April 27, 2015

Dear Family,

Thank you so much for your letters and for your prayers. They really do make a difference and I thank you all in particular those that make the effort to write each week. This past week was one of the most successful weeks of my mission. Especially for a transfer week where a lot of missionaries just slack off and don't even work because they are either going home, going to a new area, or being around those that are moving. Nevertheless, we worked our tails off this week with finding and teaching. If I were to compare this past transfer to my first three months in Cole Harbour I would tell you that things are certainly better than when I got here. When I got here we weren't teaching anyone, not even a less-active member. Not that it's about the numbers, but in just reviewing the numbers we are working 500% better in our finding. My first transfer here we only found one person to teach, Lana, and the same thing happened my second transfer-we found Sandy. Just an update for any of you that were wondering about those two, Lana has gone MIA and no one can get a hold of her and Sandy we dropped because she was using us for service. Only teaching two people in three months was not fun and in particular not fun as a zone leader.

Nevertheless, like the sons of Mosiah we have been blessed to find softened hearts and greater success this past transfer. In total we found five new investigators. Some we are still teaching and others we dropped (We dropped Helena and Michael because they aren't willing to make commitments they're just really nice). Now we are teaching Alex who is progressing greatly and Steven is just on fire. This whole time in Cole Harbour has been a period of testing. A test of my faith and a test of my physical strength. I knew that when I was being transferred from St. Stephen to Cole Harbour that the devil didn't want me to make it. He caused me (Well it could have been a joint effort) to spin off the road twice in a freezing snow storm. I think of Joseph Smith being attacked by Satan before Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ appeared to him to usher in the Restoration. In the end, Cole Harbour is stronger than when I found it. It has been so hard and it continues to be hard, but I believe that we have come very far. Key indicator wise we did 100% better than the previous two transfers this transfer. I think now is the time to really make my mark here in Cole Harbour. Thank you so much for your prayers and for your love. This has been a group effort so I'm very grateful for you.

This previous week was amazing. Just a good quality, hit the streets, find, teach and baptize focused week. After Preparation Day concluded last week, Elder Ray and I went tracting on Elm st. We said a prayer to find someone, grabbed a Book of Mormon and made our way through the street. Like most tracting experiences in Cole Harbour we faced a lot of straight rejection, lots of nice people, and lots of interesting people. We had been at it for about an hour when finally we knocked on one door. I hate to tell you this story because usually I'm an advocate for working with the members over everything but there is something about finding solid people by yourself that every missionary wants. This doesn't mean that you can think that missionary work is just up to the missionaries to do and that this happens all the time. Nevertheless, we knocked on this door and this sweet Filipino family opened up the door, saw our name tags and invited us in. They grabbed two chairs for us and gathered all of the children in the house to listen. 

I for one was blown away at how fast the whole thing happened. I didn't say much in the contact. I wasn't persuasive or convincing or asking questions that would enable me to find an interest level. I just contacted. We taught the Pasquels a short lesson about the Book of Mormon and they invited us back for Friday. Carmil, the wife, said the closing prayer and took our copy of the Book of Mormon. Elder Ray and I left and we could not understand what happened. The first thing that came to my mind was "ARE YOU FLIPPING KIDDING ME IT IS THIS EASY IN THE PHILIPPINES TO FIND FAMILIES TO TEACH?!?!?!?!?!" And then Elder Ray and I said a prayer of gratitude to Heavenly Father. Now, I'm sure it's not that easy in the Philippines, but I was just amazed at how simple the whole situation happened. Definitely a blessing from having a brother that served there. So yes, we found a fantastic family from the Philippines that lives in Cole Harbour. The Pasquels are awesome.

