With Glowing Hearts We See Thee Rise, The True North Strong and Free

Dear Family,



Thank you for your letters. Sounds like there's plenty of sun where
you are. I am jealous. Thank you for all of your prayers for me and

Elder O is ready for weekly planning :D We color coordinated our week
so we know how many hours we have for finding, teaching, retention,
and reactivation, and of course family history work

for our investigators. The work of salvation really is a team effort
and I couldn't do this without you praying for me. I love you all.
This week it is Canada Day on Wednesday. It was interesting in church
to sing true Canadian hymns instead of the American ones we usually
sing around this time of year. I'm grateful to be in Canada. I'm
grateful to be in the Maritimes preaching the gospel. There isn't any
other place I would rather be right now. Serving a mission is the best
gift God has given to me so far. This morning marked President

My study journal

Leavitt's final day as the mission president for the Canada Halifax
Mission. He has taught me so much that will bless my life into the
future. He was a ferocious worker, creative thinker, and had a strange
sense of humour. He would always invite us to look higher, work harder
and smarter, run faster, and love more. In summary here are the top 11
things that President Leavitt taught me these past 11 months.

1. The best character is built when you're winning
2. You can't lead from the back
3. When you're world champions (There's only 85,000 missionaries in
the world right now out of 7 billion. Only .000001% of the world has
the authority to do what we do) the only thing that matters is more
throttle
4. Citius, Altius, Fortius
5. You need three things when you leave this mission. Faith in Jesus
Christ. Appreciation for the gifts of the Spirit, and a testimony of
the Restoration of the gospel founded on the Book of Mormon
6. As the Lord liveth and as we live, we will not return without the plates
7. Worry is faith that things won't work out
8. You don't work hard so that you can quit and rest, you work hard so
that you can work harder
9. The power is in you
10. Plan your work and work your plan
11. If you ever go home and "go fishing" like Peter you will break my
heart and you will break the heart of God himself

6  is early no matter how long you've been on a mission

And a dozen others but those are my favourite. We now enter the era of
President Pratt from Orlando, Florida. It will be like entering a new
mission in a few days even though I have been here for a while. I'm
grateful for what the Leavitts taught me. They have huge hearts for
the missionaries and for missionary work. In terms of this previous
week, we had a decent week, not as flashy as some of our other ones,
but it was a good hard week none the less.

I have been studying from the Book of Mormon institute manual (I have
all of them for the standard works and my goal is to get through all
of them in the next year) about the Liahona and the principles it
worked by. The goal for Nephi and his family was to get to the
Americas. If you just think about how far-fetched that is for a
second. You and I would have to figure out a way to get to Mars. Like
Dad waking up one day and telling us, hey we need to get a spaceship
and go to Mars. That's about how crazy Nephi's family journey was.
Nephi did not waver once. He not only built the ship, got the plates,

Elder O ready for planning

and navigated the pacific ocean. He did all of that with complaining
brothers who wanted to kill him. The Liahona as the scriptures state
worked by small and simple means. What are small and simple means?
They are faith and diligence. I looked at our own missionary work and
realized that we have the diligent part down. We go finding for 25
hours a week and talk to 500 people. We certainly aren't lazy. What
was lacking was the actual belief that we were going to find people.
Way more than just one a week or a few every month. While we were
tracting of all things on Saturday afternoon I realized that I needed
to believe that we were going to find someone and they were going to
let us in. After just two doors we got let in for a first discussion.
We knocked into this older couple who are baptists. We never get in
with other people, let alone older people that are baptist and have
been baptist for their whole lives. They Keddy's are great. They
remind me of Grandma and Grandpa Frost. They asked a lot of questions
about baptism and priesthood, the Book of Mormon, and apostasy. Such
kind people.

