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.
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| 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.
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| the snow is melting!!!! |
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.
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| 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
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