Sunday, October 28, 2018

4 sticks and a big tub of glue

Wow! As you can tell by the title, this has been a hectic week! I'll start with Tuesday cause that's the beginning of the week. Lol
Well, we decided that we wanted to SMASH! week 6, so we tried to get in a lot of hours. We left the flat on Tuesday at 8am to do some finding and realized that it wasn't too crazy effective. Oh well. We met some nice people. That night we met with Julia!! Nooo! She's gone tomorrow!! I'm sooooo sad! But hey, it'll be okay cause she'll get baptized up there!! (she's meeting her missionaries up there today). It was a good lesson and she bore her testimony to God at the end in her prayer. I love seeing the change this gospel makes in people!!! That was one of the happiest things that's ever happened to me on my mission, seeing people grasp the gospel! I love it!!! 
Wednesday: we're continuing to meet with Mike and he's so interesting. He's a really strange guy, but he's cool. He's pretty dang solid and asked us this last week if he could get baptized tomorrow. Hahaha not yet, but you can soon! 
Thursday: we met with a dude named randlaf! He's soooo keen!!! He told us multiple times during our chapel tour that he wanted to join our organization. Haha. Yes!! You can!!! So that's way cool!!! I'm so excited for the upcoming transfer. I hope all of these people find the truthfulness of the gospel!! Oh! Also on Thursday I had a Chinese burger and it was soooo dang good!!!
Friday: we met with Yvette again! She's been thinking about baptism, so hopefully this next transfer she chooses to be baptized!!! I would love it if she could!!! She's awesome, just needs to pull the trigger. It'll bless her life sooo much!!
Saturday: transfer calls. Well, I've been here for three transfers now, so I guess it's fitting I should leave. I'm headed down to Canberra in an area called Woden.ive heard there's HEAPS of Kangaroos, so I'm excited about that. Hahahhaha a woohoo!!! Also my new comp sounds awesome! Everyone says he's the man!!! I'm sad to leave, but I'm keen to go to Canberra. Hopefully I can find some people to help there!! 
Sunday: we had a musical fireside tonight held by our mission for recent converts and members, and it was awesome!!! It was about temple and family history work, and it was absolutely amazing. Some people dressed up in all white and pretended that they were in spirit prison. They got up and spoke and told a short life story. They then asked if anyone had their name to take to the temple (we all got a slip of paper with a name on it at the beginning). If they did, then there was celebration and happiness when they finally got to leave prison, but if no one did, they kinda just walked off and were sad. The whole thing was amazing and it really brought the life to family history work! I loved it. One of our recent converts who didn't want to go to the temple said that he might start going now because he felt touched! Woohoo!!!! #theSpiritisawesome!
Well that's its for the week! I love you all heaps! I guess the title is pretty self explanatory, so I won't go into that. Have a great week yall!! 
Love Elder Maxfield

Elder Fang 
Yvette. 
Bishop, his wife, and the leavers
Archie
DELICIOUS CHINESE BURGER!! 
Me and Julia last Monday









Sunday, October 21, 2018

What a week

Hey all! Hope you've had a great week! 
This week was a good one. We had interviews on Tuesday with President and those are always pretty dang fun. Despite interviews, I think the best part of the week was Wednesday.

On Wednesday, we had trade offs and I went with Elder Kendrick. He's been in the ward for just as long as I have, so we've gotten to know each other well over these last 3 transfers. Well, we smashed the work on Wednesday! I don't think I've ever talked to that many strangers in one day in my life! We just decided at the beginning of the day that we would just go out and talk to literally everyone. So basically, there weren't too many moments during the day that we weren't talking to someone else. It was crazy! So much fun though because the time absolutely flew by! I'm trying to keep that energy and motivation up for a while.

On Friday we had a District training where we talked about helping the people we are teaching to feel the Spirit more often. One way to do that is to help them feel the Spirit better during lessons. So we decided as a companionship to try harder to have a really really spiritually inviting atmosphere during the lesson. We were doing that already, but we were also caught up a lot in making sure the information was shared. (sometimes it's hard to find the balance). We'll, the happy result was that our lessons went really really well. We were able to feel the Spirit strongly during the lessons and I hope the people we taught did too! So that was a really cool learning experience for me this week.

I love it out here and I know that as we testify of the truth, the Holy Ghost will witness to the hearts of these people that our words are true!

I love yall heaps! Hope you have an amazing week!

Elder Maxfield.   





Sunday, October 14, 2018

I promise I'm working!

