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.