Week 96 - The work goes forward

Well, it´s been a great week. I really love my new companion. He´ll be the companion I spend the shortest amount of time with - only the next three weeks - but he is a really good missionary. He is a hard worker and he relies on the Spirit. A really good friend, and an excellent person to finish the mission with. 

We´ve got a lot of work as well. We´re teaching a funny old Spanish man named Enrique. He´s got no teeth and just wants to come to church and belive in Jesus. We´ve taught him everything and it looks like he´ll get baptized this coming Saturday. He´s a little deaf, but he loves coming to church and he loves reading the book of mormon. I´ll send pictures next Monday.

My personal studies have been going really well recently. I´ve been focusing on the Book of Mormon and I notice how with every page I feel my tesimony growing - of the Savior, of the Restoration, of Joseph Smith, of everything. It really is the keystone. We had a lesson with some interesting folks this week - missionaries from another church (that also believes in a restoration with Apostles) and a very, very evangelical woman who told us that women should be apostles and who showed us a video of her "alabanzas" at church, with maracas and the apostle in a short skirt leading a song that says "donde hay el espiritiu de dios, allí hay paz y libertad". Anywho. The two of them got into a short argument about whether or not the bible said the following:

1. We MUSTgo to church every day (Acts 5:42)

2. Churches MUST have apostles (Eph. 4:11)

3. Churches MUST have musical instruments.

And as they talked, I realized something that LeGrand richards wrote a long time ago - we don´t do anything in the church because the bible says so - We do it because a living Prophet says so. If all the bibles were burned and nobody in living memory knew what they said, we would still be doing the EXACT SAME THING. And that was they key that the Book of Mormon helps us realize. Like I said, good studies.

We also had a great Ward Council meeting. My companion said that many times it´s just a complaining and calendaring session -  but we changed that. We took as much time as we could to not complain nor talk about activities, but to discuss people. It went great. We recieved names and ideas to help people with their FHE and where to go to get references from the members. We´re doing a lot of stuff, and I´m excited. The work is going forward!

Elder Maxfield

Week 95 - Surprise Transfer

This last week was pretty darn normal. Office work, training Elder Gustafson how to do my job, etc.

During office meeting President made a cryptic remark - although he´s mentioned many times that he doesn´t want me to finish in the office, he´s also told me that that´s probably what´ll happen. But then, on Wednesday, he said that he might have to send me out because a missionary was having a hard time adjusting. They didn´t want him to go home, but he send himself home. Although I really wanted to get out and work (because Elder Gustafson has already taken my whole job) I didn´t want to hope it happened because that would mean somebody else had to go home. And the mission has meant the world for me - I couldn´t actively look for somebody else to leave. 

But then - this missionary decided to stay. And ANOTHER missionary did something stupid and went home. So President called me into his office and said, "Elder Maxfield, I need you to go out of the office." At this point I was so excited - finish my last four weeks doing more than office work! And then, President said, "We´re going to send you to Gijón." GIJÓN!! For those of you who know your Spanish geography (Squid) that´s about 20m away from OVIEDO. WHERE I SERVED. Yes, I am free to hoe to the end of the row and give these last four weeks my all in a place that I already know and love. I think the Lord has blessed me a lot with this opportunity. I am so excited and I´m certainly not going to let it go to waste. Not that I´ve wasted my mission, but this is certainly going to be more fulfilling than the office. I´ll be able to finish strong here. I am so excited. My companion is Elder Lords, an excellent missionary from Idaho. It was his companion that did the stupid thing, so I´m hoping that we can get some work done. 

It was a bummer to leave the members and missionaries in San Sebastián, but this is an opportunity that I never could have expected. I feel so blessed and so lucky. 

So it wasn´t that normal of a week at all :)

It´s kinda hard to express how I feel right now. I had almost resigned myself to not getting much done these last weeks. Sure, I was going to work and not die - but I was already doing a bunch of sitting around while my companions worked with not much to do. I kinda felt que sobraba yo. Not sure how to say that. I was certain I was going to finish normalito, just keeping things going and slowly edging myself out. It was going to be hard to not die. Every day you were getting closer (geographically and time-ly) and I was losing responsibilities. Not exactly hard, but I want to finish on the right trajectory.

It´s like the Lord said, "I have something else planned for you. Now do your best, get all the gas out, because you still had something left. This will be your last chance to do missionary work without a serious distraction. You´ve done well until now - but this is my blessing to you to leave it all on the track. It´s going to be hard to not give up, because this job will be harder than the past and you´ve got an expiration date that is closer than ever. But I need you to put your heart in it and give it your all, this one last time. Now GO."

