This work is not my work, it's not our work, it's Gods work!

    I don't think that I can even describe what has happened this week. I can put it in words but in order to understand the incredible things that have happened you would have to be me. I am going to jump right in because it is incredible!

    First, on Monday, P-Day, we got together as a zone at a park and we had a really good time. The greatest part was that one of the elders has a slack line with him on his mission and he brought it and set it up at the park. I got to slack line! It was a lot of fun and I didn't think that I would ever get to do that on my mission. The elder that brought it is really good and he can do a lot of really cool tricks. It was super cool watching him and he taught me some cool things that I can do so that was a lot of fun.

    Second, my companion and I started to plan for our zone training meeting that we were going to have on Thursday. So we started planning on Tuesday and we came up with a great idea to make a time lapse video to motivate the members of the zone to do their morning workout. We get 30min every morning to workout and sometimes we get lazy and don't use that time so we were trying to get everyone motivated and exercising. So Tuesday morning as we were doing our morning workout we took a camera around with us all morning and videoed all the random funny things we could think of doing. Then we put it in time lapse, six times faster, and we watched it and it was hilarious! We loved it but we found some things we could have done better. So the next morning we did it again. We ran around non stop for 30min doing all the random funny things that we could. The second video was even better than the first one! We loved it so much that we want to put it on YouTube but that will probably never happen. We shared it on Thursday morning with the zone at our meeting and they all loved it. They were laughing the whole time! It was perfectly wonderful! It was a lot of work to get the movie ready but we did it and it was really cool!

    Third, was the actual zone training meeting that we had this week. This was my first meeting where I was in front of the whole zone instructing them so I was a little bit nervous. Last Friday we had Elder Packer, the area 70, come and talk to the leadership in the mission and he gave us all some really good instruction. So we planned our meeting off of what he taught us. I planned on teaching diligence and it went really well. I broke down the mission into percentages and it is really interesting what I found. 1/3 of the mission will be spent asleep in your bed. 1/3 will be spent in meetings, lunch, studies, p-days, and other things that are not proselyting. The last third will be spend actually proselytizing and spreading the word. I wrote that out to show the missionaries that two years isn't a lot of time when really you only have 1/3 of that time to be sharing the gospel. I really emphasized how important it is to use the time we have been given to do everything we can to spread the word. That's how I tied diligence in and I spent the rest of the time talking about what it means to be diligent. A firmly fixed, unchanging, sincere conviction in doing the Lords work.  It was super awesome and everyone in the zone leadership did a really good job. I love being a zone leader because that means I get to be friends with everyone in the zone. I always do everything I can to be someone's best friend every time I see them. I love it! Sometimes I make mistakes and then I have to make amends with someone but I have learned that it is all about humbling yourself and putting others before myself.

    Fourth, this is where the week starts to get pretty incredible! So last week I said that I was going to be having a lesson with our investigator Lane and we were going to invite Steve Young to come and be the member present at our lesson. Well everything worked out and we had Steve Young come with us to teach our investigator! It was super awesome. He is a really cool guy and Lane was really impressed that someone as successful as him, who has everything he could ever want in life could talk so powerfully about how he is so grateful for the gospel in his life. He talked about how it would help him in his games and how it would help him in his schooling. Every aspect of his life had been blessed by the gospel and that was very powerful for Lane. He said something really funny. There were 50 guys on the 49'ers when he was playing for them and 5 of them were members of the church so he said that it was a joke between them that the 49'ers paid their tithing 5/50 (10%) and that's why they did well as a team. I thought that was pretty clever. I don't think it actually works in that way but it was still very funny. I put the photo of us on the email. From left to right, Dallas, Myself, Lane, Elder Reid, Brandon, and Steve Young! Dallas and Brandon are members that are on the team so they are friends and supporters of Lane.

 

It was a pretty awesome lesson and definitely one of those moments for a missionary! I don't know everything about him but I know enough to appreciate a lesson with him!

