Week 16 pictures

Doctor Mission President

Mickey Mouse and Subway

Coin Football

Week 16, Nov 24

Crossing the Seas

Well this transfer is moving quickly - Mostly due to three days we spent in a tri-panionship and two more days spent in Tenerife (the other island. We´re back now). You asked what transfers would be like - Well we´re starting week 5. Which means in about two weeks my companion will probably leave. Usually people stay in the islands for four transfers, and ususally after training either the trainer or the trainee leave - both of which will occur this upcoming transfer. So we´re thinking he´s going back to the peninsula and I´ll stay here to area-train somewhere. Our district leader is also up to leave, along with three other missionaries on this island. So things will be getting a little shake-up (we think - It´s still two weeks out.) 

Crossing the Seas

We´re planning a baptism for Monday the 8th, a 15-year old kid named Ezikiel. (from last letter). So more on that, obviously, when Monday the 8th comes. 

This week we´re headed to the Senior Couple´s home for Thanksgiving MedioDia. It won´t be like home... But this lady is a really, really good cook. And she´s promised pie and turkey. We should survive. 

The other sisters in the ward are great cooks too. Every week we have at least three home-cooked Spanish meals, two during a MedioDia and one later at night, served by Hermana Doli, Hermana Leon, and Mercedes (husband of William, the guy we baptized). 

Hermana Leon (more on her husband later) has six kids in a very small house and reminds me of Mom. In approximately 30 seconds she can make enough food to feed a small army.  But she doesn´t stop there - all of the food she makes is delicious and INCREDIBLY dense and in four bites you´re full but she demands that you eat seconds and have an extra piece of bread. It´s pretty stressful. Walking afterwords is difficult. We tried to ask what the word for "waddle" was (because that was the only way we could walk) and they told us "penguinar". Literally "to penguin". I´m not sure if it´s real. 

Hermano Leon teaches High Priests and loves to go out with the missionaries. That is not a good combination. Investigators need very simple explanations of things. We took Hermano Leon and his son, Danny, to teach Ezikiel and his dad, Cristo about tithing. My companion said, "Hermano [Leon], in simple terms, what for you is the law of tithing?" 

"Thank you for reminding me to be simple. *Chuckles* For me, paying tithing is a privilege because of the many blessing I receive because of it. Basically the law of tithing is giving 10% of our increases to the church. It´s a law that´s been around forever - Abraham paid tithes to Melchizidek. That´s the same Melchizidek like the Melchizidek priestood - they used to call it the priesthood after the order of the Son of God, but in their language they used the actual name of God and so they changed it to avoid repeating his name too often." His son stopped him there to say, "Dad they said not profundo!" To which he ptotested, "But I was just scratching the surface!" 

So we have a ward punster who likes to make word jokes. He got me one day because I missed the placement of an accent. If you say "presbítero" it means priest. BUT. If  you say "presbiterio" you mean Presbyterian. He also got me because the Canarians don´t say "para" (means "for"). They say, "pa". So the dish "Paella" could mean either a delicious rice and seafood dish or the phrase, "For Her." Spanish is coming along. Dad, you´ll have to explain these other puns to the kids who don´t speak Spanish (maybe Charles will get them) - 

"Como se dice ´ojo´ en inglés?"

"(Eye)"

"HAHA (maniacal laughter)! HAY que tenerlos para ver!"

"Yo vine. El vino. Yo whiskey. HAHAHA!"

During Zone Conference this last week, we had President and his wife in the islands. President used to be a surgeon and so he liked to tell surgery stories/parables to teach. He told us that, as a surgeon, he asks questions regarding the accident/issue, and focuses on the needs of the patient. He told us that background information makes about 80% of his diagnosis. One time, asking questions led him to discover that what seemed like growing pains exacerbated by lots of dancing was actually a very rare, agressive, and deadly cancer. Had he not asked questions and been receptive to the Spirit, she might have died. He told us to to focus on the investigator´s story and what the Spirit prompts us to do - and then we can save them from spiritual death. (Metaphors don´t get much better than that, now do they?)

President the Surgeon

Until next week, 

Elder Stew.

Week 15, Nov 17

Tomorrow we have zone conference, so today we´re in the neighboring island of Tenerife. We took a three hour boat ride, and the canadian sister missionary got sick. So now we´re on a greener island with the whole zone - about 30ish missionaries. 