Another great thing that happened this past week was we taught Steven twice. He is committed to reading the Book of Mormon with us this whole transfer so he's doing the 12 pages a day. Believe me, we tried for putting him on date again, but he doesn't know if he'll stay in Nova Scotia if he doesn't have sufficient YSA friends. He really just needs friends here and he'll stay and join the church. Not a significant hurdle to overcome but trying to get YSA in Cole Harbour to his lessons when all of them are writing exams is like pulling teeth. We had a great lesson talking about the tree of life and reading the scriptures. I realized that my teaching could really improve. I have gotten so used to contacting people and teaching in a way that is trying to find out if people are actually interested that I don't know how to teach someone that is actually interested. You would think that it would be easier, but for some reason it's not.

Alex is really progressing as well. We taught him on Saturday about the Plan of Salvation. He's the type of person that I know how to teach not that he isn't interested but that he just lacks a lot of spiritual understanding so I have to teach very simply. I've realized that applying the points in "Teaching People without a Christian Background" in Preach My Gospel is actually very useful because although many people say that they are catholic, they don't actually understand who God and Jesus Christ are and why they are important. I couldn't really reason with Alex's Catholic background, but he is always so willing to make commitments to read. At the end we invited him to pray and HE PRAYED! It was a great prayer and slowly but slowly he is progressing. Another exciting thing was that he came to church! I wish that the members would have gone up to him and greeted him more proactively, but he loved church. It was a special area broadcast for the North America North East Area. Great broadcast. Elder Andersen and Elder Hales spoke along with Sister Reeves. Just classic talks about repentance and missionary work. They also did a brief slideshow of some of the converts in our area. They didn't really mention the Canadian parts of the area, but it was great to hear some of the stories about the saints in New England.

I invite you all to read the Book of Mormon with me. 12 pages a day for 6 weeks.

HURRAH FOR ISRAEL!

Love,

Elder McGuire 

Cease to Be Idle

Dear Family,

This past week was a great week. Every time I get to P-Day I think, where did the week even go? As a young missionary you just think like it's going to be hard all of the time and it's going to be so long and difficult. Two years on your feet preaching the gospel all day. We got transfer letters yesterday. I will be remaining in Cole Harbour with Elder Ray to complete his training. This is the longest I will have ever been in an area and it's unique because I'll skype home from the exact same spot I did five months ago. Can you believe that I've almost been out a year? I can't. In the gospel reference manual 'True to the Faith.' We read a great section about agency.

Elder Ray gearing up for another transfer with his favourite trainer in Cole Harbour :D

Really you and I have to make a choice. We have a choice to choose eternal life. It's literally up to us to choose if we are going to be with Heavenly Father forever. Have we made that choice? Do our daily choices reflect our choice to live with God forever? There is an interesting balance between faith and works, justice and mercy, grace and effort, in the scriptures. Our works reflect our faith. The mercy we are given is a just amount of mercy. We obtain grace after all we can do. True to the Faith states that we are to not idle away our time, that we should cease to be idle. We should not blame others for difficult circumstances or make excuses for lack of progress in our own lives. It is said that our greatest hindrance to whom we will betomorrow is our perception of who we were yesterday. We literally get to decide our fate. Our fate is not determined by Heavenly Father (although He has created a perfect plan for eternal happiness) nor is it determined by the devil. Our fate is not determined by our family situation whether good or bad nor is it decided by how many church callings we have or if we serve as a bishop or Relief Society President. No, we get to choose if we live with God forever. We are able to make this choice because our Heavenly Father gave us a will. Interesting enough everything in the entire universe is God's except for one thing. Our will. The scriptures illustrate this point clearly. 

 the snow is melting!!!!

Wherefore, men are free according to the flesh; and all things are given them which are expedient unto man. And they are free to choose liberty and eternal life... 2 Nephi 2:27

This previous week we continued to follow through with our goals and plans. It was a great week of contacting people. One would assume that if you talked to over 300 people that at least one would be a potential investigator. Not the case. I'm usually capable of facing rejection even lots of it one after the other, but this week just seemed different. I think I really know why I'm in the Maritimes. It's giving me a taste of how my Heavenly Father feels about me. Explaining everything so clearly and then just dumbfounded when people still lack understanding. We found a great new place to street contact in Eastern Passage. Eastern Passage is kind of like a quasi-California beech town. It has a boardwalk with all of these little shops and loads of people are out walking on the boardwalk. Contacting there is like contacting in downtown Halifax. Hundreds of people all over the place. We talked to about 60 people in half an hour. So much straight rejection I was getting pretty depressed that no one would even stop for a gospel conversation much less a normal conversation.

