That was definitely the highlight of my week.

   The next transfer date is on November 11th. I most likely will not be transferred but will be getting a new companion.

 

  I am super excited to hear that there is a punching bag at home. For some reason I have really been wanting to work out with a punching bag so now I can do that when I get home and eventually me and Allegra can do some boxing against each other. I will have to practice a bit first because I don't want to get beat! 

 

  I did get to talk with Alan back and forth in emails. Super exciting! Here comes Elder Jordan! Man, a lot sure is happening back home.

 

    Gave my first talk of my mission this Sunday. I made it so long, over a year of never giving a talk. I watched missionaries all around me giving talks but for some reason I was never asked... Until now. It was fun though. I was asked to speak on my favorite talk from conference. I chose the talk by Jörg Klebingat of the 70 titled, "Approaching the Throne of God with Confidence." I talked about pole vaulting and how the first time I ever did it I was pretty scared about the idea of running fast with a pole at a metal box. Then I tied that into all the different things I was able to do to become more confident and all of those had a connection to building our spiritual confidence. I think it went really, really well. You should have been there! :) not really though, you have to wait for the homecoming.

 

   I also got my new suit this week. Now I don't want you to think I am crazy for getting a new suit, I have good reasons. As zone leader I get to go to four district meetings every week, I also get to go to all the baptisms in the zone and I go to church every Sunday. ( that last one shouldn't be a surprise) So with all of these meetings I end up spending over half of my week in a suit and I was getting really tired of always having to wear the same thing over and over again. That is why I got the new suit. It is gray and beautiful and very different from the other suits that I have. I love it and it looks really good, but I can let you judge that for yourselves. I put a picture of me and my companion yesterday at church on the email. I think you will all love it. Go ahead and give me your opinions.

   We had a really cool miracle this week. We are at church and this guy walks in. He comes right up to us and says that he is here for the first time checking out the church and wants to know where to sit. We talk to him really quick before sacrament meeting and then he goes and sits down with one of our Ward missionaries. After sacrament meeting we go and talk with him and get to know him a little better. He said that he has talked with missionaries before and he has a really good friend that is a member in Arizona. He had been asked to go to church before but he had never gone. The past week he said that he had been feeling a lot of inspiration to go and visit a Mormon church so he called his friend in Arizona and told him what was going on. His friend found our Ward online and told him to go this Sunday. He came and after sacrament meeting he told us that he felt so blessed that he was able to come to our church and that he enjoyed it a lot. We told him that it wasn't over and he ended up staying all three hours. He took notes during gospel principles and loved priesthood meeting. After church we talked again. We got his information and are meeting up with him for dinner tonight. He is really excited to talk and learn more. So ready, so prepared. Such an amazing blessing being able to see the Lord hastening his work and providing us with such an amazing opportunity. That was definitely the highlight of my week. It has been a wonderful week and next week I will be able to write about Lanes baptism and hopefully more about our new friend!

   You are all awesome! Keep enjoying the cold! It got down to 54 the other evening and I think I almost saw my breath. It was really cold and I did not like it. I am requesting you bring a nice big marshmallow coat to the airport in a year, otherwise I might die...

   Have a great week! I love you all!

Elder Maxwell

Working twice as hard as I did before!

Hello family and friends!

 Just wanted to start by saying that I am super excited that Dana gets to come out here to San Jose and join me in the mission. It will no longer be Elder Maxwell's mission. It will become Elders Maxwell and Forsgren's mission! I have told a lot of people this week that my friend from my home ward will be coming into the mission in February! People keep asking me if I am going to train him or if I will be in the same zone as him. I have concluded that the most likely result would be that we are in the same zone but I will probably be getting transferred into a new zone at the same time that he enters the field so training is pretty much not an option. I am super stoked for him to be joining me!