    Fifth, it continues to get better. Tuesday we are contacting people on campus and we meet this guy named Conrad. Conrad is an archaeologist for Stanford and he is really cool. His wife is a Dean for Stanford so she is pretty important I guess. I have never met her and am not sure what a Dean does so she is cool in my books! Anyway, we are talking with Conrad on Tuesday and he says that if we ever want to go to one of the Stanford football games than we are more than welcome to use the tickets that his wife gets for free. We said yes, we would love to! (not even knowing if going to a football game was something president would ever let us do). Conrad tells us that his wife gets the tickets on Thursdays so if he ever sees us on a Friday he will give us some tickets. At this point I am thinking, how are we ever going to see him on a Friday, the day before a game and then call president at the last minute and expect him to let us go to a football game. I didn't have very high hopes. Fast forward to Friday. We have half an hour to contact during the day so we go to campus and we start to talk to people. While we are talking to a guy, Conrad bikes up in the middle of our conversation and says, "sorry to interrupt but I have your guys tickets!" He hands us two tickets to the next days game and then bikes off. The man we were talking to looks at us and says, "wow, God is good to you guys." Then his wife shows up and they start to leave and us thinking that there is no way we will ever use the tickets offer them the tickets but they said they don't watch football. So we walk away with two tickets to the next days game. We are both looking at each other and we are going crazy thinking about going to the game so... I make my companion call president and ask for permission. We both get super nervous and my companion explains that we have an investigator on the team and two members of our ward on the team and we already have two free tickets. He asks us what time the game is at and we say 2. He says okay, go for it. That's the slow time of the day anyways! Ahahahahah! We just got permission to go to a Stanford college football game! Fast forward to the next day, we get a call from the assistants to the president. One of the assistants was my companions companion. (I took his spot here in Stanford and he went into the office.) So he calls and say, "you are going to the game? It's my birthday so you should get us some tickets so we can come with you!" We spent the next few hours of the morning finding two more tickets. We found them and then they came up to the game. So the four of us all went to the game together to support our investigator, Lane, and to celebrate my companions, former companion's birthday. Confusing, I know. All said and done that is definitely something I never thought I would do on my mission. Crazy!

    Sixth, and last because this email is already pretty crazy long. Yesterday we had an awesome BBQ at a members home. This member had invited all of his non member friends and all of the members that lived close by and they invited all of their non member friends and it was totally awesome! There were probably about 50-60 people there and at least 10 non members and we got to talk with all of them and it was super cool. I spent a good amount of time talking with two guys who were really interested in learning about other peoples philosophies. They were very open minded and wanted to learn more. Only down side was that they live too far north. Out of our mission. That's the one direction we aren't allowed to teach in. But we are definitely going to get them set up with some missionaries! It's super cool serving in this ward because most of the people are successful and hold jobs and have cars and all those things are super duper helpful in doing the Lords work. As in helping us get investigators and such to church and activities. The work is going really well here in the area. We are seeing so many miracles and so many... Tender mercies is what I would call them but really they are super awesome things! The church is totally 100% without a doubt, TRUE. The blessings that I have seen in others lives, the love of God that I have seen people feel, and the powerful influence and aid that the Book of Mormon gives to people are all testimonies to me that this work is not my work, it's not our work. It's Gods work. We are laborers in His vineyard and He will use us to accomplish what He wants to get done.
 

   Everything is super amazing and in full swing here in California!  I love you all! I'll pray some warm weather your way this week!

Love,

   Elder Maxwell

It has already made it worth it!

Dear Family and Friends,

     I was watching some Mormon messages this past week and I saw one called "The Hope of Gods Light." It was pretty amazing. It is about a man who was going through his life and it takes you through his two year conversion process. This video is part of one of our miracles for the week. So my recommendation is that if you have not seen it before, stop reading and go watch it. Then come back and finish reading.

   So ,we were contacting on University Ave. the busiest street in all of Palo Alto on any given night. As we are walking down the street trying to talk with people a young man walks up to us. The first words out of his mouth are "Elders, I'm a member of the church but I haven't been to church in ten years. I want to come back." We were overjoyed that he had found us. We talked with him for a little bit right there on the street and set up a time that we could come and visit him. He gave us his address and his phone number so we planned on going over two days later.

Fast forward two days... We go over to his house and we go to the door and a Hispanic lady answers the door. We ask if he was home and she said she didn't know anyone by that name. Okay, we thought we had the wrong address. Then as we were leaving he pulls up in his car. Turns out we were pronouncing his name completely wrong. We go inside with him and we start to talk and get to know each other. After talking with him we realize that he has been through everything in his life. He is 18 years old. When he was 8 he watched his father die in his arms and then his mother two months later. After his parents had died he was all alone so he walked over to the police station and told them what happened. One of the police officers took him in for a couple months.