In other news our investigators are coming along. Jasmine and Burlynn
came to church and stayed all three hours. They just soaked it all in.
They thought it was so peaceful and good and not empty. The Spirit was
strong in sacrament meeting. The talks were about having balance in
our lives and focusing on the Saviour. Great talks. We need to figure
out a way to get a Turkish Book of Mormon and a Turkish Gospel
Principles manual. The mission office in Dartmouth is on the case, but

A potential investigator accidentally sent us this text that he meant
to send to a girl I think he was friend zoning. Awkward

it could be a while. For now we are learning a lot about teaching very
simply because of the language barrier. It's good because explaining
very broad concepts like priesthood or sacrament are teaching me how
to teach better and I'm learning a lot. This week I really learned
about how much a mission is the best way to prep for life and an
eternal family. We teach the gospel so that we understand the gospel
and live the gospel. Our church is so cool.

I realized that I needed to talk about our less-active and recent
converts more because we are seeing a lot of success there as well. We
met with Johnny who was baptized about a year ago. He's originally
from China and is going less-active. Teaching Jasmine and Burlynn is

Canada Day this Wednesday!
 Had to buy special ties for the occassion

easy compared to the language barrier between us and Johnny. There's
one member in Halifax and another in Sackville who speak Chinese that
we could get to skype in and help us out. Everything we know we learnt
in Primary. I think the best mission prep someone could do is teaching
primary sunday school. I wish I would have done that before my
mission. Johnny just got a job at a Thai restaurant so it's hard for
him to come to church, but he's still reading his scriptures so that's
good.

Another less-active I should make mention of is Debra. She was
baptized about 20 years ago but was never really active. She does her
visiting teaching and is even the coordinator for the sisters down in
Liverpool. The JWs tracted into her and started preaching her anti so
we had a big conversation and resolved some concerns. It's difficult
to get less-active people to come around because they have lots of
opposition from the adversary and their environment. There's always a
good chance a less-active member still has a testimony though so we
keep fighting.

Don't go too crazy this Canada Day. Make sure your fireworks are recyclable

HURRAH FOR ISRAEL!

Love,
Elder McGuire

Summer is here.....finally!

The only thing I have to decide in the morning...what to wear....It's stressful!

Elder Sortomme came down  from Sackville for exchanges.He was impressed with our Canadian backwoodsman tools.