  I must say that I feel completely different being on the second half of my mission than I did on my first. Just kidding, it feels completely the same. It is the same feeling when someone asks you the day after your birthday if you feel older, your only reply is that I feel just as much older as I did after any other day. Hopefully that makes sense. It is cool knowing that I have done half of my time and that now I get to do it all again. Working twice as hard as I did before! Thank you for the wonderful hump day package! I got it on my actual hump day so very good planning with the sending of the package. The new garments are also very much appreciated. I can go a whole two weeks without doing laundry now! Just kidding, I do laundry weekly. Don't worry mom.

 The reason I am emailing today and not yesterday is because we had a zone conference yesterday. Elder Pino of the 70 came and spoke to us. He is doing what is called a mission tour. I don't know if Austin or Christian had a mission tour ever but from the people I have talked to it seems pretty common. He came and spoke to us about working with the members as we do our missionary work. He said that any member who prays for the missionaries to find those who are ready to learn and accept the gospel might as well be praying for the missionaries to pay their tithing for them or live the word of wisdom for them. I thought this was very interesting. As members of the church we have a responsibility to find people for the missionaries to teach. Elder Pino said that members praying for the missionaries to find people is them asking God to give their responsibilities to the missionaries. I was quite taken back by this. I thought, I am sure that members don't pray for this with the intent that they won't have to do anything but then I thought. Well if we have the intent to act on what we are praying for then we should be praying for the Lord to help us find people for the missionaries to teach. It was a very good zone conference and I learned a lot about how to help members and to build their faith and reassure them when their missionary efforts are not yielding the results that they may be desiring. Because if anyone can relate to a lot of hard work and not a lot of results - it's a missionary. We work hard everyday and sometimes it feels like nothing happens. That's just how it is. A farmer that goes out in a field of dirt and plants seeds, all day has worked very hard, but when he gets home at the end of the day and looks out over that field it is still going to be a field of dirt. However in the Lord's time all of those seeds will become stocks of corn or a beautiful golden field of wheat blowing in the wind. It's all about our persistent efforts and putting our trust in the Lord. We can take this one step further and tie in how if we never follow up with the planted seeds or go back and water them. Then they will never grow. Being a fisher of men is all about how long we have our line in the water. Not how long we take to get ready to put our line in the water. Again, it was a wonderful zone conference.

 We also got to set a baptism date for our investigator. He is the football player for Stanford. He is going to get baptized on November 1st! We are super excited for him. His family is not 100% supportive of him getting baptized but he has a ton of faith and is going forward with it. He knows that being a member and having the gift of the Holy Ghost will not only bless his life immensely but it will bless his family as well. He loves his family so much and would do anything for them. He has such a pure heart and is such an amazing guy. I wish all of you could meet him. I am super happy for him and I have learned so much from him over the past few months.

    I wish you all a wonderful week! Hopefully it doesn't snow too much. Enjoy all of the beautiful fall colors for me! It's only slightly changing over here. But I will say I have turned into a California boy. It gets into the high 50's at night and I shiver and put on a jacket. I don't know how I am going to survive getting home to the New York cold! You better meet me at the airport with a giant winter coat. One of the big marshmallow ones :) that way I don't freeze to death.

   I love you all! Be safe! Have fun!

Love, Elder Maxwell

This is my last email home in the first year of my mission!

Aloha family and friends!

    How has the week been? Incredible is right! What a wonderful week full of tender mercies. I have learned so much this week and I have had some of the most amazing and uplifting memories!

  We had another ZTM (zone training meeting) this week. This time we wanted to really inspire the zone and to build them all up and get them excited to close off the year with a bang! We did a lot of praying this past week asking God  what we needed to do to help the zone and we came up with a very inspired plan. We have set a goal as a zone to  help 70 people enter the waters of baptism in this year and our zone year to date is 44. So we have three months to get about 30 baptisms. We thought, how are we ever going to do that? It seems like so much! But then we broke it down. We looked at our zone. We have 15 companionships in our zone. With three months left and only 5 current baptism dates set we saw that if by the end of the month every companionship had one baptism date for November then when November comes and goes each companionship will have gotten 1 baptism and then during the month of November each companionship sets a new baptism date for December. We focused it all on working together as a zone. How we should be building each other up and helping everyone achieve this goal as a team rather than as individuals. Everyone got super excited and super amped to get to work and hit our goal that seemed so far away but when looking at it from a team perspective became very realistic. I am really  excited to see how fast the work picks up here in the stake. We talked with the stake president and had him pass our goal on to all the bishops who will pass it on through ward councils so that not only are we working towards this goal as a zone but the members are all involved and are getting fired up because they are helping active goals! What an incredible plan! I know that it was not by my own inspiration that we came up with this. I am continually amazed at how the Lord will help us in any way we need when it is in line with his will. Miracles can happen today!