One of the final contacts I had a weaker moment. Most of the contacts with baptists and born-again Christians around here don't go that well to begin with, but I was out of patience with these people. It is so difficult to keep my head level and be patient when it's like I'm the mayor of rejectionville, Nova Scotia. This man was going off about not having to go to church to keep the sabbath day holy and grace and a bunch of anti that he had read about the Book of Mormon to where finally I just lost it with the guy. In a fit of anger I threw every scripture I knew at him from the bible. Ripping apart every concept he had about prophets, priesthood, and works and faith. For those of you keeping score, trying to prove every bit of LDS doctrine using the bible is not what Christ would do. The bible is more of a battleground than common ground. Yes I had taught this man the scriptures (One of my zingers "I can't believe I have to tell you to read your own book!"), but I had done it with the wrong intentions. I'm not proud of that contact. Satisfying my pride and yelling at this guy wasn't what Christ would have done. I should have just testified of the Book of Mormon and walked away. Need to work on my patience.

We found two new investigators this past week. Helena and Michael are a mother and son that we found while knocking. It blows my mind how people are found by knocking. It is so ineffective and yet it still produces people to teach. Helena is a little bit harder to teach than Michael. She's very nice, but very catholic. She fed us a whole meal that was amazing. Michael is her 12 year old son who is very willing to learn and read the Book of Mormon. Helena likes to learn but I'm really sure her whole intent level with meeting with us. She does keep commitments and so does Michael but teaching her just feels strange. Michael is awesome. He told me that he wants to be a missionary when he grows up. Getting people to come to church is like pulling teeth.

Sadly Steven was very sick and couldn't meet this past week and couldn't go to church and Alex was slammed with exams to write so we couldn't meet with either of them. I do think our finding could still improve. We have consistently found new people each week this transfer, but they aren't the most solid. I think now we can focus on finding more solid people like Steven. We do have a pretty sound weekly plan that should produce people to teach. I really have to thank my mission for teaching me how to plan. I had no idea how to plan before my mission and I think I am just learning how to do it now. I wish you all knew how amazing our church organization is. I love being a missionary and being enveloped in the gospel. Just the way lds.org runs amazes me. How people can send in their information for missionaries to track them down and then we get directions on how to get there sent to us. Our church is not only amazing it is true.

This is Dave. I don't think I even mentioned him in the past, but he was taught in Cole Harbour when I first got here. The sisters had taught him a little bit and we were trading off appointments with him. He wasn't really going anywhere when we were teaching him, but he moved in to Dartmouth and things really picked up for him. Yes we do baptize people in the CHM

HURRAH FOR ISRAEL!!!

Love,

Elder McGuire

p.s. Ask Bishop Fisher the areas where he's served. I've always wondered where he has been

An Effective Advocate and Messenger of the Truth

Dear Family,

Two things: Goals, plans. That is how baptisms are obtained. This past week was an amazing week. I think the best way someone could prepare for a mission is to learn how to plan to achieve a goal. It's not enough to write down a goal and hope that it will happen. The plans are where the rubber meets to road. Goals and plans are of divine nature. Our Heavenly Father has a goal and he has a plan. His goal is found in Moses 1:39. He desires that all of His children receive eternal life and immortality. What a goal. His plan to achieve this goal is called the Plan of Happiness. If we desire to achieve anything in life, whether it be in work, church, repentance, or our hobbies, we ought to have a meaningful goal that will make a difference and a sound plan.

