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Dear Family,
As always, thank you so much for your letters. I love hearing about you fulfilling your callings. That makes the lives of your missionaries a million times easier. This past week just flew by so fast. It feels like just yesterday I was writing you about my previous week. The words of prophets are true. When you go to work, time just flies by. I had a great week and received a good amount of personal revelation. One thing unique to our church is that we continue to ask questions. Plenty of people that I talk to on the street who are atheists bring up very valid points that the reason why they don't like religion is because it assumes to have all the answers already. The more and more I talk to people, the more I learn that Christ's gospel is for everyone. We are encouraged to ask questions: to study and pray about the things we are learning. We can't receive revelation until we ask ourselves a question. That is how the restoration worked. When apostasy started to happen, people stopped asking questions and religion was used to control a lot of people and wreak havoc. Christ withdrew His gospel and His priesthood because people weren't asking questions or receiving revelation. Then finally, a young boy (young boys are filled with questions) asked God which church he should join. Finally! A question was asked to Heavenly Father once more! The Glory of God is intelligence. Heaven is like a large library and when we ask questions and study, the librarian-the Holy Ghost-gives us the answers from the Heavenly library. There is so much to learn!!!!
Quote of the Week:
Elder McGuire and Elder Wolvers contacting a potential investigator. They couldn't get to the door of the house because people were blocking the way with their truck.
*Man rummaging through his truck as Elder McGuire and Elder Wolvers walk up
Elder McGuire: Do you need any help?
Random rude man: Who the *profanity are you?
Elder McGuire: Pardon me? (I say pardon all the time, I have become a Canadian)
Random rude man: Who the *profanity are you?
Elder Wolvers: We're missionaries for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
RRM: Don't need ya here (The lower-class in the Maritimes have like a Scottish and redneck accent), beat the feet boys
Elder McGuire: Why would we do that?
*RRM expresses just about every profane word
RRM: Just leave!
Elder McGuire: Why are you upset?
RRM: Beat the feet!
*RRM starts to approach the young missionaries
Elder McGuire: Touch me and you'll regret it
*Incredibly RRM backs up and gets back into his truck and drives away. It was like Abinadi or Nephi: "Touch me not!"
So anyways, don't worry about me. Milltown is an interesting and difficult area, but God protects and loves His missionaries. I feel the presence of the Spirit each time I open my mouth to share the Gospel. At times, it is frustrating for me to hear of the missionaries in larger cities having lots of success and not experiencing the same success. Dad, you sent me this a while ago from PMG CH. 1. The measure of a missionary's success is their commitment to invite others to come unto Christ. Even when people scream and yell profanities at me, I am a successful missionary, because I invite them to learn more about the restored Gospel that blesses not only my life, but my loved one's lives. We succeed when we invite.
We had some great interviews with President Leavitt over Skype the other day. He does a great job of thinking creatively. He expressed that ideally the missionaries in Eastern Canada will move on from knocking to where they use other resources to get baptisms. In other missions in Canada, such as the Manitoba mission, the members do a lot of the finding and missionaries use facebook to contact people. There might be some grand experience behind tracting, but to be honest. I've never gotten an investigator through knocking. I've gotten them through member referrals and Facebook.I never thought that Facebook stalking would be a missionary skill. President Leavitt has asked that we spend time on Facebook each day contacting people. Very fruitful! Give your missionaries people to look up on Facebook! They love it!!!!
President Leavitt is hilarious because the man is in his late 60s and is schooling all of these young missionaries how to use Facebook to find people. As you may know, we do role-plays as missionaries and President did a role-play with us over Facebook. We then followed up with all of the potential investigators in the area book and now our teaching pool is increasing. God has given us inspired tools that if used properly, will reap baptisms in Atlantic Canada. Now I am planning on using Facebook every day and knocking only when there really is nothing to do. We can even teach lessons over Facebook to people that live far away and Skype them as well. President just doesn't want his missionaries doing mindless things all day. We are here to teach. The members are here to find. I'm looking forward to the future of missionary work, because we had a very productive week.
Speaking of contacting people with technology. For crying out loud people! Answer your phone! I have been thinking about why we haven't been able to get many investigators lately and that is because we aren't following-up with them by making contact with them. Now when we stop people on the street I ask them if they're on Facebook. I think the future of missionary work will be a lot like regular life, but replacing it with gospel centered things. That is what our lives in Heaven will be like. So the other day, we asked one young man, Sebastian if he would help us forSunday afternoon. We usually go tracting with him for two hours and end up with doors slammed in our face. This time we sat down at the computer and for two hours he just gave us people to look up and contact. We got 10 potential investigators in two hours. Two hours of tracting wouldn't have gotten us that. I know there's somewhat of a stigma that tracting builds faith and God wants your life to be hard because then you'll learn. That's not the deal. God gives us challenges absolutely for our betterment. But don't put your head down and take the punches. Get up and solve the problem and have fun and be productive. I look forward to using the different tools we have.
Using the different tools we have is exhausting. You actually have to think about people and their needs! Usually when tracting we do the same door approach for three hours, find no one to teach, go back home and have dinner and then say to ourselves "Woohooo missionary work!" Nothing happens in missionary work until you find someone to teach. And that is what we are doing. Pondering over people that members give us and thinking about their needs and how to teach them is real missionary work.
Talking about real missionary work, I know that I have aforementioned that I want new less-actives to work with. I found the ticket. While contacting people using Facebook I thought of how can we get less-actives back to church. Making people feel like they're needed. So there I was calling a less-active named Greg who had given up on religion and was quite rude to me over the phone. Nevertheless, Greg loves computers. So a few days later I messaged him on Facebook telling him "I'm a new missionary and I want to learn how to use Facebook more effectively, can you help me out Greg?" He then set up an appointment right then and there. I feel like I can reactivate anyone now.
I love you all thank you for your letters!!!!
Hurrah for Israel!!!
Elder McGuire
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