It just happens that the officer was a member and while he was living with them he had the missionary lessons and was baptized. He told us that the two months he spent with that family had been the two greatest months of his life. He still remembers primary and the songs that he sang there. After two months with that family they found a foster home for him and between the age of 8 and 18 he had lived in 23 different foster homes. Once he graduated high school he was kicked out of his foster home and then three months later he finds us. He has gone through things that I couldn't even imagine. He has been through trials that most of us would never be able to go through. Yet through it all he is the kindest most sweet hearted young man I have ever met. He is so caring and so happy that he has another opportunity to go to church.

What an incredible example he is to me. So humble and charitable. We watched that video with him and as we watched it the spirit was so strong. He felt the Saviors love for him as we discussed it afterwords and he understood that he truly had not been alone through it all. He told us of a scripture that had helped him through it all. 

      James 1:12, " Blessed is the man that endureth temptation: for when he is tried, he shall receive the crown of life, which the Lord hath promised to them that love him." 

      Again, the faith he has blew me away. As we finished up our talk he expressed to us how grateful he was that we came over to talk. Then we left. A very simple visit. We didn't really teach him anything. We didn't invite him to do anything. We didn't change anything that he was doing, but I know as we left that lesson that it had been the most incredible lesson I have ever been in. The spirit was the teacher. It brought to life the quote, "Preach the gospel at all times, use words when necessary." I learned so much about what I need to become from that lesson. I realized how much more room for improvement there is. It truly was a humbling experience talking with him and I will never forget it!

     Second amazing miracle of the week (that I think both Mom and Dad will appreciate). We are teaching a young man who is on the Stanford football team. He is a freshman on the team and is actually recovering from an injury this year but he is still huge and ready to play. We have been teaching him for a while and we invited him to be baptized but when he told his parents he was thinking about being baptized they weren't too supportive. So now we are at a point where he knows it is true and he wants to be baptized but he doesn't want to ruin his relationship with his family. Very understandable and we are not going to push him to do that. So were were trying to think of ways we could continue to strengthen him and help him progress. Then we had a crazy idea. 

      Steve Young, the famous football player from BYU and the 49ers, lives in our area and we thought it would be cool to have him come to a lesson with us. Only one problem, we don't have Steve's phone number because for some reason they don't list his personal phone number in the ward directory. So we call our mission president who actually is friends with Steve and we ask him if he could talk to Steve for us. He says he would love to. We wait a couple of days and nothing happens. So we are at dinner at our bishops house and he actually lives in the same ward boundaries as Steve, so his wife and kids go to that family ward while he goes to the singles ward. We get to talking about the lesson we want to set up and our bishops wife says, "Oh, I text him all the time, I'll send him your number and tell him to give you a call." The next morning as we are studying we get a call from a number we don't have saved in our phone. We answer and it is Steve Young asking us when a good time to set up the lesson is. So now we have Steve Young saved in our phone and he is going to come and be the member present in our lesson this Thursday. What an awesome lesson! I have never met Steve Young before and I have never really been dying to meet him but now that I am going to it is super cool and I am super excited! Ahhhh! It is pretty awesome. Maybe I'll get a picture for you! Maybe...   
    In answer to your question about balance. I can think of how balance between fun and obedience is super important on a mission and I feel like that applies to life before the mission in the same way. On my mission I have learned that being obedient is the only way. It is extremely hard to be an effective missionary if you are not obedient. But if you are letting that stop you from having fun, you become stressed and can't function as a normal person. So the balance is essential to being an effective advocate of Jesus Christ. The same thing is true growing up in the church. We have to keep the commandments no matter what. That's a given. The balance comes through finding ways to have fun while being obedient. The thing that probably sticks out to me is that our house has always been the party house. We would always have friends over and have super awesome parties and everyone had a lot of fun! Strange, there were no drugs, no alcohol, and no immodest clothing. How could we have fun? That's what it comes down to. The world has stated that these are the things that are needed to have fun and all of them encourage us to break the commandments. But we have proved the world wrong! True fun comes through wholesome activities and people who respect each other and want to have fun together while being obedient. That's what sticks out to me the most. Not worded very well but I hope you get the point!

