the Ipad decides to work.

Love, Elder Stew

Stewart with Elder Dussant

Stewart's a Grandpa