Monday, May 18, 2015

The Lord Has Need of Willing Men

Dear Family,





Could I just be the first one to say that your letters were exceptional this week. Thank you for telling me about your families and what you've been up to. You all look so happy. The family love that I can see motivates me in a way that nothing else seems to. You show the model for what I am trying to make happen in the lives of those whom we are working with. So keep up the great work. The Family is of God. Our Heavenly Father has a family therefore it just makes sense for us to have a family. God gave us families to help us become what He wants us to be. Salvation is a family affair and you all are headed in the right direction.

This past week was one of the most successful weeks I've ever had on my mission. It has come down to using time wisely. If we have goals and plans then we will naturally just get what the Lord wants us to do done. I had a large revelation this past week or maybe it was confirming revelation. I can't remember what I have told people from time to time. Anyways, I realized something significant this week. People are usually home between the hours of 3 and 9. This means that I have to be out on the streets at least by 3 to do traditional contacting and proselyting. Now comes the question in my mind, what do I do from the hours of 10 to 3? I have to be making phone calls and gathering information about specific less-actives and former investigators that I want to teach this week. This past week was the first time I tried out this method that came to me as I was studying from chapter 8 of Preach My Gospel. We had an amazing week.

One thing that I've been developing is something I've termed a 'contact run.' It really helps me figure out the city and I'm able to kill two birds with one stone. We pick a point A to start with. Maybe a member we have a dinner appointment with or a less-active lesson. Then we select a point B that's in the same area but far enough away that we can hit other former investigators and less-actives on the way there. This has proved very beneficial. We are street contacting in between stop-by visits and the results are astounding. We taught seven less-active members this way where in the past I would only see two less-actives and only if I had an appointment with them.

The streets of Lunenburg. Gorgeous place
In terms of our less-active work, we have got some great members that are making some progress. I won't tell you their names because they are dealing with some addictions but it's amazing to watch the atonement work in their lives. I'll tell you about Jerry though that isn't his real name. Jerry has severe depression and has a hard time dealing with drugs and pornography. He is really turning his life around though. He's been reading and praying every day and hasn't views porn in more than a month. Incredible. Coming to church is still a challenge for him because he doesn't have a ride, but in our lesson talking about faith and Ether 12 the Spirit was just so strong. He gave us a few referrals even though they didn't work out. Jerry is coming back slowly but steadily. It's amazing to watch it all happen.

Another less-active that we are working with whom we'll call Susan really opened up with us this past week. She brought up every concern under the sun about the church. From tattoos to gay marriage to the temple to Christ actually existing. In the past it was just an awkward lesson where we would follow-up about her reading or praying and trying to find out why she wasn't doing that. She has about 6 main concerns and we are taking on one concern per week. The Lord has commanded that we seek learning by study and by faith. I've printed off a lot of material frommormonsandgays.org and we're going back this Thursday for dinner. Less-active work is missionary work. Things are taking a turn for the better.

LaHave River
We've also been visiting lot of members either through dinner appointments or stopping by on a contact run. The way the members reacted in Cole Harbour to referral asking made me stop asking because my relationship with some of the members would have been hindered. Can't believe asking for someone to try would offend someone but apparently it just does. For the most part the members we asked really took it seriously and gave us great people to contact. We got eight names to contact and out of all of them one man told us to come back. His name is Horst and he is from Germany. Straight up German. We could hardly understand each other but we are going back to teach him on Tuesday. I found a copy of Das Buch Mormon in the library that we're going to give to him. 

Another large success this past week was reserving names to take to the temple. We only did about three hours of Family History work but I found eleven people in need of ordinances. Seriously you all could go on familysearch.org right now and probably find some. After an hour of doing record hints I found five. It was a great week for family history work. You would be proud of me Lindsay. I love taking the time to find the information. Take the cover off your hatchets!!

All in all it was a very good week for the work of salvation. Our investigator on date to be baptized has fallen off the face of the earth but other than that I had a great week. Thank you all for your prayers. I am learning so much from being on a mission. I still need to work on my patience but I am coming along. The atonement is real. The truth is on the earth once more.