     I am glad to hear that Emma is there to keep all of those crazy boys in line. It's crazy thinking that all my siblings that are close in age are off at college. It makes me feel like I am falling behind in life but then I remember what I am out here doing and I put my trust in God and am hoping He will bless me and help me after my mission. Serving a mission is definitely a sacrifice but I have already learned so much here that I couldn't have learned elsewhere that it has already made it worth it.


I love you all! Keep up the amazing experiences! I love to hear about all the experiences!

Love, Elder Maxwell

We determine our success in life...

   As we walk we hear the shouts of the crowd. The thundering of thousands of voices chanting in unison. You can feel the vibration of the excitement running through the ground and into your entire being. Suddenly, it goes quiet but not silent. You can feel the anticipation in the air. Then without any warning you hear the roaring of the crowd once more! The magnitude of their cries overpowering the sound of my own voice. The game is over and now it is our time. As we walk the paths of the campus searching for the people who are ready to hear the gospel. The campus is full, people everywhere! The are all wearing red in support of their favorite team. We talk to some and they enjoy our conversation. We talk to others and the blow us off as if we are a leaf in the wind. Minute by minute, hour by hour we work as the time slips away. We give it our full effort but nobody seems to want to hear. We watch as they miss the opportunity to grow and experience the changing power of the Atonement. After giving everything we had and feeling like nothing came from it, we head to the car defeated.

 

   We were about to head home to make ourselves "who knows what" for a dinner when a man runs up behind us and asks us how we are doing. Overjoyed that we would now have an opportunity to share the gospel with someone we stop to talk with him. Without wasting any time the man asks us if he can buy us some dinner, he then also told us that he was a member of our church. We replied to him that we would love some dinner. He bought us some Panda Express and we went and sat down with his family. They were in town for the game and were about to head back up to Sacramento. They had seen us walking from where they were sitting and thought that we would probably be hungry. We had a wonderful meal with them.

 

   We asked them how the game went and we learned that Stanford won 45-0. What a win! First game of the season with no sweat. We continued to talk and I learned that the daughter was really into rock climbing. She had just started getting into it recently but she loved talking about anything rock climbing so we had a great conversation. She then saw on my tag that I knew sign language so she began to sign to me. It was great! She took sign language all through college at BYU. They were a very cool family and we really enjoyed talking and sharing dinner with them. Then right as we were about to leave my companion mentioned to them that we didn't have anyone signed up for dinner for that night and how great of a blessing it was that they got us dinner. The mother then said this in reply, "You Elders must be living right!"

 

   As we parted ways and we headed back to our car for the second time. We had a demeanor of joy and love knowing that our efforts had not been in vain. It illustrated to me that no matter the circumstance, we determine our success in life off of how hard we try, not off of the results that we see. Heavenly Father knows our hearts. He knows the effort that we put in and he will bless us accordingly. We don't know the effect that we will have on someone. The seeds that we plant just in our interactions alone can become, in the future, blossoms of faith that will develop into worthy and faithful followers of Jesus Christ. What a great lesson to learn. We are the tool that lies in the hand of our Heavenly Father. As we make ourselves the most effective tool we can, Heavenly Father will work amazing miracles through us. This joins in exactly with a lesson that we taught this week. If you remember back to general conference in May, President Uchtdorf gave a talk about being grateful in our circumstances. He said, "We can choose to be grateful, no matter what.

This type of gratitude transcends whatever is happening around us. It surpasses disappointment, discouragement, and despair. It blooms just as beautifully in the icy landscape of winter as it does in the pleasant warmth of summer.  When we are grateful to God in our circumstances, we can experience gentle peace in the midst of tribulation. In grief, we can still lift up our hearts in praise. In pain, we can glory in Christ’s Atonement. In the cold of bitter sorrow, we can experience the closeness and warmth of heaven’s embrace."

   As I read what he has said to us, I look back on my own attitude as I was feeling defeated and tired as we went to the car the first time. I think now about how much different it could have been if I was grateful in my circumstance. I could have been grateful for the opportunity I had to be out sharing the gospel with those around me. If I have learned anything this week it is that I need to be more grateful for what I am doing.