President Leavitt hammered us during MLC considering the gold and silver standards-what is expected key indicator wise from President Leavitt each week. He has trained extensively on using the area book, the wall maps, the member book, and our planners to achieve the gold and silver standards. To be honest I am the only leader in the whole mission that hasn't hit the standard ever. That's not something to be proud of. After some serious pondering and studying and training, this past week we had a sound plan that actually helped us achieve our goals. The result-we were one on-date investigator from reaching the silver standard. I don't thing many of you know how big this is because this is huge. Reaching it every week I am still getting there, but we were so close this week. Ridiculously close.

In MLC President Leavitt trained about weekly planning. If we want to achieve something we have to have a plan. We can't just go out and say "Well Lord bless me with achieving my goals." It doesn't work that way. The Lord is logical. He has a plan, he remembers his plan, and he follows his plan. President Leavitt gave the training that the key indicator goals we have must only be 20% of the names we actually must have to achieve our goals. This meant that the standard for each companionship for finding new investigators each week is 2. To be honest, I have been in Cole Harbour for 4 months and I have only taught about 5 people. That is certainly not 2 new people a week. So we wrote down ten people who we thought had potential to become new investigators.

From that point, Elder Ray and I went to our wall map and identified the former investigators around these selected individuals and we wrote them down to follow-up on. We also identified the less-active members to follow up on and the active members to follow-up on. This ensured that if we had appointments around the people that could potentially become new investigators that we could save time by being in the same area. With this large list of people to follow up on we knew that if we didn't have more names to work on we would never achieve our goals. 

We began to whittle down the list until we found those who would become new investigators. The first man we had identified to become a new investigator was Dustin who wanted to change his life and get off drugs. We had an appointment set up and everything with a member coming, but unfortunately Dustin backed out right before we got there because he doesn't like the church's stance on gay marriage. So close. Not to worry, we had 9 other people that could potentially investigate the church. The next two people was Richard and Madhu-referrals from a less-active couple we are working on reactivating to get sealed. Sadly Richard only wanted to bash, but hey we got in the door and testified about the Book of Mormon. Now we had 7 people left to follow-up on. The next one was Mark. Mark was about to be baptized 3 years ago but backed out at the last minute. We phoned him and set up an appointment. Had a member coming. Unfortunately his parents called us very upset that we were coming by. His baptist mum and dad totally ripped into us and the church. That was not a fun phone call. It seemed like all of our potential investigators were falling through and there was no way that we were going to get one new investigator or even two new investigators.

We continued contacting the rest of the people on our list. After some member visits and less-active lessons we had eventually gotten through some more names who weren't interested. We only had three people left to follow-up on and it was Saturday afternoon. They weren't picking up the phone (so they are still on our list right now to track down) and we were feeling discouraged especially after the phone call from Mark's parents. We decided to take a break for the night and do some tracting. After talking to about 40 uninterested people we had an hour left in the night and so we did some updating in the area book.

Then come Sunday I knew we hadn't found anyone and we had followed up on even more formers around those whom we thought would investigate. Feeling pretty depressed the night before I couldn't sleep and just sat there at my desk crying. I had no clue how we were going to accomplish the simple silver standard that President Leavitt had said only 5 days earlier that it was the easiest thing to accomplish. It's the strangest thing on a mission. You are so stressed out all the time and you talk to a lot of angry people each day that you just get used to it.

In tears, I got on my knees and was so upset with my Heavenly Father. That he had put me in a cold and boring place where the people's hearts were so hard. The same feelings before my mission about feeling inadequate because of my call began to creep in and I felt as though I understood nothing about God, His gospel, or even the atonement. I expressed that I knew nothing of how works and grace or mercy and justice even worked and that it was impossible for me to find anyone. Nothing is more frustrating than obeying a commandment (this training on planning) and not seeing blessings. But that's not how God works. After an angry prayer I went to bed. We keep God's commandments because we love him. Certainly blessings can and do come. God is logical.