HURRAH FOR ISRAEL!
The people were mean but the cat was nice. Always can count on the cats

Love,


 Elder McGuire





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Monday, May 11, 2015

Arise O God and Shine

Dear Family,


It was so great to you all on Skype yesterday. Or at least you on the phone through the Skype. I thought that was pretty funny. Thank you all for being there for the call. It means a lot to me to hear from you all each week and it was rewarding to have the whole family there for the call, active and in their Sunday best. Looking back on the call I wish I had more funny and spiritual stories to tell you that can only be explained through talking not typing. I'll have to prepare for the next call in December. I'm especially grateful that Mum and Grandma were there. It's great to have the two mothers that really helped me get on a mission and keep me on a mission. No calling is greater than motherhood. Only Heavenly Father's most chosen spirits are mothers because they are filled with charity from the get-go. So thank you Mum and thank you Grandma. I owe a lot to your example and your teachings. 

One of my favorite things that mum would do on Sunday mornings was put on Mormon Tabernacle Choir. It really brought the Spirit to the house in the morning while everyone got ready for church. Now when driving on my mission, I hear familiar songs that take me back to those mornings where it was Sunday. "People die in bed!" Mum would say. Or my personal favorite "It's 6:30, are you planning on going to Seminary today?" How do I respond to that question? Mum always did her best to teach her children the gospel every day. I remember that year that she had to teach seminary and she would ask for our input on her lessons. Some afternoons I remember coming home and seeing her scriptures and study journal on the table. Make no mistake, our mother has a testimony of the restored gospel of Jesus Christ. Now look at all of us as her children. Would three of her daughters be sealed in the temple for time and all eternity were she not faithful? Would both of her sons have served missions were she not diligent? If you want to know of the grandest and greatest calling in the world, in the church, it's the calling of motherhood. No calling is greater. I love you Mum!
Yes we live in a cabin out in the middle of nowhere

So yes, things are heating up here in Canada. We've got about another month before it starts to snow again. I love the sunshine. I never knew how much I missed it until I didn't get to see it for half the year. One important thing Mum stressed growing up was vitamins. You don't have strength to preach the gospel if you don't have any iron or vitamin D in your system. Vitamin D comes from the sun. Maritimers love to talk about the weather. Especially this winter compared to last winter and this spring compared to last spring. I'd say that's how I start most conversations with people on the street.

Bridgewater is a great little place. In a way it reminds me a lot of St. Stephen. Small town, everyone's related to each other everyone knows the missionaries and where they live. When I was in Cole Harbour, living in Dartmouth, I would meet people that hadn't even heard of the church before. It always shocked me because there's a temple in Cole Harbour. Most of everyone walks in Bridgewater to get places so we can go street contacting fairly often next to the river. The town is split in two by the LaHave river and there are two bridges, not one, in Bridgewater. For the most part people are friendly. They don't brush us off when we go to stop them and they will really talk about anything with us so that's good. I haven't gotten a potential from street contacting in a long time and this time we found three potential investigators just by contacting people down by the river.

Elder O'Brien approves 
Like St. Stephen, we have all of these little towns that are also in our area. There used to be a branch in Liverpool about 30 minutes south of Bridgewater so we go down there about once a week to see members and talk to people on the street. There are a lot of less-active members in Liverpool that don't come to church because they are bitter their branch got shut down. It is a great place to be at. It reminds me of downtown Flagstaff where there's lots of people to talk to in the park.

This area has so much potential to really take off this summer. In our mission we like to create maps that show us where the members, less-active members, and former investigators are living. This way we can make a solid weekly plan of who to get in contact with for the week. We have about 140 former investigators which is twice the size of the formers I had to work with in Cole Harbour. It's nice too that they are fairly close together. Many of you might wonder what we do all day as missionaries. No people are not always home throughout the day or on the street until the afternoon. Out of the 9 hours in a day we have to proselyte, we spend about 7 of those hours hunting down information about people and getting an idea of how to help them. Lots of phone calls and stalking them on Facebook. Then once we start to get appointments and plans created and filled up the real work begins. Only about 10 hours in the week do we spend street contacting and knocking. I sometimes feel like a private investigator. Figuring out where people live, where they go to school, to work, how many kids do they have, where do those kids go to school, and then the same information about the members or less-actives that live around them. It's fun to learn about people and find the most effective way to serve them.