   The other cool story for the week was how we got our new investigator. We got invited over to dinner by a girl in the ward and often in this ward three or four women will share one house and will all be roommates. So this one sister invited us over for dinner. When the day of dinner got closer we called to confirm that we were still on for the next evening. She said yes we found a man that can be there. So fast forward we are at dinner and the man that was there was the non member boyfriend of one of the other sisters. Perfect! They had talked a lot about the church before so he was really cool and was asking us a lot of questions. We had a great discussion over dinner and then afterwords we shared a lesson about the plan of salvation and he loved that. He had so many good comments to add. At the end of the lesson we invited him to continue to learn and meet with us. He said that he would love to do that so we will be meeting with him again soon. It is so cool! I love how many people in this ward have friends that are not members and they all bring them to church without having to be asked to do so. Singles wards defiantly have it very easy to get friends to come to church or an activity. It is really cool to be serving here. I love it.

    Serving as a Zone Leader is so much fun! I get to go on exchanges whenever I want! Its so cool. Spending an entire day with other missionaries is such a great way to get to know them and love and understand them. I am really loving serving all the other missionaries in the zone. I was studying about leadership the other morning and I read a talk that taught me a very important principle. Being a leader doesn't make you better than anyone else. The talk mentioned something called the "Jonathan Factor". This was in reference to the story in the bible about Saul and David and Jonathan. Saul was going to be replaced as king and David and Jonathan were the two candidates. As Samuel anointed David to be the new king, Saul was upset because he wanted his son Jonathan to be the new king. So Saul tried to convince his son to kill David, but Jonathan understood that being the king meant nothing more to God. So Jonathan faithfully supported David as the new king! This is exactly how it is for us. We support our leaders faithfully and we know that our Heavenly Father does not determine our success by how many different leadership positions we hold. Jonathan was just as great of a man as David. That is how I want to be as a leader. Humble just like King Benjamin and Jonathan!

 

    It was an awesome week! I had such a great time! Happy Labor Day! And good luck starting school!

Love, Elder Maxwell

We only planted a seed...

Dear fellow family and friends,

     So as you all remember from last week I mentioned that I was getting transferred and becoming a zone leader. Well that was a week ago and now I am transferred and a zone leader. I am so glad that I am a zone leader because that ended up meaning that I get to serve in the coolest ward in my new zone! I am also very grateful that I get to serve and uplift other missionaries again. I love all my new friends here in..... The Menlo Park zone! I serve in the Stanford area! We are right on the Stanford campus and it is so amazing! I am serving in the Stanford singles ward and it is so crazy! The Central Park ward would on average have 75-100 wonderful people that I absolutely love every Sunday. The Stanford singles ward has over 200 wonderful people that are all between 20 and 30 years old. It is so crazy. After church yesterday I was honestly overwhelmed with how many sound members there are in this stake! It's so awesome! The Menlo park zone covers one of the richest zip codes in the United States and that means that you see a lot of really nice cars every single day. This area is very, very, very affluent. I feel like I don't stick out as much walking around in a shirt and tie because everyone is always dressed up in super swanky clothes. They are all so good looking, I love it!

 

My new address is:
2369 Wellesley Dr.
Palo Alto CA, 94306

 

     My new companion is Elder Reid. He is from Maryland. He is really cool. I served in the same zone as him before when I started my mission in Greenfield. I got to know him a little bit then and it was really exciting getting called to serve with him up here in Menlo Park. We are the Zone Leaders for a zone of 30 missionaries. Our zone covers all of the Menlo Park stake and it covers a big portion of the Polynesian congregations. We get along really well. He loves to play golf so we have a connection there in the sense that I was the one that would cut the grass for him before he would show up early in the morning. He seemed pretty grateful for that.

     Funny thing happened yesterday. We went to dinner at a home that has about five members that all live together and they had invited about ten more members to join all of us for dinner. They called it a group dinner. It was a lot of fun and the food was delicious. We were about to start eating when they said that we were all going to do introductions. So we all went around and said where we are from and our favorite tasty treat. The last person to introduce herself was Brittany Molina. From Beaverton Oregon. What a crazy coincidence! She just moved into this ward two months ago. She is working in accounting over here in the Menlo Park area. It really is a small world.

