British Area Authority Seventy

“To ask an Englishman to talk about himself is a difficult assignment since natural reserve must be overcome,” says Elder John Maxwell of Retford, Nottinghamshire, England, a member of the Europe North Area Presidency. He added, “My wife said that the process was akin to extracting teeth.” Still, as a member of the Royal Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain, he knows a great deal about relieving pain.

Elder Maxwell earned a bachelor of pharmacy degree from the University of London and a doctor of philosophy degree from the University of Bradford. He is retired as the director of pharmacy for the Rotherham Health Authority and is now a senior lecturer in pharmacy at the University of Nottingham.

In his late teens, growing up in a mining village in South Yorkshire, he considered a career as a minister in the Church of England, attending regularly as a choir member. Then Latter-day Saint missionaries knocked on the Maxwells’ door. After several months of investigation, he joined the Church in 1957, the only member of his family to be baptized.

The next year Brother Maxwell left for London to commence his undergraduate studies. There he told his friend Elizabeth Sheila Wright about the Church; she and her mother were soon baptized. After Elizabeth and John finished their studies, they were married and then sealed in the London Temple.

Elder and Sister Maxwell have four living children and eight grandchildren; two children died in infancy. “The influence of the gospel is profound, and permeated all our decisions and thinking, particularly when times were difficult,” says Elder Maxwell. “We have always tried to hold family home evenings, family councils, and family prayers, and we involve our children in the programs of the Church. Our children and grandchildren are a particular delight to us. We are grateful for them, for their faith and testimonies, and for the love they show to us and to each other.”