You always need a proper wall map
When I got here we found out that we didn't have the sisters area book to work from (No sisters in Bridgewater this transfer). They had a number of investigators that had consequently been dropped because sisters got transferred. Just after an hour of making calls we had appointments with most of them. We now have 8 investigators, two of them are on date to be baptized in June. It's exciting to actually be working with people that want to join the church. I felt like in Cole Harbour I was hitting my head against a brick wall most of the time. I think in a way I learned a lot about how to be a more effective missionary in Cole Harbour and now I can put those skills to the test here in Bridgewater. The members here love us. We've had a dinner appointment almost every night and the ward council is just amazing. Our ward mission leader personally goes out to each of the members and teaches them principles from The Power of Everyday Missionaries. Bridgewater is the promised land.

HURRAH FOR ISRAEL!

Love,





Gettin it done!
Elder McGuire 
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Monday, May 4, 2015

I'll Go Where You Want Me to Go

Dear Family,

Let's see, where to start. Ultimately I will start with a thank you to all that wrote me this week. Especially to those that faithfully write me. I love hearing about your lives. Your experiences with the gospel. How it blesses your life. This gospel is a gospel of joy of happiness. We are to have joy. One of my favourite sayings comes from a drummer named Scott Johnson. He says that "If you're not having fun, you're doing it wrong." If you feel the gospel to be a burden then you're doing it wrong. Figure it out and have joy. The prophet Nephi put it this way "Adam fell that man might be and men are that they might HAVE JOY." Before I tell you some very big news, I would like to tell you of a parable that hit me this week in a dream.

Tell that primary 9 class that they're awesome
The Parable of the Child on Christmas Morning

I remember every Christmas morning with the family. We would wake up early to get dad and mum up so that dad could go and light the tree and we could open presents. One time Jessica got up at 3 or 4 in the morning to get everyone going and Lindsay laughed at her and told her to go back to sleep. Personally from my perspective I was bummed out that we had to wait a couple more hours to open presents. So good on you Jess, you had your priorities in order. Ultimately we would get mum and dad up, dad would go and light the tree then we had to get our lavish camcorder to film all of us lined up. We've got some great pictures from over the years. Go and look at those, our parents rock. We had to line up in order from youngest to oldest and then make our way to the tree. One year, I remember getting a Rescue Heroes command centre that was also a boat. That was an awesome toy. Mum clearly recognized that I had a passion for Rescue Heroes. I played with that thing all the time. One time I remember I had to take a bath and Jess was in charge and we put the expensive command centre in the bath tub. Smooth move. Hey I thought you were an awesome baby sitter. There were other Christmases where the very routine occurred for the waking up early, lining up, and getting the camcorder charged and rolling. The only difference on occasion was my reaction to different gifts. Sometimes I loved those presents like the command centre. Other times I didn't care much for some presents and didn't use them as much or hardly at all. How sad it may have been for mum and dad or my brother and sisters to watch me not play with something. I remember one time I was upset with a gift that grandma gave me. I don't remember what it was, but I didn't play with it.

An interesting thing about all of the presents given to me is that they were free. They were bought and paid for. I didn't have to pay any of you back or get you gifts of equal value. I simply was presented the gift and had the option of playing with it. This is how our salvation works. Let me tell you all this right now. Write this down. Our salvation is bought and paid for. That was the whole purpose of the atonement. It was because of Christ that we are saved. We are saved by grace. Christ gave us the ultimate gift-salvation. Indeed we are saved because of grace, we are saved because Christ saved us. The gift of salvation is already bought and paid for. Think about that. Your salvation. You in the celestial kingdom is already paid for. It's done. Now the ultimate question you have to ask yourself is "Will I choose to play with the gift?" "Will I choose liberty and eternal life?" Our faith, our repentance, our good works, all of those times we give service to others will not save us. I will point out that that doesn't mean to sit back and say "Whelp I have been saved by grace! No use in doing anything because I've already been saved" Yes you have already been saved. We all have. To say the 'Whelp I've been saved' is like the child on Christmas morning who says "Whelp thanks, this is great" with a disappointed heart. No. The gift of the atonement is ours for the taking. Pick up the toy and play with it. It's for our benefit. It is to make us happy. 