Faith of Our Fathers

Dear Family, Happy Father's Day to Dad! And to all of you other fathers and future fathers out there. There is much power behind the influence of a righteous priesthood holder in a home. I remember growing up with Dad dutyfully taking JT and I to Fathers and Sons even though we weren't campers or outdoorsy people. I remember all of the fun trips we went on to Lake Powell, every year to add! Dad was always looking to improve his health and would work out consistently. I remember when Dad took me to get my drivers license and he was teaching me how to parallel park. That was stressful. Dad is the best boat driver because he slows down on the reentry (You'll never live that one down Shirl). I remember one time when we went to watch the fire works at Lake Powell and someone (We still don't know who) let the rope fall off the side of the boat so it got stuck in the prop. Then dad diving into the water to untangle it and then coming back up for air to hear his family hush their laughter. Most profoundly, I remember Dad taking the time on a drive back from Utah to talk to me and JT about the importance of honouring the priesthood and being worthy to hold it-why that's important. There are a slew of other stories about dad. I love you dad! This past week we really had our nets out. Usually a missionary in the North America North Eastern area teaches about 5 lessons a week whether it be to less-active members or recent converts and of course investigators. There have been weeks where I would on average only get one lesson taught. I remember skyping home and delivering that sobering news. Yes this is still Canada. With lots of planning and hard work, we taught 12 lessons this week. That is something significant. We got out a time table and planned out all of our time so that we would have all of our finding mapped out. After we broke down the things we couldn't control like meetings and meals and what not we started to plan in our time to be balanced in the work of salvation. It was a great way to focus us and see that hey we are in a yellow hour right now we need to be talking to people and finding them to teach. There have been weeks where we would manage to only get like 6 hours of finding. When I mapped it all out I realized that we have 40 hours to look for people to teach. That's a lot of time. When I've got a solid map to see where all of the members, less-actives, former investigators, and potential investigators, our finding becomes more effective. We are lighting the south shore up with new investigators. We found 4 this past week. In terms of those whom we are already teaching, Jasmine and Burlynn are doing well. We shared the Family a proclamation to the world and talked about some things they could do to improve their family and their relationship with one another. We are essentially marriage counselors. They are committed to coming to church this week which is good because in weeks past they didn't want to. I think what made the difference was getting a recent convert in the lesson to bear testimony about his conversion. We took Brother Harlow. The Harlows are great. They are converts of three years, from Newfoundland, and they love being ward missionaries. Missionaries literally knocked at their door in Bridgewater for 30 years and they finally let them in to learn more. They are some of my favourite people of all time on my mission. They feed us just about every week. Recent converts are dynamite in lessons. Troy is coming along. He is still having a hard time believing in God with all of the pain that he has to go through and the accidents he has been in. He said the pray at the end of the lesson but he's not too keen about coming to church or reading. I'm afraid he might be doing this just for his wife, but we'll see. If you could pray for him that would be great. In terms of our other investigators we had to drop Rodney and Desmond because of opposition from family members and girlfriends. Frustrating when we finally get in with someone but we have to get past the whole family and peer group. We did find a great new investigator this past week named Jason. He is studying culinary arts and has been searching religions for 20 years. Right now he's a freemason and he has a lot of mormon coworkers that got him interested in the church. Before you freak out about mormons and masons, Jason has a lot of real intent. He's probably one of the most solid people that I've taught on my mission. He is reading the Book of Mormon studiously and he said the closing prayer. The other investigators we found were Dianne who's the mother of an excommunicated member who used to investigate. Another big find was Juanita and Bob. They are a young couple that missionaries gave a Restoration DVD to but never followed up on. We are having a lot of success. I love you all so much. I wish I could tell you more about what goes on in the week, but there's never enough time. HURRAH FOR ISRAEL!!! Elder McGuire

This is My Father's World

Here's the fountain in the middle of the LaHave river. 

Dear Family,

Thank you so much for your letters once again! Thank you even more for
your prayers and your own personal efforts to live the gospel and
share it with others. It sounds like summer is in full swing down in
the states. Strange to hear of people that I know going on missions or
getting married or having been married for a while now and I just find
out about it. The weeks are whipping by it's amazing to me how fast
it's going. I remember at the beginning of my mission thinking of how
long the two years was and I couldn't believe it when I would hear
other missionaries saying that our time here is so incredibly short. I
now finally see how right they are. I think it's beginning to hit me
that my family is now moving to the valley. It's like you're all
getting transferred and you'll have to whitewash! You all are truly
incredible. Your level of church activity would guarantee you a stake
calling in eastern Canada. I have been studying lately from the Book
of Mormon in Jacob.

My favourite scripture of all time is Jacob 4:6. When we search the
prophets we are promised the blessings of priesthood power is the
theme of the verse. How incredible it is to have a living prophet on
the earth. The role of a prophet is to teach God's children the
gospel. The gospel is the way back to our Heavenly Father. If we heed
the counsel of a modern prophet we will be exalted. That's the way it
works. Can you think of the two talks that President Monson gave this
past General Conference? Can you think of the invitations he extended
to us? As Amos states "Surely the Lord will do nothing save he
revealeth his secrets unto his servants, the prophets" (Amos 3:7). The
Lord has given us counsel through President Monson to go to the
temple. If we haven't been to the temple yet then that's something to
do this month. Another thing that the Lord invited us to do through
His mouthpiece President Monson is to learn our duty. My favourite
piece of counsel that President Monson relayed in his talk The
Priesthood-A Sacred Gift was that our objective should be to be
described as the sons of Mosiah. They did search the scriptures oft
and give themselves to much fasting and much prayer. Do you have a
plan for daily scripture study? Daily prayer? We are the only church
that has a prophet.