Stewart and his companion on their way to Zone Conference

We played soccer today for P-day, which was a great time. Afterwords, I was sitting in the goal letting some other guys practice, when President Jackson came up and said he would like to take a coupld penalty kicks (he spent the whole P-day calling us over and interviewing us on the sidelines, gauging our comfort and generally seeing what´s up.) So he shot - and I blocked it. And he shot - and I blocked it again. Everyone yelled that I should let him score (because President seemed like he would keep shooting until he beat me), and then he scored. He said, "Remember, Elder Maxfield, I can send you anywhere in the mission". So if I end up in Parla next transfer (known as the pits of the mission) everyone knows why. Haha. 

Stewart Plays Goalie

Mission President Shoots

So my last email got cut off - I was talking about our ward mission leader. He´s awesome. A picture should have uploaded with him and all the primary kids, because that´s his second calling. We went to go catch frogs at the ward BBQ, the Elders, the kids, and the Ward mission leader. He put a indian feather in his head and said, "How." He definitely makes the work go faster. 

So my Spanish was going quite well - and it is, I can understand everyone pretty much all the time. But sometimes I mess up. The other day, instead of saying "Can we close this meeting with a prayer (despedir)?" I said, "Can we wake us up with a prayer (despertar)?" So that was fun. Down here in the Canaries, people eat the "s" in most words (or the z or the c, when those letters make the "s" sound"). The other day in church, someone was talking about fishers of men. BUT. If you take out the "s" sound from the word fisher (pescador) you end up with sinner (pecador). So I spent a good two minutes wondering why Jesus was asking his apostles to be sinners. So the Spanish is coming along, poco a poco. Really I can see every day that the Lord blesses His missionaries with the gift of tongues. Sometimes I´ll not have much to say, and Elder Dyer will start looking for a scripture - and then I have to open my mouth to bear my testimony. And EVERY TIME it has been filled with vocabulary and the subjunctive and not perfect things but good enough for the Lord´s purposes. Wow.

We´re going to baptize somebody else coming up soon - Ezikiel is his name. He´s 15 and his dad is a menos activo who called wanting us to reactivate him. He was very back and forth and they missed church for nigh on 12 weeks. (They met him before I came) Until one week when either they ran out of excuses or just felt like coming. They showed up, only for the first hour. Then Ezikiel came to the ward BBQ. Then they came to church again, and Ezikiel stayed the whole time! And then he decided to go to seminary the next morning. And he hasn´t missed seminary since - even though it starts super early in the morning. And then one time, he came to English class and one of the English class attendees said, "I haven´t seen you here before. Are you a member of this church?" And he just said, "Sí." His testimony is super strong and this 15 year old kid taught me that if you want the blessings of God in your life you need to DO something. What a stud. 

We have another investigator named Juan - keeps the cleanest house I´ve ever seen and made us meatballs the other day. He´s a brother of a menos activo, and he loves church. Baptism - very probable.

That´s all I got today - I love you guys!

Elder Stew

Week 14, Nov 10

In terms of eternal spring - it's really weird. It's hard to judge time because it's still the same temperature it was back in August. All it does is rain occasionally and then go back to sunny all the time. We got soaked last night in a freak rainstorm - it was awesome.

Oh yeah, the cookies - my oven is gas powered without a pilot light - we light it with a lighter and you can see the actual fire, hence a not very even heat distribution. I'll work out the kinks.

I had my first D&C bash the other day. We got back in contact with someone who (maybe) had been excommunicated. He had LOTS of weird questions about worship on Sunday. We answered them all from the Bible (because Sunday worship is a primitive church thing) and he said the following - "I don't believe the Bible. It's wrong and was translated too many times. What does Joseph Smith say?" We were dumbfounded. Nobody EVER cares what Joseph Smith says. We tried to help him out, but it was nearly a lost cause. 

Our Ward Mission Leader's name is Carlos Castro. He's from Uruguay, and he does work. He is very intense during our correlation meetings. We told him about the experience with Jesus (the excommunicated guy [ironic, right?]) and he told us, "Don't waste your time with that guy. All he's good for is to get information about his family and see if they're interested." And then, two days later, Jesus came to church AND he brought a new investigator for us. 

So there's not very many members in this rama, which means that everyone has several callings - and the ward pianist alternates between three of the young women. (Emma and Squid, take note).  Carlos' other calling is in the primary, and it's hilarious to see the change that comes over him between High Priests and the Obra Misional and hanging out with the Primary kids. He kinda reminds me of Grandpa Frazier, except for he speaks Spanish and I very rarely see his un-serious side. 