Elder Blum and Elder Ray. Great missionaries that I've served with or around. I will certainly miss them
Now for the big news. I am being transferred to Bridgewater, Nova Scotia in an hour. I am released from training and being a zone leader. I will be a regular missionary. You all are now probably wondering "WHY!?" Well I will tell you why. Before my mission I was naturally a perfectionist and I would get depressed when my current skills were not where I felt they should be. I took counselling for this and worked through most of my problems. Now I have gotten better but I've still got a long way to go. This zone wasn't performing up to my expectation. I felt like a complete stranger when I was training the zone this past Wednesday. I just demanded too much from them. Not to say that they threw me out of leadership-they didn't. The assistants sat in on my zone training and noticed the tension. My zone has struggled for the longest time. I would say that I gave it my best effort, but ultimately I was pessimistic towards the whole situation. I had an interview with President Leavitt and we talked about my history with perfectionism. He said that I do a great job and that the zone does a great job, but I've just got to sort out my expectations for my mission. I'll be honest, I've never really thought about my actual expectations of my mission. How many people do I want to baptize. How many people will I find and teach. It's important to go for those things. The ultimate success as a missionary is not in achieving goals but focusing our time on activities that will. Now this will probably be a subject of our skype call, but bottom line. I am fine. I am not depressed or anxious. I didn't offend anyone. I just need a reboot and President Leavitt is making that happen for me.

This past week other than that was decent. We had to drop the Pasquels because they wouldn't return phone calls or keep appointments. Steven is coming along. He is somewhat soft-spoken but is still diligently reading and praying. He texts us everyday about his reading and praying. That is when the real conversion happens. Not during the appointments but in between visits. Where he can read and pray. I'll be sad to not be there when he gets baptized. He was an amazing experience and we're friends on Facebook so we'll keep in touch. 

In terms of Alex, he unfortunately dropped us. We went in to teach him more about keeping the sabbath day holy because he was doing great job with keeping commitments. However, his parents were talking with him the past week and Elder Ray and I came up and with their Baptist background they just into Alex for meeting with us. Then Alex said that we couldn't meet anymore and he can't come to church. Granted this droppage was an hour after the news that I was to be released and transferred. Needless to say we went to Dairy Queen and I like a teenage girl after a break-up ordered a large chocolate shake and drank my feelings. As mum would put it sometimes you just need a good cry. If any of you are feeling down about anything I would say do that, pick yourself back up and move on. If we could, let's not focus the majority of the skype call on these things that have happened but on other positive things. It would really help me out. I'm sure you want to know more details but let's just focus on the positive.

I love you all,

HURRAH FOR ISRAEL!

Elder McGuire 
Another contender for the slam dunk competition. Nice Claim. Only in Preston

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Monday, May 18, 2015

The Lord Has Need of Willing Men

Dear Family,





Could I just be the first one to say that your letters were exceptional this week. Thank you for telling me about your families and what you've been up to. You all look so happy. The family love that I can see motivates me in a way that nothing else seems to. You show the model for what I am trying to make happen in the lives of those whom we are working with. So keep up the great work. The Family is of God. Our Heavenly Father has a family therefore it just makes sense for us to have a family. God gave us families to help us become what He wants us to be. Salvation is a family affair and you all are headed in the right direction.

This past week was one of the most successful weeks I've ever had on my mission. It has come down to using time wisely. If we have goals and plans then we will naturally just get what the Lord wants us to do done. I had a large revelation this past week or maybe it was confirming revelation. I can't remember what I have told people from time to time. Anyways, I realized something significant this week. People are usually home between the hours of 3 and 9. This means that I have to be out on the streets at least by 3 to do traditional contacting and proselyting. Now comes the question in my mind, what do I do from the hours of 10 to 3? I have to be making phone calls and gathering information about specific less-actives and former investigators that I want to teach this week. This past week was the first time I tried out this method that came to me as I was studying from chapter 8 of Preach My Gospel. We had an amazing week.

One thing that I've been developing is something I've termed a 'contact run.' It really helps me figure out the city and I'm able to kill two birds with one stone. We pick a point A to start with. Maybe a member we have a dinner appointment with or a less-active lesson. Then we select a point B that's in the same area but far enough away that we can hit other former investigators and less-actives on the way there. This has proved very beneficial. We are street contacting in between stop-by visits and the results are astounding. We taught seven less-active members this way where in the past I would only see two less-actives and only if I had an appointment with them.

The streets of Lunenburg. Gorgeous place
In terms of our less-active work, we have got some great members that are making some progress. I won't tell you their names because they are dealing with some addictions but it's amazing to watch the atonement work in their lives. I'll tell you about Jerry though that isn't his real name. Jerry has severe depression and has a hard time dealing with drugs and pornography. He is really turning his life around though. He's been reading and praying every day and hasn't views porn in more than a month. Incredible. Coming to church is still a challenge for him because he doesn't have a ride, but in our lesson talking about faith and Ether 12 the Spirit was just so strong. He gave us a few referrals even though they didn't work out. Jerry is coming back slowly but steadily. It's amazing to watch it all happen.