   We had some really cool things happen this past week. On my first day here we were walking around Stanford campus and I met a man named David. He is here teaching a course on how the internet works. He stopped and was willing to let us talk with him. We told him a little about the church and invited him to come to institute later that evening. He gave us a not so reassuring answer and said that if he got everything done before he would come on by. Later that night as we showed up to institute he was there waiting for us. We were very surprised and very happy to see him there. We took him on a tour of the building and ended up having a talk in one of the classrooms. We started out talking about the timeline of the world and when it was created. Then we went even deeper and talked about when the universe was created and there were some equations put up on the board and then we plugged in the Book of Mormon on the giant timeline and then we all sat back and looked at it. Then we asked him about faith and how we can develop a testimony. We had an awesome lesson about building faith as a foundation of our testimony. The spirit was definitely there and it taught us all that night. We invited David to read the Book of Mormon and pray to know the truth. He said he didn't know if he would pray but he would definitely be picking it up and reading it some more. It was such a great ending to a wonderful day here in Stanford.

     We had a lot of other cool experiences this week. One other one was with a young man yesterday. We were walking down university avenue and we saw him standing alone so we talked with him. The first words out of his mouth were don't waste your time. But we were a little more persistent this time and we continued to talk with him. After about five minutes of talking he agreed to let us share a scripture with him and he was completely open with us about his religious background. It amazes me still to see how the spirit can soften someone's heart so quickly. We only planted a seed last night but that seed will continue to grow and soften his heart over time.

     The time is flying by. Can you believe it's already almost September! That means the kids are going back into school again! Whoa! That's crazy! The year has flown by so fast. Just think, this time next year you all will be getting ready for me to come home. So weird to think that I have already been gone for almost a year!

    I love you all and I hope you all make it home safely or you have a great kickoff to the new school year!

Love, Elder Maxwell

The people are awesome!

     Transfers are in this week. I am sad to say that I will be leaving my son after six weeks. I don't get to do the entire 12 weeks with him. He is also sad so I guess that is a good sign for me. I have enjoyed having him as my companion so much. He is an amazing missionary, he will do well to carry on the work here in Fremont. Sadly this also means that my time in Fremont is coming to an end. After nine months of wonderful service here in three different areas I am sad to see it go. I keep telling myself that the change will make the time fly by even faster and I think it is going fast enough already. I also got called as a Zone Leader this time so wherever I go I will be leading the Zone. I am excited, it will be a lot of fun. I hope it is as much fun as when I was a district leader. I loved that so this has to be on at least an equal level of awesomeness! Like I said before the change will be making the time fly. I have no idea where I am getting transferred to or who my new companion  will be but I will keep you all informed as quickly as I can.

 

      Yes, my forced frugality was good but as soon as I got my card I accidentally spent money on new shoes. It was for a good reason. I needed shoes with no holes to do service. They are really cool if that helps at all! I am going to start right now and make a challenge for myself, never use my debit card in the rest of August and all of September. You can hold me accountable to that! I need a good challenge. I am glad that this is my weakness though because there could be much bigger challenges for me to overcome at this time.

 

     We had an awesome week besides the part where this cold you have been mentioning for the past two months somehow found its way all the way over here to me! I was fine until you said I hope it doesn't get you in your last email and then two days later I woke up with a nasty head cold. Good thing for me is that week a couple of very busy days planned so all day Thursday and Friday I just had to work through it. I took lots of decongestants and a lot of Tylenol. Made it all the way to Saturday morning when the stake president invited all the missionaries to come to his home for some pancake breakfast. Now as a missionary you have to understand that you never pass up free breakfast. So I took some medicine after I woke up and headed over to breakfast with my companion. Now the thing about decongestants is that they make me a little bit wired. So for those of you who know me. When I am not 100% in my head I say a lot of random things that come into my head. All of the people there were loving all of the funny things that I was saying and then later the stake president was talking with me, (we have a really good relationship because he lives in my ward) and he asked me if I was alright. I told him I was sick and taking medication and he commanded me to go home and sleep after the breakfast so I did and I ended up sleeping till one in the afternoon. After that I was much better and the head cold has pretty much completely gone away now. It really is weird how it clogs up the ears and makes it so you can't hear. I have never had that before. Just another adventure of being a missionary! Looking back at everything that happened this week overall it was an awesome week so I have no grudges against my sick day. 

 

    On Tuesday we were able to teach John again. We talked about the Plan of Salvation this time and it was such an amazing lesson. I am so glad that I have had the opportunity to go and be there to help him grow and understand the gospel. He such a great guy. I am going to miss him so much. I am going to miss all of my good friends in Fremont. This ward is so amazing, the people are awesome! I am so glad that I had the chance to be blessed their wonderful spirit. I know that as I have served among them that I have learned so much from each and everyone of them. I have been so blessed to be able to make so many wonderful friends! I don't know if My next areas will be able to top this. It has been incredible.

