Week 84 - Stewart the Landlord

Last week! And the week before that - Living in the office is definitely interesting. 

Thanks to the almost continual movement, we haven´t done much preaching-wise. But, we did get a new companion two mondays ago. His name is Elder Doxey, and he´s here to replace Elder Dugan. He´s my new desk-mate, and he´s a good friend. He´s fun to have around. 

Two weeks ago, as we were planning transfers, we got a notice that 4 missionaries would not be coming to the mission. It was very sad. And then, two days later, we got a notice that three of them would be coming in - AFTER we had planned everything. President came in and decided instead of trying new travel and companionships, he´d put all three of them in trios. My only part was trying to find beds for them - without letting their future companions know anything. Totally not a suspicious phone call when a day before transfers the oficinistas call wondering how many can fit in your piso. But it all worked out. Then we stayed up late planning things, got up early to take people to the airport, ate great food that Hermana Pack and Hermana Larsen gave us, and then fell down exhausted. AndWednesday morning I remembered that along with these changes, I´m district leader - and I had to plan a meeting on the fly. But it went great. We had an awesome discussion about who we are. It stemmed from a conversation I had with President during an interview. (That´s a fringe benefit of working in the office. We´re blessed to work with President a lot.) We were discussing the troubles a certain missionary was having when he commented, "I think the root of the problem is that this missionary just doesn´t know who he is. If he really understood his calling and what the Lord had called him to do, this wouldn´t be a problem." How true that is. Elder Peterson asked in the meeting why we didn´t explain the how - the process, the tricks and tools. That´s important, but the focus of our meeting was that when we actually truly understand who we are, then tricks don´t matter, because "your confidence [waxes] strong before the Lord". 

Anywho, back to transfers (I know that´s the most interesting part of my week). I spent a good chunk of time creating an excellent way to check if apartments have room - it involves an excel document with key data info of ALL the apartments linked back to one big report. The idea is that, using this, I can quickly make reports to President about which pisos could expand and include other missionaries.  I was very pleased with myself until Elder Regehr commented that I did something similar (but not nearly as easy) the transfer before - and President had looked at it, studied it - and put missionaries in apartments that were NOT on my list. I learned that although information leads to inspiriation, revelation does not limit itself to what a report says. 

Not much else to report. We´ve got one landlord calling his lawyers, trying to force us to do needless repairs to an apartment, another who refuses to put his information in the church system even though it´s how he´ll get paid, and some missionaries who, while wrestling, broke the sink off the wall. I don´t even want to know how. But, all is well.

Elder Maxfield

Week 83 - an excellent week; investigators and rental contracts

We have had a great week - which is nice to be able to say, because we´re entering to transfer week which is apparantly the worst time of our lives. What´s nice is that on late office nights Burger King will deliver to the office for no extra charge until all hours of the night :)

I´ll start off this email with my favorite (and only...) proselyting story of the week. We went to Manolo´s house to see if we could track down his inactive, unemployed son. Manolo is this sweet old man who´s calling is ward missionary and who just hangs out with the missionaries ALL DAY. We call him and say, "Manolo, what are you doing?"

"Well I´m just at home."

"Right, but what are  you doing?"

"Waiting for some missionaries to call me."

So we were at his house when his son comes out and says, "I have questions that no missionaries can ever answer, and that´s why I won´t come to church." I was expecting something like polygamy or weird false stories about Joseph Smith, but he said - "Why is there so much bad in the world? Why don´t I have a job? Why can you say God is my Father when my life is so bad? A real father doesn´t let his children suffer." I was taken aback, not because the questions were difficult but because they were so textbook - I mean, every missionary learns the stock responses to questions like these. Babies without baptism? Moroni 8. Christ only loved the jews? 3 Nefi 11. Bad world? 2 Nefi 2. Right, it´s just so easy. 

But as we started talking, it was apparent that many APs and oficinistas (usually fairly good missionaries) had tried the same things and nothing. But as we talked, I had an idea, an idea so simple but that I had never tried before. And that´s why I loved this experience - because I know now what I didn´t know in the moment that it was a stroke of inspiriation from the Spirit. I said, "Are you a guy who likes to run?"

"Yeah."

"Ever run a race?"

"Yeah."

"Why?"

"I just wanted to say that I finished. I didn´t care about beating everyone else, I wanted to do something hard."

"So it wasn´t easy."

"Hombre, claro que no."

"That´s how this life is. It´s a race, and our Father wants us to finish. If he takes away the hurt, he also takes away the achievement. He wants you to finish the race - and when it gets so hard, He has given you a Savior to help you without taking away everything you´ve worked for. The world is tough - but it has to be so that you can finish and say you´ve done a hard thing."

Morea looked at me and said "You´re the first elder who´s been able to answer my questions." I know it was the Spirit who gave me those words. He didn´t come to church, and I don´t know if he will - but nothing feels greater than being a tool in the Lord´s hands to help one of his children.

