MIghty Men in Faith

Dear Family,

Thank you to those that wrote to me. Thank you also to those that even
though they didn't write, I know you are praying for me. The miracles
continue to roll forth in Grand Falls. It was a crazy week with
transfers. Transfer in Newfoundland are crazy because with being the
zone leader you have to coordinate all of these flights and people
driving and who's staying here and who needs a companion and my, it is
stressful. It was a good week other than the travel that accompanies
transfers.

Elder Hardesty 

My new companion is amazing. Elder Hardesty is from San Jose,
California. I have never had a companion outside of Arizona, Utah,
Idaho, or Alberta before so this is good, someone different. Outside
of the Book of Mormon belt as I call it. Elder Hardesty is a convert
of about three years and has been on his mission 3 transfers longer
than me. He just came from serving 8 months in Moncton where I began
my mission. He is very hard working and skilled and obedient.
Definitely one of if not my most solid companion. We are going to do
some good work here in Grand Falls.

The week began with Elder Cox and I doing as much work as we could in
our area before making the 3 hour trek to Corner Brook for Elder Cox
to go to Halifax via plane. Lots of finding and teaching. When I began
my mission we were maybe teaching 3 lessons a week. Most of the time
in the winter it was like 1 a week if any. This previous week we had
20 lessons. I am almost teached out. Can't believe I would think that,
but there were moments where I thought "Man can't we just go street
contacting or something?" No no, we are here to teach people. I think
it's been a culmination of things since my time being unsuccessful to
my time now being one of the most successful areas in the mission.
It's come down to planning work and taking thought and lots of nitty
gritty business-like skills (Follow-up, confirming appointments,
resolving concerns, effective commitments) but I would say now with
the skills in place and at a high level it's coming down to hope. Hope
that if we just work and work hard and think hard that the Lord will
bless us with lots of success.

Elder Cox

In total we found four new investigators this past week. Finding used
to be such a hard thing. We found George and Violet by doing a contact
run (maps, records, pens, and planners). George and Violet are the
father and grandmother of a less-active's boyfriend. Odd combination
but hey we'll take it. They are originally anglican and have lots of
tattoos. We taught mostly about the Godhead and prayer and coming to
church. Unfortunately they wouldn't commit to coming to church. Need
to do some more scooping to find the real concern. The next
investigator we found was Agnus. Heavenly Father will move his work
forward no matter how absent-minded his missionaries are. I am still
trying to learn the area and we were supposed to go by and teach
Gerald who's on date for baptism. But no no, I thought I remembered
where he lived but instead it wasn't his house so we just did a normal
approach with Agnus and boom, we're teaching another investigator.
Agnus comes from a Pentacostal background and loves the bible. She's
not too convinced about priesthood authority but she wants to read the
Book of Mormon. Hey we'll take it. Just up the road from George and
Violet was Mr. Butt. Now I know we're not supposed to say that, but
that actually is a last name in Newfoundland and Mr. Butt said that if
we're not going to go by our first names then neither is he. Mr. Butt
is awesome though. He comes from a catholic background and wow does he
know the bible. He was going to come to church but he was sick so blah
foiled again. He wants to be baptised the way Christ was baptised, by
immersion by authority. We will have a branch here in Grand Falls
before I leave, I just know it.

Got some bad news this past week. Darren, one of our most solid
investigators is moving to Ontario. He is still going to investigate
out there, but it would just be nice to stand in a font with someone.
It will happen. So many miracles are occurring, there isn't enough
email time in the world to tell you about it.

HURRAH FOR ISRAEL!

Love,

Elder McGuire

Here's a gospel question for you. Bonus points to those that give me

an answer. How did John the Baptist get his priesthood authority?

Mom's personal favorite--A+ in the eyebrow grooming department
(Our kids always say--"mom, if you could just talk to me without judging my eyebrows---")  

Pictures

This is Dennis, a recent convert from Cox's Cove

If Ye Have Not Charity, Ye Are Nothing

Dear Family,

Thank you for your letters and for your prayers. We are seeing
miracles in Grand Falls. I feel like if I could just serve the rest of
my mission here we could start up a branch. No unhallowed hand can
stop the work from progressing. It was a solid week with a few
drawbacks, but we persevered. I'm listening to all of the Teaching, No
Greater Call podcasts on meal breaks and I heard this great quote from
one of the speakers. "All of life's problems are remedied with gospel
solutions." Sometimes we feel so trapped and alone with our
challenges, but if we search the scriptures and ask God in faith what
we should do then things will work out. How wonderful is that? The
world is your oyster (or scallop if you live in Newfoundland) when you
have the gospel to direct you.