   

Love, Elder Maxwell

READ IT, PRAY ABOUT IT, LOOK FOR IT!

My Family and Friends...

    It has been such an incredible week. I had my first confrontation with a dog on my mission this week. We were walking around on Saturday and while we were walking through a neighborhood we passed a big car and right as I got past it there was a big black dog and it was about two feet away from me. I started to back away from it and it continued to approach me. It was about to come at me I could tell so I was about to run and my companion told me to turn and walk away. For some reason the dog didn't care about him. So me and my companion are walking down the street. I have a big 120lb dog a foot behind me barking up a storm and I can't stop watching it and making sure it doesn't come at me. Somehow I was able to walk for a good 30 seconds with this dog right behind me. At any moment that dog could have chomped down on my leg. I will be honest for those 30 seconds I was absolutely terrified. Every single part of my body was telling me to run and get away from the dog but after my companion said to walk I couldn't run. I physically felt like I was being constrained. I wanted to run over and over and over again but I had to slowly walk it out. I am so blessed to not have a giant dog bite out of me right now. It was definitely the closest I have ever been to getting eaten by a dog. Not something I want to do again. Thank you God for blessing me with safety. That's the most adrenalin that I have been pumping this week.

     On a more spiritual side of things we had another wonderful lesson with our investigator John. He is so prepared and ready to receive the gospel. We taught him the restoration last week and this week we followed up with the Book of Mormon. We had invited him last week to read Alma 32 about faith and when we came this week he had but he was a little confused about where the Book of Mormon was happening and in what time so we had to clear that up a little bit but we had such a great lesson with him and he completely understands the gospel and how it is blessing him in his life. We wanted to give him the opportunity to pray and ask to know if the Book of Mormon is true so we asked him to read 2 Nephi 31-33 and to pray after he read those chapters. He said he would and I believe he will. I pray for him all the time and I know that he can get his answer as he prays sincerely. He is such a great guy and I love him so much. He has two giant mastiffs and they are way too friendly. Me and my companion have what we call the John pants. We wear them once a week and after our lesson every week they are covered in dirt and hair and drool and can't be worn again until they have been put through a heavy duty wash cycle. I think that is a very small price to pay to help someone receive the restored gospel of Jesus Christ. We both look forward to our lesson each week and getting our John pants super dirty. It is amazing how things like that can bring me such joy now. I look forward each week to coming home with a filthy white shirt, pants, and tie on. I love it!

    Yesterday in sacrament meeting we had the most amazing spiritual sacrament meeting in the world. We had two really amazing speakers. The first one was Sister King who spoke about how service has blessed her throughout her time in the church she said that she found true joy in serving others. The best part was that you could see she really had found true joy as she was speaking. Her testimony filled me and I knew in that very second that what she was saying was true. I could see the same experiences coming to life in my own life. I love, love, love, love, love service!  After Sister King was her husband Brother King, President Richard King of Rotary International, he has been all around the world to do service for anyone and everyone. Such a great couple. Very inspiring and wonderful to listen to. He spoke and left a powerful influence on me. He spoke of the life of an eagle and how an eagle understands three aspects of the gospel very well. First the eagle understands vision. It can see very far into the distance and has a very clear sight of what is up ahead. We similarly need to be looking ahead in the direction that we are going. Setting eternal goals for us to be striving to achieve. Second the eagle understands change. When an eagle hits 40 years of age it goes through a rebirth. It cleans off all of the old, and gets a new beak, feathers, and talons. We also have to be born again. The savior said, "Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God." We all have to be baptized to make it back to our Heavenly Father.  Third the eagle understands commitment. When an eagle starts it's flight it sets it's end destination. The eagle will continue to fly until it reaches it's destination. I love this part because he said that the eagle will even continue to fly through the worst of storms to get where it wants to go. This compares to us as often we are asked by The Lord to fight through hard times. He asks us to stand for what we believe. He asks us to do this because he knows it is what will give us strength. I absolutely loved this talk and I am sorry for the lengthy email but I felt like that is what I needed to share this week. I hope and pray that someone will gain strength from this. That it will give someone the guidance that they are searching for.