    We got to go to the temple again this week and what an amazing day that was. Perfect weather, beautiful drive, and such an amazing spirit. I miss being able to go to the temple all the time. The temple is the best. I am so grateful for the two opportunities that I get each year. They have become very valuable times for me. What an amazing place to have questions answered and the spirit and love of God poured out on you. Just like those good old dryer hugs! I haven't had one of those in a long time. After we went through the temple we went to a place called Fentons. If you have ever seen the movie Up, it is the ice cream place that is in the background at the end of the movie when they are counting reds and blues. So I can say that I have eaten there now. Their ice cream is super good too. Just in case you were wondering. I had a lady tell me on Tuesday that I was too skinny and I needed to eat ice cream more. Every day for the rest of the week I somehow got offered ice cream after every single dinner. I only turned it down once. I still don't think it will be enough to help me put on weight. I eat a ton of food.  And I'm still the skinny missionary that left a year ago. Which reminds me...

   This is my last email home in the first year of my mission! When I write again I will be on the downward slope. The backside of the mountain. Always picking up more speed! That amazes me. 1 year has come and gone. Now we will all just do it one more time and then I'll be on a plane home. It's coming very, very quickly. I am feeling emotions of excitement and nervousness and possibly sadness. It will definitely be a bitter sweet moment when it comes around.

  We also got to see that new movie Meet the Mormons. They had a special showing for just us missionaries on Thursday so we packed the chapel and watched a movie Thursday morning. That was strange but good. I love the movie! Awesome, very well done. I hope that it is a big hit because it would definitely open people's hearts. We got to watch a clip by Elder Holland before we watched it and he explained the churches intentions for it. He said that the movie was not s way for the church to make money. All profit goes to the Red Cross. He also said that it is not a proselyting tool, it is a way for people to understand some of the simple ways of a Mormon lifestyle. Very very good. Go see it of you can. If you can't it will be put on Netflix in a while and it will also be showed in visitor centers for church sites. There are plenty of those around home! 

  We also got an announcement from the president that we will be getting internet proselyting training starting in the beginning of November and we will be getting iPads at the end of November so I will be needing to get $400 to pay for it when the time comes but that will be a good thing for me to get because I need to spend my money more wisely! :) oops! That means the Christmas Skype will probably be from my own iPad and maybe I will even be emailing from it pretty soon here...

  Long email full of goodies and love. I hope you all enjoyed it and maybe learned something as you read. I love you all with the faculty of my whole soul. You are all amazing and I am so glad that I get to spend this time serving the Lord and hopefully sending blessings and experiences your way! Have a great week!

  Happy birthday to mom on Saturday! Hopefully my letter makes it on time. I mailed it today! I send you my love and birthday wishes. Don't turn too old this year! For your next birthday I'll be coming home! Exciting!

With utmost respect, and a whole lot of love!
                       Elder Maxwell

It was a great week of learning!

   What an amazing week. I am so grateful that we have a prophet that lives and guides our church today! It is such a blessing getting revelation that is in our language and for our time! How cool is that?! I am definitely going to continue to do what the prophet asks. He is a man that is in tune with the spirit. I did get to watch all of the sessions. Isn't is interesting how they all had their own theme.

     We had a very busy week this week but I feel like we had hardly any time to do missionary work. We spent a lot of time in meetings. Probably 25 hours of meetings this week. That doesn't leave a whole lot of time to do anything else. We will not be making these meetings a habit. I like it a lot better when we have missionary work to do. Because of that I don't really have very many stories to share.