Well there was going to be a lot more to this email, but I've just been kicked off. Suffice it to say that Telde's had a great week, that I'm healthy, that the potato is God's gift to missionaries, and that next chance I have I'll fill you in on the Rama BBQ because there are some pictures I uploaded related to that. 

Love, Elder Stew.

Week 12, Oct 27

I found a cockroach in my bathroom, it was disgusting, It also died I lot easier than I thought - A good solid smack with a shoe and it was not doing any more living. Welcome to the Canary Islands.

It has been a great week here in Telde!! I´m trying to load photos to Dropbox, so we´ll see what happens. As for mail - the Telde address works just fine, about a 7-day delay, and sending it to the mission home means I´ll get it once a month. No matter when mail gets to the mission home, I wait until Leadership council, when the Zone Leader will go to Madrid and bring everything back. So that´s how mail works here. (which means I haven´t seen Grandma´s package she said she sent, and I won´t see it until Leader meeting in two weeks.)

I think it´s probably cooling down in Utah now, right? It is pretty close to Halloween - Maren´s test is on the Ancient Americas (Aztecs, Mayas, Incas) and it will be printed on orange paper with Halloween jokes. That is how awesome Mr. Felt´s class is - I still remember. But anyways, it´s still hot here. My companion said he hasn´t really felt a temperature change since he got here in June. Which means that this Christmas will be hot and humid - but not rainy, because it NEVER rains here. It started sprinkling after church once and the whole rama lost it, huddling inside waiting for the men to go and get the cars. Those who walked to church just waited out the 30m drizzle.

We just had transfers - my whole district is staying. I´ve been told that you usually stay in the Islands for 6 months (although that rule has definitely been broken) or four transfers. I was my companion´s third transfer here, and we will be staying until the next, which ends on Dec. 7. After that I bet he leaves and I stay to Area-train, which basically just means I´d introduce the new guy to the area. But anyways, for the next six weeks my trainer and I are remaining in Telde. 

I had a super cool spiritual experience this week. Elder Bednar gave a talk, (an MTC devotional, not sure if you guys could find it or not) where he talked about spiritual promptings. We watched it in the MTC and his main point was basically that you never know when the Spirit is talking to you - just be a good boy, obey the commandments, honor your covenants, and the spirit will direct you and YOU WON´T KNOW IT. 

My companion and I were walking down the street, headed to go and visit a Menos Activo who is never home. Really, we just had 30m to burn (late at night with no lessons that managed to remain planned) and this guy lived 15 minutes away. So we went. We were headed down our usual route, and I said, "Nah, let´s take Castile y Leon" another street that was close by. It didn´t really matter and I have no idea why I said that. But as we were walking, we met an Argentinian man and his cat (whom he had named "kitty," not knowing that meant cat in English). We stopped to say hello, and as we were talking, he said, "Do you guys like Tortilla? I just made some for my kids, they´re coming home right now." So we ate his tortilla, toured his house, talked to the cat, and shared a 2 minute message of the Restoration. He loved it, and said, "So are you guys going to take my number or something?" Turns out, he was an old investigator whom the other missionaries before my companion (other - read: lazy - not my words, but my companion´s) had stopped teaching. How cool is that? In the moment, I would not have said anything about the spirit. But based on what Elder bednar said, I know that I was being led "not knowing beforehand the things which I should do." 

We have this pueblo in our sector called Jinámar. It´s a super sketchy government housing district - We´ve met two transvestites, my companion has stepped in poop, and someone threw a rock at him. The people there are very humble and ready for the gospel (due to their Latin-American-esque circumstances) but they´re just hard to find sometimes. When the Canary Islands was its own mission, there were a couple Elders assigned to just Jinámar, and they did work - door knocking, baptizing, etc. There´s a member in almost every of the 50-odd buildings. But one thing led to another, and now there are a boatload of menos activos, all of which are hard to find. We met one man who went inactive because somebody offended him, another who found Anti-Mormon material, another who said that he´s not a member of our church (even though the records say he got the priesthood), etc. But we found one guy who hasn´t been to church in 20 years because he felt like the Branch President wasn´t doing his job. He used to be the Elders Quorum President. When we knocked on his door, he let us in and we started talking. And, unlike every other Menos Activo we´ve taught, he said, "I know now that I never should have left." How cool is that?! He came to church the next week, and he brought his nonmember brother too!

Alright, I gotta write the President now. I love you Mom. Thanks for the pictures.... Sorry I couldn´t be there to help finish the deck. But it looks so awesome!!