    I know that God is by my side. He is protecting me, He is teaching with me, and He is giving me the strength that I need to continue forward every single day. I know that this gospel is true. I have a testimony of the Book of Mormon. I have read it and it will only invite us to improve ourselves. If you don't know this for yourself, READ IT. I know that Jesus Christ suffered for me and that because of him I have the chance everyday to try and be like Him. If you don't know that for yourself, PRAY ABOUT IT. I know that the power of the priesthood is real. I have seen it work in peoples lives as the have been blessed and promised blessings. I know that the spirit inspires us and guides us in every decision that we make. If you don't know this for yourself, LOOK FOR IT. I promise all of you that as you grow closer to your Heavenly Father through your diligence, He will bless you and help you overcome the challenges that you face everyday. I promise you this as a representative of Jesus Christ and in His name. I love you all with all my heart. My prayers are with you! I love my mission!

Elder Maxwell

So many amazing things have happened...

Sunshine Psalm​:)​ (explanation from mom:  I requested that he send us some sunshine for our Wednesday activity for the Young Women this week as the forecast was for rain. So he sent a sunshine psalm and the directions for making it work) 

 

  Which truth shineth. This is the light of Christ. As also he is in the sun, and the light of the sun, and the power thereof by which it was made. And the light which shineth, which giveth you light, is through him who enlighteneth your eyes, which is the same light that quickeneth your understandings; Which light proceedeth forth from the presence of God to fill the immensity of space— That which is of God is light; and he that receiveth light, and continueth in God, receiveth more light; and that light groweth brighter and brighter until the perfect day. 

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....​This is from D&C sections 88 and 50. From my understanding the light comes from Christ. The light lives within us and as we continue in Christ that light will grow brighter and brighter until the perfect day. So this time to get that perfect day you all must continue in Christ. Let your light shine! You can make even the darkest of places have light.

   I want to jump right in to writing about the week because so many amazing things have happened and I want to have time to give all of the details.

 

   First was last Tuesday, we had the first lesson or the Restoration with one of our investigators. It was a super awesome lesson and the spirit was definitely guiding what we were saying. After the lesson we asked him if he had any questions or if anything really stood out to him. He then recounted back to us the Joseph Smith story and he told us that it was amazing that a 14 year old boy got to see God and Jesus Christ. He said that Joseph must have been doing something right if God chose him to bring back his church. This is so true. Usually we have investigators who don't want to believe that someone could see God and Jesus Christ but this time it was perfect. I know that the spirit testified to him and told him that this message is true. At the end of the lesson we invited him to read Alma 32 in the Book of Mormon and he said that he would read it after we left. It is so wonderful to see someone accept the gospel so quickly and with so much enthusiasm. The Lord truly is preparing people. 

 

   We did some more service for Eleanor this week and as we were talking when we first went over there she said that ever since we came and helped her, her entire life style has changed. She said that she has been more confident and more anxious to get up and get things done. She loves having us come over and help her out. Next time we want to bring up the gospel with her and ask her about her religious beliefs and hopefully invite her to come to church next Sunday. She is so nice and so open to letting us be there to help her out. I really enjoy the opportunity we have to go and do service for a complete stranger. It has been such a cool experience. I love seeing the joy someone gets when things start to look how they wanted them to look. So cool!

 

   Then to finish up the amazing week we got to have a third lesson with one of our investigators and we had been meeting with him and his member friend at the members home but the member was out of town so we invited him to come to the church and have a lesson with us in the chapel. The spirit was so strong and the lesson was perfect. We were all sharing scriptures and they were all connected and the spirit was definitely guiding us all. I believe that the spirit in the chapel was confirming to him that it was true. I could see the joy on his face and his excitement as the spirit was with all of us during the lesson. He is so spiritual and had a very good sensitivity for the spirit. So many wonderful blessings that he has had in his life. The light of Christ really is in everyone!

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  I have seen so many blessings in the work as we have been obedient and as we strive to do everything we can to improve each day.​ I hope that all of you can enjoy the beautiful weather that you will be having this week and I hope everyone stays safe on the Young Women's adventure day! Sounds slightly less exciting than a High Adventure!

 

Sounds like everyone is doing well! I miss you all and hope you all have a wonderful week! I love you!

Elder Maxwell