In other news, my greatest challenge this last week was working with Spanish realtors. I wrote part of a lease in Spanish (THANKS NATE!!!!) and we´re working on getting an apartment in the Canary Islands for a couple who got to Spain on Saturday and the realtor STILL won´t give me anything! I´ve been promised that they can move in tomorrow, but it´s pretty stressful to say, "I´m on it, hopefully it´ll be ready" to President and be doubting on the inside whether or not it´ll actually happen. Uy. 

Well, that´s been my week. Excel sheets, great compainons, late nights, airport trips, and realtors...... 

The gospel is true.

Elder Maxfield

Week 82 - How to find time for everything? The reality of life.

This has been a pretty good week. I worked on most of the week trying to get a bunch of safety information for all the apartments, which meant calling all of them. A little tedious but I did get some cool responses:

"Hey Elder. Do you have a Carbon Monoxide detector"

"Uhhh, I don´t know."

"It´s a rectangle with a black lever and a test button? It might be on the wall near the floor or on the ground."

"Well I found a rectangle with a black lever... but there´s no button."

(Insert five minutes of frustration trying to figure out if we´re on the same page)

"Well, just send me a picture of whatever it is you´ve got and I´ll check."

Then I got a call a couple minutes later, "Remember that thing? Upon further investigation, I discovered it was the doorbell."

I also recieved a letter from the guys in charge of the cars. - "In the fourth quarter of 2015, 65% of accidents were preventable. The major cause of these accidents was ´hitting an object or another parked vehicle whilst moving slowly´". Which is why we back people up EVERY TIME. 

My only other novelty is just being sick the entire last week. I think it´s the office disease, but I´ve been told there´s no such thing. But what´s nice is just that I´ve been pounding Oranges and Sudafed and Ibuprofen so I feel a lot better. I bought myself a 3 kilo malla of oranges and life is good. 

As for investigators, it´s been a slow week there, as usual. This area needs a lot of work to get it back up on its feet, there´s just not the time to do that. We´re supposed to leave every day at six. But the amount of work and the changes that we´re going through to prep for one senior couple´s departure and another´s entrance. So we don´t have the time to either do our office work nor our proselyting perfectly - and I know that we could do at least one of them perfectly and the other one sub-perfectly, but that´s just not the way it is I guess. It´s like a story I read once about two missionaries in Germany. They decided to be PERFECTLY obedient to ALL of the rules - including standards of excellence, studies, even all the things you don´t usually think about. They whipped out their Manuals and an extra list of rules from President, and put it all together. And it didn´t work and it didn´t work until one of them tried a different route - and they discovered that it was completely possible to be perfectly obedient, provided that every day have 25 hours. I´ve decided to take it as a lesson to do my best and then just be content, even when my best just isn´t good enough. That is frustrating.

Church was nice this last Sunday. We have so many people every week that we have to transmit the sacrament to two other rooms. I did the translating for the Packs, which was interesting. I had to apologize for my spanglish every couple of minutes, but it went just fine. 

All in all it´s been a good week. The Book of Mormon is coming along well for the nosecuantos time, and I am feeling better. The church is true.

Elder Maxfield

Sheep Crossing

Stewart, Son, & Grandson

Week 81 - Fat and White

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

Week 80 - My New Life

So I´ve been transferred. Gas, water, light, cleaning them, fixing the sink when a wrestling match takes it off the wall, weird noises, bad neighborhoods, etc. That is my new life. When I was out there - in the real world - I used to make jokes about the mandatory "stupid pills" that they must be taking in the office..... And now Elder Weiss has informed me that it´s actually the rest of the mission that takes the stupid pill. AND HE´s RIGHT! I got a call the other day and the missionary was like, "I need a new piso. This place is not fit for human habitation."

"What´s the issue?"

"It´s just, it´s terrible. The windows are dirty, it smells bad... I just... it´s not ok. I need a new one."

"Is it clean?"

"...."

"When was the last time you cleaned?"

"Uh...."

"Clean your piso Elder. Then we can talk."

 

 

The last time I went to bed on time.... I don´t even remember. It must have been before transfers. I am having a great time, in part because I´m replacing Elder Larsen - that guy is a MACHINE. He just works and works and works and then finds better ways to work.

 

I also feel really, really good about my new companionship. In left to right on the picture I sent, it´s Elder Weiss, Elder Regehr, Elder Dugan, and then me. Weird assignement, new job, GREAT companions, fish-out-of-water feeling. Ever since I was trained, I´ve been in some sort of leadership position - leading the area, Senior comp, trainer, district leader, zone leader.... But now? I feel like a greenie all over again. It´s excellent. I am excited. Life is good. And there´s no need to publish that list of my leadership positions - it was just there to add backstory.

 

Elder Maxfield

Week 79 - Transfers

Well, I have now been given my last area in the mission: San Sebastián de los Reyes. I´ve been told this next assigment will last me the rest of my mission. It is about 30 minutes NW of Alcalá, and it´s in the same zone. It´s the area where President lives. My new companion is Elder Weiss, Elder Regehr, Elder Dugan. That´s right, three different companions. 