This past week was an eventful one. The Bridgewater/Sackville District
is tearing it up. We had zone conference this past week on Wednesday
and just broke down the week into how many hours we have for certain
activities. After we have filled in hours for administration, family
history, retention, and less-active work, we can do 45 hours of
finding in 10 days. As a district we got together and mapped out
eachother's week with finding. It was no surprise that as a district
we found 7 new investigators-the most in the mission for that week and
the most a district has gotten this year. The key was just realizing
that hey we have set aside this much time to find people to teach
let's look for them during this time. The new objective is to get all
of these investigators at church and on-date for baptism. I think
there was a belief in the mission and I know I felt this way at times
too that the Maritimes are just a hard place to work. The people have
their own religion (whether they go or not is another story) and they
don't want talk with us. That may be true for the first forty people
in the first two hours of finding for that day, but once you are in a
serious finding groove there's nothing stopping you from finding
people to teach.

I was reading in the finding section of Preach My Gospel and there was
an interesting principle that I had never really thought about before.
That was "Teach while you Find, Find while you teach." Most
importantly the finding while you teach. Our area book is full of
people that have responded positively to missionaries interacting with
them at some point. They are instances where people have felt the
Spirit. Many of the names in our potential records hadn't been
followed up on and if they had a "drop" next to their name there
wasn't a reason why they were dropped. We decided to build on these
names and contact them throughout the week. In between these contacts
with people who used to meet with missionaries or had agreed to learn
more in the past we talked with other people. President Leavitt calls
it "Spend the majority of your time teaching and find as you go."
Granted it's a little bit easier in the summer to talk to 100 people
in a day because they are out on the street.

We found two new investigators this past week. That makes 5 in the
past week and a half. We met Burland and Jasmine tracting around a
former investigator. They are from Turkey. What are the odds that we
meet someone from Turkey in the middle of Nova Scotia's countryside?
You could count the number of Turkish people in the province on one
hand and we are teaching two of them. They really like how we look so
happy walking around talking to people in town. They want to know how
the gospel can improve their family relationship. It's a little hard
to teach because I don't speak Turkish and we don't have a member that
does, but for the most part they are picking up what we are putting
down.

In terms of our other investigators, Troy is doing well. We taught him
more about the nature of God and prayer. He still isn't sure that
there is a God but he did commit to praying every day and Tammy is
going to hold him accountable which is good. He said a nice prayer at
the end of the lesson and when we followed up with Tammy she said that
he's been praying every day. The influence of a woman is a powerful
thing on a man. The situation with Rodney is interesting. He didn't
come to church because his parents aren't too keen on us meeting and
teaching him. He said once he turns 18 and gets out of the house we
can start to seriously teach him. For now it's just going to have to
be the occasional drop by visit when we are downtown. Tyler is going
in for surgery this week so that pooched us meeting with him. Which
was a bummer because we were going to take a recent-convert with us
yesterday. We are doing well with finding but now is the task of
conversion. Things are happening, we have found people to teach, now
it comes down to commitments, follow-up, and above all the Spirit.

HURRAH FOR ISRAEL!

Love,

Elder McGuire

So I got bit by black fly and it turns out I'm allergic :D My whole
finger swolled up, but we got it sorted out

We also have a mice problem in our cabin

Here's me getting rid of the mouse

You could literally drink this stuff and feel good about it. Pure Nova
Scotian maple syrup made from the trees in the backyard. It also spilt
a ton of it on one of my favorite ties but it was worth it

I might go broke buying it though

Decisions Determine Destiny

Dear Family,

What an amazing week! One of the best of my mission. We worked so hard
this past week. Sounds like you all had great weeks as well. I'm so
grateful to hear about your successes living the gospel of Jesus
Christ. It's a great time to be a Latter-day Saint. I continue to pray
for you every day.