Another less-active that we are working with whom we'll call Susan really opened up with us this past week. She brought up every concern under the sun about the church. From tattoos to gay marriage to the temple to Christ actually existing. In the past it was just an awkward lesson where we would follow-up about her reading or praying and trying to find out why she wasn't doing that. She has about 6 main concerns and we are taking on one concern per week. The Lord has commanded that we seek learning by study and by faith. I've printed off a lot of material frommormonsandgays.org and we're going back this Thursday for dinner. Less-active work is missionary work. Things are taking a turn for the better.

LaHave River
We've also been visiting lot of members either through dinner appointments or stopping by on a contact run. The way the members reacted in Cole Harbour to referral asking made me stop asking because my relationship with some of the members would have been hindered. Can't believe asking for someone to try would offend someone but apparently it just does. For the most part the members we asked really took it seriously and gave us great people to contact. We got eight names to contact and out of all of them one man told us to come back. His name is Horst and he is from Germany. Straight up German. We could hardly understand each other but we are going back to teach him on Tuesday. I found a copy of Das Buch Mormon in the library that we're going to give to him. 

Another large success this past week was reserving names to take to the temple. We only did about three hours of Family History work but I found eleven people in need of ordinances. Seriously you all could go on familysearch.org right now and probably find some. After an hour of doing record hints I found five. It was a great week for family history work. You would be proud of me Lindsay. I love taking the time to find the information. Take the cover off your hatchets!!

All in all it was a very good week for the work of salvation. Our investigator on date to be baptized has fallen off the face of the earth but other than that I had a great week. Thank you all for your prayers. I am learning so much from being on a mission. I still need to work on my patience but I am coming along. The atonement is real. The truth is on the earth once more.

HURRAH FOR ISRAEL!
The people were mean but the cat was nice. Always can count on the cats

Love,


 Elder McGuire





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Monday, May 11, 2015

Arise O God and Shine

Dear Family,


It was so great to you all on Skype yesterday. Or at least you on the phone through the Skype. I thought that was pretty funny. Thank you all for being there for the call. It means a lot to me to hear from you all each week and it was rewarding to have the whole family there for the call, active and in their Sunday best. Looking back on the call I wish I had more funny and spiritual stories to tell you that can only be explained through talking not typing. I'll have to prepare for the next call in December. I'm especially grateful that Mum and Grandma were there. It's great to have the two mothers that really helped me get on a mission and keep me on a mission. No calling is greater than motherhood. Only Heavenly Father's most chosen spirits are mothers because they are filled with charity from the get-go. So thank you Mum and thank you Grandma. I owe a lot to your example and your teachings. 

One of my favorite things that mum would do on Sunday mornings was put on Mormon Tabernacle Choir. It really brought the Spirit to the house in the morning while everyone got ready for church. Now when driving on my mission, I hear familiar songs that take me back to those mornings where it was Sunday. "People die in bed!" Mum would say. Or my personal favorite "It's 6:30, are you planning on going to Seminary today?" How do I respond to that question? Mum always did her best to teach her children the gospel every day. I remember that year that she had to teach seminary and she would ask for our input on her lessons. Some afternoons I remember coming home and seeing her scriptures and study journal on the table. Make no mistake, our mother has a testimony of the restored gospel of Jesus Christ. Now look at all of us as her children. Would three of her daughters be sealed in the temple for time and all eternity were she not faithful? Would both of her sons have served missions were she not diligent? If you want to know of the grandest and greatest calling in the world, in the church, it's the calling of motherhood. No calling is greater. I love you Mum!
Yes we live in a cabin out in the middle of nowhere

So yes, things are heating up here in Canada. We've got about another month before it starts to snow again. I love the sunshine. I never knew how much I missed it until I didn't get to see it for half the year. One important thing Mum stressed growing up was vitamins. You don't have strength to preach the gospel if you don't have any iron or vitamin D in your system. Vitamin D comes from the sun. Maritimers love to talk about the weather. Especially this winter compared to last winter and this spring compared to last spring. I'd say that's how I start most conversations with people on the street.