I´ll be working in the office. My new responsabilities are pisos, rent, cars, utilities, and everything in between. I´ll also serve as translator for Elder Young, a senior missionary who doesn´t speak a lick of Spanish. So if anyone breaks a window - that´s me. If anyone has a cold shower - I´ll be there. If you have a three-mile-an-hour sideswipe crash and total the car - Who ya gonna call? Me. I am going to get fat and white, sitting in front of a computer until7pm for the next six months. I´m not super sure how I feel about the assignment, but it´s what the Lord wants me to do. My P-day today was initiation - I´ll be replacing Elder Larsen, (from the canaries) who is NOT an 18-year old missionary and thus expects a lot more. My brain´s a little fried, so if this is all incoherent, let me know. I was also up until 2:30 last night packing, because I was in denail and didn´t even start until 11:00. Pretty good, right? Pack up your entire life in less than 4 hours. And, Elder Weiss came to pick me up in our sweet ride (cause now we have a car).

Elder Avila and I finished the week out well. He was, well, himself up until the last moment. This is going to be a very different dynamic than it was in Alcalá. I´m sad to go, but to be honest.... I figured I was leaving ever since the transfer started. It was hard to say goodbye to everyone- but it was nice to be able to say with surety, "I´ll be back in July." That ward treated me so well - I think we ought to go to church there if we can. 

I just re-read the email, and I seem a little negative about the new post - it´s not like that. I´m excited for the chance to learn a completely new skillset, with some of my good friends from the mission. I´ll also get to hang out with President, which is always fun. God seems to know exactly what we need, even if we´re too silly to realize it. He has a plan. 

Me.

Week 78 - Baby Steps in the Gospel

Sorry about last week's lack of a letter. It was a bit of a crazy
P-day and I just plumb forgot to do it. All I managed to get out was
regarding housing, and heaven knows THAT's boring. So here's a quick
sum-up of our last two weeks.

Last P-day we went to President's house to do interviews and to have a
BBQ. It was a lot of fun, but nothing was weirder than seeing
President in a sweatshirt and jeans. We did interviews in suits, and
then after he finished he said, "Alright, go put on your grubbies and
we're going to play tennis and barbecue." So we made burgers and it
was cool to just be able to talk with him and Hermana Pack. They are
great people, and they're doing a great job leading the mission.

Elder Ávila and I have been planning a super fun ward activity - we're
going to do a movie night of Meet the Mormons. There's gonna be food,
the movie, food.... Alright, so it's just normal. But this week, to
get everyone excited, we've been going to their houses and giving out
invitations - the personal touch (:  And then, we told them they had
to bring a friend. Those who don't bring friends, don't come. It was
fun to try and hit all the active members in a single day - and this
is my first area where that wasn't actually possible! On Tuesday we're
going to do the same recorrido, but to do some follow-up and remind
them that no friend-no entrance. While we were out knocking the doors
of the members, almost all of them gave us food. And one Romanian girl
started talking about the homeless people in the city, and then she
looked at us and said, "Oh! I almost forgot!" And then she ran inside
and got us some food. People think we're starving I guess....

One of my favorite lessons that we teach is with a Spanish guy named
Raul. He got baptized in June, and we're giving him the follow-up
lessons. We teach him twice a week like clockwork, and he is
progressing really well. Buuuut - he talks a whole lot. My companion
timed it once, and in our 1hr 5min lesson, he spoke for 1 hour. So
last week, for the first time, he blessed the sacrament! And then he
taught Elders Quorum. The first one went much better than the
second.... Have you ever been in one of those lessons that you are
just praying to have it end? It was funny because the members of the
class had to fight the teacher for speaking time... Oh it made me
laugh. I love Raul, and we're excited to see him keep doing stuff.
This weekend we're going to have his first Home Teaching
experience.... More on that when it comes. But for sure it will be
funny. It's great because he understands the gospel SO WELL- better
than most people. He's just a chatterbox.

Maria is another woman we're doing follow-up after her baptism. And
she got assigned  to give a talk and clean the church last week. But,
she takes care of an old lady 24/7, so both of those jobs are not the
easiest. But we had a cool experience when we started explaining how
to give a talk and a testimony. I started asking her questions about
the gospel, and she just got frustrated. "I don't know, just tell me
the answers and what you want me to say!" And then I said, "Maria,
it's not a test - pretend I'm your friend who is honestly curious.
Tell me what you know, what you believe, and what you feel. Nothing
else." And a sweet spirit filled the room as she shared her testimony.
She had no idea what it was, but she could tell it was different and
real. The gospel works!

I think my favorite thing is watching the baby steps that people make
as we teach them. Things we invite them to do and then they actually
DO them, and it makes a huge difference in their lives. Jesus has now
come to church FOUR times, and he actually wants to - Maria fulfills
her church assigned ends - Raul gave a class. Six months ago (when I
got here... Transfers are this weekend) I would have never said any of
that was possible. But the Holy Ghost has been present in their lives
and changes have been made. That is so unbelievably cool.

Me.