Nova Scotia the land of the spiders

This week I felt like I was serving in Brazil. We mapped out all of
our time on a chart with different colors. A lot of our time is taken
up by administrative things like planning and studies and meetings and
meals. We have so much time in a week to find people to teach it's
amazing to me how I couldn't seem to do it consistently. After
blocking off all of the administrative things we had no control over
we then began to fill in time to work with less-actives and recent
converts as well as to do family history. We want to be involved in
all parts of the work of salvation. After we had coloured in our time
we were left with how much time we could spend seriously looking for
people to teach. I am usually a very gung ho person when it comes to

We are doing service at the hospital and we get red vests!

street contacting (my favourite way to find people to teach) and
knocking. We have a lot of time to find people to teach. We have a
total of 33 hours in a week to look for people . That is a lot of
time. In the past in the beginning phases of my mission we would maybe
get 10 hours and that's the standard so we felt good about that. After
mapping it out I realized hey we could be finding way more than we
already are. Of course in the middle of the week I forgot to account
for total drive time in a day which is about an hour so we roughly
have about 25 hours to find people to teach in a week.

There's this thing about our purpose as missionaries. We have to talk
to people. We have to work. We talked to about 500 people this week.
Setting the goal to talk to 100 people in a day is intimidating but it
needed to be done. We needed to talk to everyone and we needed to be
looking for people to teach more. We were blessed after we showed the
Lord that we were working hard. The standard for the mission is to
talk to 140 people a week and tract and street contact for 10 hours.
The summer is kind of nice because more people are on the streets and
we can talk to more people. The first person we found was Josh from
North Preston! I can't believe we found a guy that used to be in my
old area of Cole Harbour. He just left Preston to get away from the
crime there (it is the ghetto) and he liked that we were kind of like
the ministers that talk to prisoners in jail. If we can find humble
people there's a good chance we can teach them. Then we ran into
Alicia who works as a cook at the local pub but wants a better

Our cabin actually has a pool but we aren't allowed to go swimming

environment to be in and a better set of friends to hang out with. I
felt like we were on fire this week.

After talking to a couple more dozen people we ran into a young black
guy named Javon. Javon is the real deal. He has studied a lot of
theology and says he hasn't looked into Mormonism before and he said
we were nice gentlemen so bingo we are going to be meeting with him.
It's my belief that we have to mine ore before we find the gold
nuggets. That means working hard. President Benson said that the
secret to missionary work is work! Work means talking to people. Not
to say that we weren't talking to a lot of people in the past but this
week we really made an effort to talk to people. We were just finding
potentials left and right. Indeed we would still run into the older
I've got me own religion types of people but they were just the ore we
had to get throught before we could find the gold.

We found three new investigators this week! I have never found three
new investigators in a week in my life. The most was probably two that
were flaky. Our first investigator that we found through street
contacting was Rodney. Rodney is 17, in grade 11 and wants to be a
professional wrestler. Yes Rodney is legit. He is actually from St.
Stephen! The promised land. He saw how devoted we looked on the street
talking to people and wanted to know more about what motivates us. He

Maybe the most I have accomplished in one day .....

is going to try out coming to church this next week so if you could
pray for him that would be great. We want to get him on a mission.

Our next new investigator is Tyler. We also found him street
contacting. He has cerebal palsy but used to investigate 20 years ago.
He couldn't get baptised because he never overcame drinking. He's a
humble older guy with an anglican background. He really likes how we
don't debate or push our faith like the JWs. It should be good to
teach him more about the atonement. HUmble people are the ones that
are joining the church the most these days.

The next new investigator is Troy! He is married to a recent convert
that used to be excommunicated. He is big into motorcycles and he's
been in a lot of accidents. He wanted to know what Tammy is wife was

.............and all of my planners
for my mission so far

getting herself back into. He asks a lot of great questions and Tammy
was a good fellowshipper. She really expressed how important it was
for her to go to the temple. Then Troy wanted to know what the temple
was all about and we explained sealings and he thought, well that
makes sense. He doesn't know if he'll be baptized just yet because he
wants a testimony of it first. He'll do great.

We had an amazing week. Thank you for your prayers!

HURRAH FOR ISRAEL!

Love,

Elder McGuire