 

   One of our meetings is called Missionary Leadership Council (MLC). In MLC we get to sit down with all the other leaders in the mission and we all talk about things that the mission can improve on. We talk about our successes and share with others about how they can have the same success. Really pretty cool but nothing really to share from it. 

 

   I did get the conference package but unfortunately it is extremely hard for me to find little kids around. One down side to serving in a singles ward. But I found the next best thing, a whole bunch of missionaries. Its a good thing I found them because I would have died if I had eaten all of that candy on my own. It was pretty impressive when I dumped out all the candy and my desk shook and my companion fell off of his feet and had to sit down to retake his breath. Once he had his bearing again he told me that if I ate all of that we could no longer be companions. I agreed and we quickly found a group of elders who would love to play some Conference bingo as long as that means they get free candy.

 

   Overall it was a great week of learning and taking some time to seek some self guidance! I loved it!

Sorry the letter is so short but that's really all I can think of. We will have a twice as impressive letter next week to make up for it.

 

Sending E-mail to our moms!

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Love you all!

Elder Maxwell

Pictures!

Baptism Day!



Happy Birthday, Elder Reid!

 

Zone Sunrise Birthday Hike

It still amazes me to see how the gospel is able to change people.

  We had another awesome week! We had a baptism this week! It was the most amazing service I have ever been to. We had a musical number and then I gave a talk on baptism and the Holy Ghost. Then C got baptized! Then we had another musical number and then it was over. Short and sweet. Very simple and the spirit was very strong.

  C has one of the coolest stories. I haven't said anything about him yet so I will start at the very
beginning. C works here in Palo Alto. He was working one weekend and he came up from San Jose a little bit early and decided that he wanted to have a bit more to his life. He didn't know anything about church or the gospel but he knew that religion would help bring him closer to God so he started to search that day. He did what any person would do when looking for something. He got on Yelp and looked up churches in the area. Our YSA congregation showed up and had pretty good reviews so he decided to check it out. He walks into church one day and is met by the missionaries. He enjoys it enough the first time to come back again. He has come every Sunday since! I love what he said about why he came back. He said that the feeling of warmth and the love that was showed by the members was what got him to come back. It just goes to show that people can be brought into the
fold in any way and once they feel the spirit they know that it is true and that is the feeling that will keep them coming back for more. He is such an awesome guy and he is very happy that he decided to get baptized.

   We also had another outgoing fireside last night. That is where all of the missionaries that will be going home get to give a quick two minute testimony about whatever they feel inspired to say. They are really cool firesides and there are always a lot of missionaries at them and the best part is that all of the missionaries bring investigators. A really good missionary opportunity. I know several people who have benefited from going to these firesides. We got to go with one of our recent converts named S. S is super awesome and he was asked to speak at the fireside. He spoke about how he joined the church. He started with absolutely no religious background so it was a lot of learning for him. He went from not believing in God at all to trusting fully in Him. It still amazes me to see how the gospel is able to change people. No matter who you are or what you do. No matter how good or how bad. There is always something in the gospel that can help you.

    I don't have a lot of time today! My companion is 21 today! Because it is his birthday, we have a lot of fun things planned! We went on a Sunrise hike this morning and it was amazing! Pictures attached. We also went golfing today. My companion loves, loves, loves golf. And I sent a
picture of the baptism!

Love you all! I will keep praying for you all!

Love, Elder Maxwell!

We can be so happy when our families are built on the gospel.

 I hope everyone had a fantastic week! I hope it wasn't too cold for all of you. I saw your weather forecast and it looks like rain. Hopefully it stays rain and not snow because that would infer that it isn't super cold.

