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