I often think to myself, "Man, a mission isn't supposed to be this fun." But then I think, "well that would be absolutely ridiculous!! Missionaries can have fun too!" Well first off I want you all to know, yes I'm actually working very hard. I could bore you to death about street contacting, but I like to focus on the more exciting parts of my weeks. Hahaha. (which sometimes have to do with cake, cookies, or some poor Mexican food made by yours truly).

I bring that point up because this week was yet another fun one in the mission field. Let me tell you, I LOVE THE PEOPLE HERE SO MUCH!!!! Seriously, they're amazing! To make a long story short, today is Catherine's birthday (one of the people we're teaching. She's so cool!) Well, of course we had to celebrate. So last night her, Julia (another person we are teaching), Amber (member), Jessica (someone else is teaching her), Hinase (member), Elder Fang (companion), and I had a party; complete with tacos and a cake that had accidentally been completely eaten by members earlier that day..... :( So no cake.. So sad. And my tacos were mediocre at best. Oh well. I WAS THE ONLY ONE AT THE TABLE WHO COULD EAT SPICY FOOD!!! (I was so surprised!) We had a really good time and more importantly, Catherine had a good time. She is making really solid friends here in the ward and I hope they'll encourage her to keep pushing forward and find an answer! They're all so awesome.

Well, conference was awesome this weekend. I love listening to our leaders. They're truly men and women of God and know the Lord's will for His church. I can't pin a favorite, but Elder Hollands talk was great, so was Elder Brough's talk, and so was Elder Bangerter. I also really liked Elder Gong's talk and Elder Ballard's talk. So basically all of them. Hahahahahaha. It was such a good conference. I hope you all can take the advice given in conference and apply it to your life. I know that as we do so, the promises given by these faithful leaders will transpire. The church is true everyone! Shout it from the rooftops.

Love yall heaps!!
Love
Elder Maxfield

1) Jessica (someone else's investigator soon to be recent convert) Catherine, Hinase (Japanese member) and Amber. We took a few serious pictures and each time Elder Fang smiled in them. So we decided to take a picture where we all laughed but he wasn't smiling.
2) yeah.. Trying to be serious doesn't work
3) back left to right (Jessica, Catherine, Hinase, Julia, Amber)
4-5) more pictures hahah. The Polaroids came out better than the phone pictures 
6) Elder Fang got a peppa pig bag, then got rid of it real fast. Hahahaha #thankgoodness! 
7) Our "Gucci" ties came in! So skuxx! 

 The tie I'm wearing in pretty much all of the pics, a member named Tou (pronounced like Two) made it for me! He's the man!!! 









Sunday, October 7, 2018

Shower of Blessings

I think the best way to describe this week is that it was "a shower of blessings." It's been raining all week and I've heard it will continue to rain almost daily for the rest of the month of October. So it's been interesting.. Not necessarily the best weather to do street contacting in. Oh well. We'll see what happens.

So last week at the opera house was sooooooo cool! The Piano Guys were absolutely amazing. They were so funny and their musical talent is ridiculous. Especially the cellist. He played the cello so well! It was mostly the cellist and the main pianist the whole time and they were just making fun of each others instruments the whole time hahahha sooo funny! Really cool experience and a great show!

As far as others things happening, I can't remember much of what went down this week. Sorry. But what I do know is that we smashed the finding on Tuesday and Wednesday. Wednesday we did finding with Archie. Friday we met up with Julia and had a super cool. Lesson with her. She's so awesome! She has felt God's love in her life soooo much these last two weeks, so that's super super exciting! However, she's leaving for Brisbane on the 25th.. And not coming back. Anyways, she might stay here for a bit if she finds a good pastry job, but if not sooo sad! We will miss her a lot. She's sooooo cool! We went finding with her too. Hahaha it was so fun! And she got us super spicy dry hot pot. It was hecka delicious!!

We had trade-offs with elder Cowdrey and with the APs. That was pretty fun. Made for a busy week, but it made it fun.
A little all over the place today, sorry bout that, but just know the week was good and we had a good time teaching everyone.

Some cool miracles happened
1) Piano Guys concert!!
2) we were able to get Archie a temple recommend! (he's not going to the temple, but it's a step forward)
3) Julia is seeing sooo many miracles in her life!
4) Julia might actually find a pastry job here and stay! Pray for her soooo hard!!!!
5) umm yeah that's about it, but it was cool!

Love yall heaps! Hope. You have an amazing week and stay dry!
Elder Maxfield

Dry hot pot is soooo yummy!!!!!
The view from the Opera House balcony during intermission
And the inside WOOHOO!!! PIANO GUYS!!!!!