  We have had a really good week this week. A lot of wonderful experiences and memories. We were contacting on Stanford campus this week and as we are talking to this really nice lady who is sitting on a bench outside a dorm. This other woman walks up and asks us what we are doing. We said that we are talking with our friend. The lady then asks us if we live on campus and we say no we actually live just a block that way right off of campus. She then says that she thinks Stanford has a no soliciting policy on campus and we shouldn't be there. We said that we weren't selling anything and we were having a really nice conversation with our friend. She then says that us being there was making her uncomfortable and we needed to leave. We apologize to her and we start to walk with the woman away from the dorm. The woman then asks us, "Why she was so mean to us when all we were doing was being very friendly to her?" We said that everyone is different and we try to be nice to everyone regardless of the circumstance. She was very impressed by how we handled the whole situation and she said that she would definitely recommend her daughter to come to our church.

  We said goodbye and go our separate ways, as we are walking again, we go past a group of people who are cleaning up from a BBQ and we offer to help them clean up. Then we see the same woman from before and she seemed to be in charge of the BBQ. She said, "no, we are fine thank you." So we were about to continue on our way when one of the other women, who also looked like she was in charge, asked us if we would like something to drink while we were on our way. We said sure and both got a root beer. As we were walking away, we were talking about how the whole situation had played out. We realized how important it was that we were polite and respectful of someone no matter how rude they were to us. We realized how important it was for us to be friendly and offer service to someone who may have been in need of help. I think about that woman and how she was so rude and I automatically assume that she had some kind of animosity towards the LDS church. Then I think of how the way that we were polite and friendly could have changed her entire view on the church. We were definitely guided by the spirit. I am very glad that we chose to be Christ-like in that situation rather than exploding in a huge argument of rude words and negotiable annotations. It is an example to me for how everyone can leave a hostile situation feeling uplifted.

    We had a splendid lesson with one of our investigators this week. We were teaching him the plan of salvation and he has no real religious background so we knew it was going to be hard for him to understand some of the things we were going to talk about so we invited a member of our bishopric to join us for the lesson. He is a professor at Stanford and he is a single cell biologist and has done some incredible research and had some amazing breakthroughs. We knew, that with his background, he would be able to help answer any of the super intellectual questions that where asked. So we went through and taught the plan of salvation and he listened and understood everything that we taught and once we were finished he had a whole lot of those intellectual questions that I mentioned. When the lesson was finished, and we all went home, we felt like we had failed at teaching because he had so many questions and it was as if nothing we said made sense to him. But we got a text from him when we got home that said he really enjoyed the lesson and that we were definitely inspired to bring that specific member to the lesson. He said that the member was able to answer some of the questions that he has had for a very long time. It just goes to show that the spirit will work in any way it can to speak to people. We were guided by the spirit to bring a certain member and that member was able to be an answer and a testifier of the truth. I love to see all the different ways that the spirit can help us understand what God would have us know.

   I have grown a lot this week. In church yesterday one of the members of our bishopric got released because he and his family are moving out to Utah. They had him and his wife both get up and share their testimonies at the end of the meeting. The wife got up and shared how much she loved the ward and her husband and how she knew that her husband loved all of us because of how devoted he was to his calling. She talked about how they had grown closer together as a family because of their service in the church. The husband then got up and shared his love for the ward. His love for his wife and two kids. His love for the gospel and the scriptures. His love for our Savior, Jesus Christ. He shared his love for God and Gods love for us. Then after they were all done and the spirit was incredible and I was full of joy and peace, the other councilor in the bishopric got up and said that he felt prompted to share one impression. He then said to a congregation of young single adults, "I hope this family has given you all a hope of what you want to have in the future. I pray that you will all strive to have the love and joy that this family shares." As he said those words it clicked inside of me. I understood at that moment. I saw right in front of me an example of what the whole purpose of life is where true joy comes from and why our Heavenly Father wants us to all return to live with him. We can be so happy when our families are built on the gospel. My view of missionary work has changed from helping individuals to helping families! The gospel is such an amazing thing. It truly does change people.

   I am so happy to hear that everyone is doing well! Stay smart by going to school! Everyone but me is in school :) I'm so lucky!

I love you all! Have a fantastic week!

Elder Maxwell