Elder Maxfield

Week 11, Oct 20

This week´s letter will have to be short. We got stopped on the way to letter-writing by a man who yelled out, "Hey, it´s the Mormons!" We went over and said hello. It turns out he was totally nuts. I could hardly understand what he was saying, but I caught the words "Mormon" "Jesus" "Heaven" "America" so I felt like we were on the same page. He also asked us some weird hypothetical questions with appropriate gestures, like "What would you do if you were reading under this tree and somebody cut it down right then?" We told him that we had to go, and he responded by kissing us on the forehead, on the hand as we shook hands, and on the pass-along card that we gave him. Maybe we´ll cross paths again.

It has been another great week in Telde! I´m convinced that this is the best place in the mission. That picture I sent was of me and the man we just baptized, William. He is just the best. (I´m pretty sure I already told you about him...) He loves church, loves reading the Book of Mormon, and his wife will get baptized soon. Every time we teach them she insists on cooking. And even though he´s baptized, we still go over a lot to teach the new member lessons and to teach her (because she´s still an investigator, technically). And then, one of the rama members showed them the chart where you can sign up for feeding the missionaries. AND THEY SIGNED UP. They´re both South American and are our best friends. 

This is a picture of our rama, faulting maybe 1/3 or 1/4 at Willy´s baptism. There´s an old man in the back, behind a girl in brown. His name is Parreño and is the coolest ever. Not sure why, but he kinda reminds me of Grandpa Walker. He loves church and helping out, and he always tells the same old man stories. One of these he told last time in Sacrament, and I could not for the life of me figure out what the story was about. I know for sure I heard the words "las papas" meaning potatoes, "los papas" meaning popes, misioneros, finca meaning farm, and catolico. So not sure. But he´s so cool and the very definition of enduring to the end.We´re great buddies (when I understand him, about 90% of the time)

Sorry it´s short, but rules are rules.

Love, Elder Maxfield

Week 10, Oct 13

Being a missionary is super awesome. Every day we get up at 7:00 and
exercise until 7:30. We then get ready and eat breakfast, and personal
study starts at 9. I´ve been re-reading the Book of Mormon, in english
because my Spanish is still coming along. Then we have companion study
at 10. Here, we plan a little for the day, read from the white bible,
and practice the lessons we´ll be teaching our investigators or
practice contacting situations. These are super helpful for learning
Spanish, because my vocabulary is still very small but I´m very good
at talking around things. Speaking in Spanish is just one big giant
game of Taboo. After that we have language study, and I read things in
Spanish to practice grammar and learn new words, be it the Missionary
Library (Except Jesus the Christ... Not in a foreign language), old
Liahonas, or an investigator´s philosophy homework - he promised to
read the Book of Mormon if we´d help him with philosophy. We´ll see
what happens. Then, depending on the day, we have either training
study (12 weeks) or we go out and proselyte. Walking around this
city/town/village is super fun. There are parts that are really nice,
like where the Stake President lives, and then there are the
not-so-nice parts. There´s farms, where the people live with their
goats, and then there´s nice homes as well. We have an investigator
named José who lives in half a house. It was half torn down, and then
he moved in. He lives among piles of rubble, random garbage, and he
laid down some linoleum floor next to his bed, which is on
cinderblocks. He wrote in what appears to be charcoal on the wall,
"And ye shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, might, mind,
and strength." Very Evangelical man... He´ll be converted the second
he reads the Book of Mormon. He also steals cable and electricity from
the neighbors, which he was very proud to show that he rigged up
himself.

We do a lot of contacting, because we´re always out walking. It´s a
really great time. Sometimes we say hello to people and they just give
us a death stare. Sometimes they run away. And other times, they chat
for a second and are super golden. William, the guy we just baptized
on Saturday (after a 9-month dry streak! Woot!) was 1000% prepared by
the Lord and was also met as a street contact. Miracle. His baptism
was so cool!! I couldn´t stop from grinning the entire meeting, and he
was so excited. His testimony at the end was so powerful... I just
wish I had understood it all. The Spanish will get here.

A typical day, after all our study, involves contacting as we head to
our various lessons in various pueblos - some in the mountains, some
on the coast, one called Jinamar where there seems to be millions of
apartments in which nobody ever answers. We teach on benches, in
parks, in pisos filled with cigar smoke, or in nice homes. After
MedioDia, which is both lunch and study time, we go and do it all over
again until we literally collapse into bed at 11 - not like a rut, but
like a groove. I am loving missionary work. I love you all!

Until next week,
Elder Maxfield