No worries. Canada in April. Spring is not as bad as winter I will say that much

After a pretty depressing Sunday we had three hours left in the week and I felt like God had abandoned Cole Harbour. I could deal in the previous weeks not finding anyone to teach and just getting used to it. But this time was different. I had followed training as best as I could. I had seen success (Appointments and getting into doors). But we were still short. We were a new investigator, a member present lesson, an investigator at church, and an on-date investigator away from hitting "the easiest standard of them all." I knew I had failed. I had done my very best and had fallen short. 

We are all like this. We strive to do our best. Even when we have done our absolute best, we fall short. How is this even fair? Why keep the commandments at all if the world and the devil are just going to throw them back at our face? 

We had one more appointment that night with a less-active sister and I felt that I couldn't make an impact in anyone's life. The beautiful thing about the atonement is that it makes up for the rest of our efforts. You will fall short. You will feel as though you have failed. You may feel like you don't even have a testimony that this is just all made up by people that want to govern our lives because that's the nature of people.

Grace is the greatest blessing the atonement granted for us. I had done all I could. We do all we can. Then grace comes into our lives and we wonder why we had even doubted in the first place.

I saw the hand of God last night with one hour to go before the proselyting week ended. In our lesson with this less-active sister, her cousin from Labrador had just moved in to stay with her family. Steven is from the North Shore of Labrador close to Greenland. He came downstairs to listen to our lesson and then relayed the greatest miracle I have ever heard. Steven went to the YSA branch that Sunday morning. He had loved every second of it and he said he wants to be a member. He began reading the first book of Nephi all afternoon and was so happy to see us when we stopped by. We taught Steven with this less-active sister there. He wants to meet three times a week and he wants to join. The only reason why he wasn't put on date was because he doesn't know if he'll get called back to Labrador and if he does there would be no point to being a member out there (There's only 4 members in Labrador and 3 of them need to be excommunicated). But Steven is the real deal. Prepared by the Lord.

I know that the atonement and grace are real.

HURRAH FOR ISRAEL!

Love,

Elder McGuire

Our apartment has a pool table! This was last P day

 

His Grace is Sufficient

Dear Family,

I am so pleased that you all enjoyed conference. Conference is like the Super Bowl for missionaries. This particular conference was very well done. I particularly enjoyed President Uchtdorf's talk about grace. That shattered my entire ideas about grace and repentance and obedience. So powerful. I have misinterpreted that scripture for years. After does not mean because. That statement brought tears to my eyes. We don't earn our way into heaven. We become converted in this life and perfected in the next. I don't really have too many thoughts about grace because I realize that I don't entirely understand that yet so I'll be studying that this week. I really liked Sister Burton's talk as well. I don't know about you, but her tone was just very powerful and commanding. Not that I don't enjoy a good talk by Sister Esplin, but Sister Burton laid it down. I don't usually watch or read from the women's session, but I wanted to start reading more of Sister Burton's talks. Conference is such a special time for the church. We hear all of these great talks and then we go home and keep doing what we've always been doing. How can we do that?

Conference is not some movie or distraction from our regular activities. If you were an accountant and you went to a workshop on how to be a better accountant wouldn't you apply what you learned in the work shop? I think too often it is said in prayers "Please bless us that we'll be able to take what we learned and apply it to our daily lives." The question is "How?" How are you going to apply Elder Nielson's talk about rescuing less-active members or Elder Holland's talk about the atonement and the fall? The bridge between theory and reality is goals. Elder Nielson tells us to go after less-active members. What could be a goal for us to accomplish that? A goal involves a number and a deadline. This isn't some business thing, but President Monson said that when performance is measured performance improves. Our goals have to be geared towards making a difference as President Uchtdorf put it. We could say that we want to rescue 2 less-active members by August 1st, 2015. Elder Nielson has given us instructions on how that is to be accomplished. The bridge between theory and reality is goals, plans, and holding ourselves accountable. I promise that as you prayerfully ponder a conference talk and set a real goal then you will make a difference and come closer to your Saviour.