I am so excited. So, more info on ASTURIAS in the coming weeks.

Elder Maxfield

P.S. I ordered the ECON books. I sure hope they show up before you do. Not sure there´s anymore administrative tasks. How many maletas are we sending home vía sending them and not carrying them? One or two? How much stuff do I have to ditch?

Week 94 - The final transfer

Well, it´s finally here - my replacement in the office! His name is Elder Gustafson, from New Hampshire. He´s a good guy and it looks like he will also be finishing up his mission in the office. Now it will be harder than ever to not get trunky, as I slowly but surely give up all my responsabilities. It´ll be fun! It will be nice because as I shed my office work, I can get back in to actual missionary work as much as I can.

This week we´ll have a small transfer, with only six going home and seven coming in. Pretty normal as we move people, luggage, money, iPads, and all the other stuff that we deal with. 

Keep sending me the fotos from Rome! You´re seeing all the cultural stuff that for me is only a side-perk. This should be interesting as you inch closer and closer to España. (also, dont forget to send me the pictures of the Maxfield reunion in Florence that we talked about on Skype.)

Not much to do this last week, as we did transfers and I filled out more completely my spreadsheet on inventories for the pisos. Trying to keep track of what the missionaries buy and where it ends up. 

I had my quarterly interview with President last week. He asked me what my goals were for the transfer - and I told him I don´t want to die and I want to hoe to the end of the row. We suggested that I make a goal to talk to at least 10 people a day - something that will be quite hard. To be honest, it will require finding interesting ways to bring up the gospel in situations where it´s not as comforatble to do so. But that´s o.k. I think it will be good practice for home, when stopping someone with an enthusiastic "We´re missionaries!" will be less than appropriate and won´t make any sense. I like the opportunities I have to find to share the gospel in a way that will be great practice for back home - with people like cashiers, security guards, random guy in the store. Just strike up a conversation, and worse case scenario is that you have an awkward moment. It´s the sort of thing that the Lord looks for from the non-full-time missionary folk (which I´ll be in two short months) - taking advantage of every small opportunity given to us. 

Love,

Elder Maxfield

Week 93 - Waaaay awesome Excel Skills

We have had a great last week. Today we went to Toledo for P-day, which was great. Elder Doxey served there, so he told us all about the different things that he had picked up on while serving there. And this time, I didn´t buy any swords :).  Not enough pasta, like we say in España. But, it was cool as we walked around the old, old part of the city and imagined what it´d be like to have been there in medieval times. We had an interesting experience when we ran into some Mormon American tourists (as usually happens in Toledo). They stopped us, and the lady said, "Now you young Elders, when do you go home? Doesn´t matter. When you go home, I want you to get married as fast as you can. I have a beautiful daughter and she´s not married yet because people like you don´t want to. Will you do that?" And then she just about gave me her daughter´s phone number so I could ask her out in two months. 

There´s a reason I don´t usually like running into Americans.

This week was also pretty normal in terms of the office work. I found some new excel tricks and updated by my now-massive spreadsheet to include all sorts of important information. 

We had a couple fun lessons, but you already know that our area doesn´t have much. We are helping a fairly recent convert get back on the book-of-mormon reading habit every day. It´s almost tangible, the change when he does and when he doesn´t. It´s striking to me the important things that I need to be doing when the mission is over. These are habits that have been hard-formed and will need to be kept up if I hope to maintain myself spiritually. 

One thing I´ve learned in the past couple weeks is the need for constant spiritual nourishment. We have a missionary here who isn´t doing too hot, and so President emergency-transferred him to us. He´s a good kid, but I can tell it´s hard on him to start off his mission doing.... not much. Our goal has been (and mine still is) to necessarily sacrifice the "spiritual" work and the chances for spiritual growth so that he can have them. It´s interesting when your time to do spiritual things is so limited how you hang on to every little opportunity and treasure it. Sunday I had the chance to give a blessing. I´ve been working hard to keep myself worthy for a long time now, and I could feel my "confidence wax strong" as I laid my hands on her head. I said some things I wouldn´t have said to this sister in any other circumstance, and the blessing was short  - I was scared to see what she would say when I finally said "amen". She looked up at me with tears in her eyes, saying that it was exactly what the Lord wanted to say to her. 

That is probably one of the most important things I´ve learned from the office (besides my mad Excel skills - I can be waaaay more productive for Nate now, if he´d hire me.) The need to constantly nourish yourself spiritually, and when you´re in a situation where that´s just not quite as possible - treasure up every chance you get. 