Bridgewater is a great little place. In a way it reminds me a lot of St. Stephen. Small town, everyone's related to each other everyone knows the missionaries and where they live. When I was in Cole Harbour, living in Dartmouth, I would meet people that hadn't even heard of the church before. It always shocked me because there's a temple in Cole Harbour. Most of everyone walks in Bridgewater to get places so we can go street contacting fairly often next to the river. The town is split in two by the LaHave river and there are two bridges, not one, in Bridgewater. For the most part people are friendly. They don't brush us off when we go to stop them and they will really talk about anything with us so that's good. I haven't gotten a potential from street contacting in a long time and this time we found three potential investigators just by contacting people down by the river.

Elder O'Brien approves 
Like St. Stephen, we have all of these little towns that are also in our area. There used to be a branch in Liverpool about 30 minutes south of Bridgewater so we go down there about once a week to see members and talk to people on the street. There are a lot of less-active members in Liverpool that don't come to church because they are bitter their branch got shut down. It is a great place to be at. It reminds me of downtown Flagstaff where there's lots of people to talk to in the park.

This area has so much potential to really take off this summer. In our mission we like to create maps that show us where the members, less-active members, and former investigators are living. This way we can make a solid weekly plan of who to get in contact with for the week. We have about 140 former investigators which is twice the size of the formers I had to work with in Cole Harbour. It's nice too that they are fairly close together. Many of you might wonder what we do all day as missionaries. No people are not always home throughout the day or on the street until the afternoon. Out of the 9 hours in a day we have to proselyte, we spend about 7 of those hours hunting down information about people and getting an idea of how to help them. Lots of phone calls and stalking them on Facebook. Then once we start to get appointments and plans created and filled up the real work begins. Only about 10 hours in the week do we spend street contacting and knocking. I sometimes feel like a private investigator. Figuring out where people live, where they go to school, to work, how many kids do they have, where do those kids go to school, and then the same information about the members or less-actives that live around them. It's fun to learn about people and find the most effective way to serve them.

You always need a proper wall map
When I got here we found out that we didn't have the sisters area book to work from (No sisters in Bridgewater this transfer). They had a number of investigators that had consequently been dropped because sisters got transferred. Just after an hour of making calls we had appointments with most of them. We now have 8 investigators, two of them are on date to be baptized in June. It's exciting to actually be working with people that want to join the church. I felt like in Cole Harbour I was hitting my head against a brick wall most of the time. I think in a way I learned a lot about how to be a more effective missionary in Cole Harbour and now I can put those skills to the test here in Bridgewater. The members here love us. We've had a dinner appointment almost every night and the ward council is just amazing. Our ward mission leader personally goes out to each of the members and teaches them principles from The Power of Everyday Missionaries. Bridgewater is the promised land.

HURRAH FOR ISRAEL!

Love,





Gettin it done!
Elder McGuire 
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Monday, May 4, 2015

I'll Go Where You Want Me to Go

Dear Family,

Let's see, where to start. Ultimately I will start with a thank you to all that wrote me this week. Especially to those that faithfully write me. I love hearing about your lives. Your experiences with the gospel. How it blesses your life. This gospel is a gospel of joy of happiness. We are to have joy. One of my favourite sayings comes from a drummer named Scott Johnson. He says that "If you're not having fun, you're doing it wrong." If you feel the gospel to be a burden then you're doing it wrong. Figure it out and have joy. The prophet Nephi put it this way "Adam fell that man might be and men are that they might HAVE JOY." Before I tell you some very big news, I would like to tell you of a parable that hit me this week in a dream.

Tell that primary 9 class that they're awesome
The Parable of the Child on Christmas Morning

I remember every Christmas morning with the family. We would wake up early to get dad and mum up so that dad could go and light the tree and we could open presents. One time Jessica got up at 3 or 4 in the morning to get everyone going and Lindsay laughed at her and told her to go back to sleep. Personally from my perspective I was bummed out that we had to wait a couple more hours to open presents. So good on you Jess, you had your priorities in order. Ultimately we would get mum and dad up, dad would go and light the tree then we had to get our lavish camcorder to film all of us lined up. We've got some great pictures from over the years. Go and look at those, our parents rock. We had to line up in order from youngest to oldest and then make our way to the tree. One year, I remember getting a Rescue Heroes command centre that was also a boat. That was an awesome toy. Mum clearly recognized that I had a passion for Rescue Heroes. I played with that thing all the time. One time I remember I had to take a bath and Jess was in charge and we put the expensive command centre in the bath tub. Smooth move. Hey I thought you were an awesome baby sitter. There were other Christmases where the very routine occurred for the waking up early, lining up, and getting the camcorder charged and rolling. The only difference on occasion was my reaction to different gifts. Sometimes I loved those presents like the command centre. Other times I didn't care much for some presents and didn't use them as much or hardly at all. How sad it may have been for mum and dad or my brother and sisters to watch me not play with something. I remember one time I was upset with a gift that grandma gave me. I don't remember what it was, but I didn't play with it.