Quote of the week:

*Contacting a referral (The member didn't know the exact address so he gave us the street to knock and we had to knock a few houses before finding these people)

Elder McGuire: Hey how are you doing today?

Contact: What's up?

Elder McGuire: We're missionaries from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Have you heard about that church before?

Contact: Yes, give me your address

*Elder Ray takes out a pass-along card and starts to write the address of the church on it

Contact: No I mean where you live

Elder McGuire (Joking): Well we live in Dartmouth, and I guess you could come over but we don't have too many chairs and we're making Kraft Dinner.

Contact (Unimpressed): I don't come knocking on your door and you shouldn't come knocking on mine! Please don't come back!

So where do we go from here?

I need to work on my jokes. Most of my stories are tracting stories, but hey they are good tracting stories. We had a decent week. I'm a little frustrated with the zone, but things theoretically should improve. I went old school last night and collected district totals for key indicators and talked with the district leaders about what they'll be training on in district meeting. The zone only found one new investigator this past week. I can't really blame them because I didn't find anyone to teach this past week. I think it really just comes down to planning it out how we are going to get one.

I like the metro of Halifax because it forces me to do real work. In southern New Brunswick where I could find a lot of flaky people to teach I really wasn't learning anything. How to actually accomplish real work. We had an excellent leadership meeting about finding people to teach. President Leavitt is a genius when it comes to planning. He has devised this system where we have all of the members, less-actives, and formers on a large map of our area. Say when we have a dinner appointment or when we get a referral we just check the surrounding dots around that area and we are able to visit more people that we are supposed to each day. It really helps reduce travel time and we're able to speak with more people when we focus on just one area of Cole Harbour. Not driving all over the place looking for certain formers or less-actives. President Leavitt said that the head trainer for the missionary department said that chapter 8 of Preach My Gospel is the most important chapter out of the whole book. In the point 10 of weekly planning we are supposed to be setting goals and making plans to find people to teach. This includes identifying people with potential to actually investigate. Then we work around that area where that person lives so that we reduce travel time. You would be amazed how effective President Leavitt's system works. In the past I would look for all of these less-actives that needed information or a particular former I may have called and left a message for. Anyways, I was wasting a lot of time. 

For example on Thursday night in two hours we contacted three less-actives, one member of the ward council, a part-member family that wants to feed us, and a former that wants to join the church but is facing a lot of opposition from her family. In addition to that we spoke with about 50 people for that day. Super effective. We have also gone through the ward and divided the members according to who would be better to work with them-elders or sisters. This ensures that all of our member records are up to date and we aren't wasting time copying records that we don't need. My next plan is to swap area books with the sisters and put eachother's formers on our maps so that we see even more people to visit. Similar to how we have split things up with the members. It's not like I'm not trying to find people to teach. I just don't think I did it in an effective way.

Yes, I can give myself a haircut

I have also noticed that university students are way more open to meeting with missionaries. The key was to find when and where all of the students from Dalhousie were in Cole Harbour. Unfortunately we don't have a university in Cole Harbour, but we found that Cole Harbour Road is very busy between the hours of 4 to 6 because that's when all of the students are getting off the bus from Halifax and walking back to their apartments in Cole Harbour. I'm still determining effective uses for time in the early morning. Street contacting is decent at 10am but the other hours are a little slow. We were blessed this past week to receive 5 member referrals. One family that we were referred to was an east indian family that we contacted in between sessions yesterday. I love people from that part of the world. They just want to know all about your family and if you have food to eat. Richard and Madhu are actually from Bangladesh and they have been searching. They invited us right in. I was blown away. This was maybe the second time I have ever gotten in to a door on my mission. We are going back tomorrow to pick them up as new investigators. Elder Ray and I decided to fast for new investigators. I wanted to fast until we got one but I couldn't physically do it. Nevertheless, we were blessed with Richard and Madhu.

Go to the temple!

HURRAH FOR ISRAEL!

Love,

Elder McGuire