Love, 

Elder Maxfield

Week 92 - Elder Bednar visits the Mission

Today we went to see a castle! We were sitting in the office, thinking about what to do, when Elder Doxey said, "Let´s go see a castle." So we looked up "castle" on our maps on the iPad (not google maps, some other wierd application) and we drove for about an  hour straight north until we hit a little town called Buitrago del Lozoya. There´s an old church and a castle on a hill overlooking the river (very defensible). There´s some super cool history behind it, but no need to go into detail here. 

So, on Saturday and Sunday we saw ELDER BEDNAR. It was amazing. Dad, there were several recurring themes included in the notes you sent me from Lonn. We spent three hours in a discussion, with one quick break (because, and this is an apostolic quote, "The mind and the heart can only recieve what the rear end can endure."). And he taught us as agents. He asked questions the whole time and invited us to act and to write on small plates what came into our hearts. We had prepared by reading several of his talks, and he led the three hour discussion with only four questions - 

1. What stood out to you in your preparations?

2. What are you learning about the process in which we are learning?

3. What questions do you have for me?

4. What have you learned today?

When he opened up the discussion to "inspired questions" - that is, questions that have to do with the current speaker, place, and moment that you may not be able to ask ever again - he called on me. So I asked him what he had done to prepare himself for our meeting. And I got the sassiest apostle answer I had ever seen - "Elder, I´ve been alive for sixty-five years." I asked what I could do to get to where he is now, and he said to be content with where I am and to consistently experiment and try to not be afraid of messing up - because that´s how you learn. I remember from the "conversation on leadership" about the lawn-trimmer theory of management. There was more to it, but suffice it to say, it was awesome. I learned a lot, not just from him, but as to HOW to continually learn on my own. Huge boost. It was a great week! 

Elder Maxfield.

Week 91 -Office Logistics

Well. I´m finally taking the time to write home. I´m sorry I´ve been so unreliable. Two Mondays ago we had transfers, and I was the organizational mastermind behind collecting suitcases, money, and getting folks to the airport on time. It was good practice. So, we didn´t really do anything except that. It was fun, and I only lost one suitcase in the process :). The next morning we had to take my old companion Elder Avila to the airport. I´m going to miss him. He was a funny guy, even if we didn´t always get along. Interesting how that works. Then, this last P-day, we were doing great. We studied, played soccer, chess, some version of the mafia game - up until about 5 o´clock, when we had to drive people around until 10. It was a long Monday. And yesterday, we had the Mission Leadership Council, which was not nearly as fun when you´re behind the scenes. We had a lot of things to do, drives to make, and so now,Wednesday night, I can write. 

Not much to tell, seeing as we´ll be talking on Sunday. I´m doing fine. We haven´t had much proseylting work recently, and that´s kinda tough. But we try to get our studies in and we make things happen.  

Week 89 - missionary "work" from the office. The Lord is still needed.

I´m sorry, it was a really crazy P-day and I´m trying to get caught up on all my work. I had hoped to start writing yesterday, but it didn´t happen. If it makes you feel any better, my week was just as interestingly boring as the week before :) 

I´ve been negotiating leases, which is really fun but really stressful. I´ve been practicing the best way to explain who we are and why we don´t make money and how the apartment will basically be a revolving door for foreigners without a background check or a job.... Nobody really understands the first time. My recent hurdle has been government subsidized housing - It´s exactly what I want, when and where we want it, but.... government protection does not include missionaries. I´ve become more Republican in the office because I´ve now seen what a massive, sprawling, ineffecient goverment does to normal life. Heaven knows we don´t need that. 

I´ve also been paying bills and trying to collect Security deposits - Old spanish people try to take advantage of the American with a only slightly high-school knowledge of Spanish laws, but I´m ok - they haven´t gotten me yet. One guy threatened legal action, another tried to make me pay 70€ for some sheets, and another one just sent me some bills that I already paid. But they didn´t get me :). 

I had an interesting thought last week when I got swamped with a bunch of stuff - and that thought was something I´ve felt at several different parts in my mission - how I can´t do it all by myself. I´ve been blessed with a keen intellect and it´s helped me through many tough spots. But really, the only thing that is ALWAYS guaranteed to push through a sticky situation is the Gospel. Met that several times where Stewart´s critical thinking couldn´t solve a problem but humble prayer could. Be honest, have faith, trust in the Lord, and things will all work out, like President Hinckley said.