Another incredible week has come and gone. What an amazing experience it is to be a missionary, at this time, in this place! Stanford is the best! So many incredible people that we get to meet and teach! But before I get into all the details of the miracles of the week I have to introduce my new companion to you.
And coming in at slightly shorter than me, from the town of Orem Utah, is Elder Kerby! Unfortunately for us all he is not related to Kirby, the pink flying marshmallow. I asked him the first day that we met. I figured I always get asked if I am related to THE Elder Maxwell so I wanted to ask him if he was related to THE Kirby. He is not, so we have set that straight! He is a super solid missionary. He has been out for over a year just like me and he has served in a lot of YSA wards on his mission so I call him the YSA Pro. So does our mission president so its all good.
We have had so many amazing things happen this week. First off is that Logan will be getting baptized this weekend. He has been on a very long 7 year journey of learning about the church and now we get to be part of his last 3 months of learning and he is so excited to finally be ready to take this step. I am really excited for him and I absolutely love to see how he loves and understands the gospel. It has changed his life in ways that he could have never imagined that it would change. He is such a personable guy! I should have more on him and how the baptism went next week. I have learned a lot from him about what it means to be diligent in our studies. I don't know if I will ever be 7 years diligent though. He is an incredible guy.
We had Elder Bednar come and speak to our mission and the Oakland - San Francisco mission this weekend. He came out to speak at the 50th anniversary of the Oakland temple and he had a special meeting with just the missionaries. It was such a cool meeting. He had three hours with us and he opened it up as a question and answer for all of the missionaries. What a rare opportunity to be able to ask an apostle of the Lord a question. He taught us a lot about what it means to be an agent and not an object. He shared the scripture in the Book of Mormon that talks about acting and being acted upon. He told us all to be agents. He treated us as agents and never took our agency away. He would always ask us permission to ask a question. It is so important for us to be someone who is doing and not being acted upon. He mentioned how in the church it is a tradition to talk and talk and talk about what we need to do. We all know what needs to be done. He challenged us to change our prayers from help me to know what I need to do, to: help me to do what I know needs to be done! What great advice. It really makes you want to get up and go. Get to work. Rather than sitting there talking about the blessings we can receive from paying our tithing we should just go out and pay our tithing. I love Elder Bednar. He is such an incredible individual. He is inspired and led by the spirit. I can testify that he is an apostle of the Lord. He has been called of God and is truly a seer for our times!
Last night we got a text. It went as follows: "Hey elders, I have the most incredible referral for you. He is a good friend of mine and he has been reading the Book of Mormon on his iPad and he called me and told me that he wants me to baptize him. Here is his number. Will you please call him right now and set up a time to meet with him?"... What!? We were blown away! We called him right away and as we talked to him he was telling us a little bit about himself. He said that he is playing professional baseball for the St. Louis Cardinals and that he just got home from his season and he has the next few months off. He said that he had been reading the Book of Mormon and that it had been answering a lot of his questions. I asked him what he thought of it so far and he said that he loves the connections that he sees between the Book of Mormon and the Bible. We set up a time to meet with him for Wednesday night. What a miracle! He fell right into our lap! Then to top it all off, our mission president gives us a call and says that he is good friends with the father of the guy that sent us the first text and that he wanted to be in on the teaching of him. Whoah! So to conclude it all we now have a new investigator who is a professional baseball player that already wants to be baptized some time in November!
If this is not a miracle I do not know what is. The Lord is hastening his work! The question is are we going to keep up! This could happen to any of you. We have no idea who is prepared by the Lord. All I know is that as we open our mouth we will have the words placed in our mouth. The Lord will place the prepared in our pathway if he knows that we will open our mouth. As members we have the ability to call down the powers of heaven so do it! Find those people for your missionaries to teach. Remember the water did not part for the Israelites until their feet were wet. We have to take that step into the water. Trust in God! He will always provide and he will never let us down.
I love you all and I send blessings of warmth to you all. Probably not from the weather but warmth inside of the home. And a whole lot of love! Be good!
Love, Elder Maxwell
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