An interesting thing about all of the presents given to me is that they were free. They were bought and paid for. I didn't have to pay any of you back or get you gifts of equal value. I simply was presented the gift and had the option of playing with it. This is how our salvation works. Let me tell you all this right now. Write this down. Our salvation is bought and paid for. That was the whole purpose of the atonement. It was because of Christ that we are saved. We are saved by grace. Christ gave us the ultimate gift-salvation. Indeed we are saved because of grace, we are saved because Christ saved us. The gift of salvation is already bought and paid for. Think about that. Your salvation. You in the celestial kingdom is already paid for. It's done. Now the ultimate question you have to ask yourself is "Will I choose to play with the gift?" "Will I choose liberty and eternal life?" Our faith, our repentance, our good works, all of those times we give service to others will not save us. I will point out that that doesn't mean to sit back and say "Whelp I have been saved by grace! No use in doing anything because I've already been saved" Yes you have already been saved. We all have. To say the 'Whelp I've been saved' is like the child on Christmas morning who says "Whelp thanks, this is great" with a disappointed heart. No. The gift of the atonement is ours for the taking. Pick up the toy and play with it. It's for our benefit. It is to make us happy. 


Elder Blum and Elder Ray. Great missionaries that I've served with or around. I will certainly miss them
Now for the big news. I am being transferred to Bridgewater, Nova Scotia in an hour. I am released from training and being a zone leader. I will be a regular missionary. You all are now probably wondering "WHY!?" Well I will tell you why. Before my mission I was naturally a perfectionist and I would get depressed when my current skills were not where I felt they should be. I took counselling for this and worked through most of my problems. Now I have gotten better but I've still got a long way to go. This zone wasn't performing up to my expectation. I felt like a complete stranger when I was training the zone this past Wednesday. I just demanded too much from them. Not to say that they threw me out of leadership-they didn't. The assistants sat in on my zone training and noticed the tension. My zone has struggled for the longest time. I would say that I gave it my best effort, but ultimately I was pessimistic towards the whole situation. I had an interview with President Leavitt and we talked about my history with perfectionism. He said that I do a great job and that the zone does a great job, but I've just got to sort out my expectations for my mission. I'll be honest, I've never really thought about my actual expectations of my mission. How many people do I want to baptize. How many people will I find and teach. It's important to go for those things. The ultimate success as a missionary is not in achieving goals but focusing our time on activities that will. Now this will probably be a subject of our skype call, but bottom line. I am fine. I am not depressed or anxious. I didn't offend anyone. I just need a reboot and President Leavitt is making that happen for me.

This past week other than that was decent. We had to drop the Pasquels because they wouldn't return phone calls or keep appointments. Steven is coming along. He is somewhat soft-spoken but is still diligently reading and praying. He texts us everyday about his reading and praying. That is when the real conversion happens. Not during the appointments but in between visits. Where he can read and pray. I'll be sad to not be there when he gets baptized. He was an amazing experience and we're friends on Facebook so we'll keep in touch. 

In terms of Alex, he unfortunately dropped us. We went in to teach him more about keeping the sabbath day holy because he was doing great job with keeping commitments. However, his parents were talking with him the past week and Elder Ray and I came up and with their Baptist background they just into Alex for meeting with us. Then Alex said that we couldn't meet anymore and he can't come to church. Granted this droppage was an hour after the news that I was to be released and transferred. Needless to say we went to Dairy Queen and I like a teenage girl after a break-up ordered a large chocolate shake and drank my feelings. As mum would put it sometimes you just need a good cry. If any of you are feeling down about anything I would say do that, pick yourself back up and move on. If we could, let's not focus the majority of the skype call on these things that have happened but on other positive things. It would really help me out. I'm sure you want to know more details but let's just focus on the positive.

I love you all,

HURRAH FOR ISRAEL!

Elder McGuire 
Another contender for the slam dunk competition. Nice Claim. Only in Preston

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