I am continuing my study about the Godhead. Many people that we meet
who don't want to talk with us will usually end the conversation with
"It doesn't matter what church, there's only one God." Nothing could
be further from the truth. William Tyndale who translated the Bible
into English was grieved because of the flagrant stupidity of the
public's understanding of the scriptures. I feel that way sometimes
when we meet people that have their own religion even though they
don't go to church. The nature of the Godhead is taught frequently in
both the Old and New Testament. Talmage points out the phraseology
used in Genesis to describe the Godhead "Man has become as one of US"
"Let US make man in OUR image." Nebuchadnezzar even points out that
the spirit of the GODS is in Daniel. That's just the Old Testament.
Consider the baptism of Jesus in Matthew chapter 3 and the stoning of
Stephen in Acts 5 where he sees the Son of Man (Christ) standing on
the right hand of the Father. We may think that the Book of Mormon
doesn't teach this distinction as clearly but if we examine chapter 11
of 3 Nephi we will see that God witnesses of Christ. Abraham chapter 4
is personally my favorite because it clearly teaches that the GODS
created the earth. However, despite all of these scriptural examples,
none explain so clearly the nature of the Godhead than that of Joseph
Smith's First Vision where he sees two personages. If people do not
understand the nature of God or the Godhead then the rest of religion
will not make sense. I know that Joseph Smith saw God the Father and
His Son Jesus Christ.

I'm working on a talk about the Godhead. This past week we saw many
miracles. I began the week in Corner Brook working with Elder Argyle.
Corner Brook is seriously the most beautiful part of the mission. It's
like Hawaii but colder and the people talk funny. We went and played
basketball with some of the young men and then went for chinese food
with a recent convert named Dennis. I would love love love to serve in
Corner Brook for my last area. I want to stay in Newfoundland for the
rest of my mission even if that means enduring a terrible winter. We
had Family Home Evening with the senior couple and three of the recent
converts (the Corner Brook Branch has had like 10 baptisms in the past
year). Then we had a lesson with Dennis. He comes from a Pentacostal
background so we resolved lots of his concerns about the Book of
Mormon and then he brought up Deification. My knowledge of the gospel
has grown this past year but I was struggling to explain deification.

I made a mistake and left the weekly plan in my binder and didn't give
it to Elder Cox so he was lost on Tuesday without our list of people
to track down to achieve our goals. Not the brightest move. We did put
the plans on our google drive but the worst thing happened. Our
computers got hacked into last week and everything had to be wiped. I
usually like to keep all of my weekly plans to refer back to them
during planning but everything was gone. Just as proverbs says, when
there is no vision the people perish. So on the drive back from Corner
Brook to Shepherdville and then to Grand Falls we had to do some
emergency planning to get the week in shape. Things were looking
pretty grim when we finished the night on Wednesday. We had really dug
ourselves into a hole with the goals we had set and not having the
plan in place for Tuesday. I was discouraged, but knew we could get
things back and running on Thursday.

We found a new investigator to get things going. We found Jennifer by
visiting one of our on-date investigators Bonnie. Jennifer met with
missionaries in Botwood almost 10 years ago but we had no record of
it. She comes from a Pentacostal background but couldn't get the Book
of Mormon out of her mind. It was a quick lesson because we had to run
and go teach Helen. Helen is doing well. She is still struggling with
the Word of Wisdom but she is enjoying the Doctrine and Covenants
which is good. She couldn't come to church this past week because some
family randomly decided to visit (Then bring your family to church!),
but things are good.

Our teaching pool is expanding. We are currently teaching 12 people
and 5 of them have baptismal dates. We found another new investigator
yesterday. Donna met with the elders back in Halifax in the 90s and
was going to get baptized but something happened that prevented her
to. Not sure what it was, but she has studied with the JWs and the
7th-day adventists so you could imagine to doctrinal confusion
throughout the whole lesson. We focused most of the lesson on
priesthood authority, but finally an impression came to my mind to
just ask her to be a member of the church. "Donna we want to invite
you to be baptized a member of our church." Bingo. Simple is always
better. I'm telling you, if I stayed here for another year then there
would be a branch in Grand Falls. It's up to the Lord but huge things
are happening and I couldn't be more pleased.

We got transfer letters yesterday. We came into the church after
working all day, checked the email (Elder Cox is going to Sackville to
serve with one of my old companions Elder Wolvers and I'm staying here
and Elder Hardesty will be my new companion) and then we noticed
something wasn't right. Unfortunately, the church got broken into.
They only took the TV but we had the cops there and everything. Who in
their right mind steals from a church?! We are checking the buy and
sell pages on Facebook because it's common in Grand Falls for people
to steal things and sell them for drugs. So that was a sour note to
the end of the week. Elder Hardesty is from California and a convert.
He has been the zone leader in New Brunswick for 8 months and he
sounds pretty solid. I'm excited. We are now on a 5 week streak for
the mission standard.

I LOVE MY MISSION!

HURRAH FOR ISRAEL!

Love,

Elder McGuire

Sum Marnin Smarnin If Marn Marnin is like Smarnin

Dear Family,

What a wonderful week. Thank you for writing me despite your vacation
plans and your crazy summer. Send some of that hot weather up here
because I am freezing and it's only August. Gearing up for a
Newfoundland winter. If we thought Halifax was bad, b'y yous tain't
seen nuddin yet. Thank you for praying for me and for putting my name
on the temple prayer roll. I am seeing the miracles of prayer
throughout my whole mission. In my patriarchal blessing it says that I
will see many miracles and miracles come by faith and faith comes by
prayer. Your prayers mean so much to me.

We have a unique privilege to have physical bodies. Our spirits and
our bodies are like a hand in a glove. When we die the hand is removed
from the glove but both the glove and the hand remain intact. This is
why death is not the end but merely a separation. The hand gives life
to the glove though we may not see it just as the spirit gives life to
our bodies. Our spirits are affected by what we do with our bodies, we
don't work out or eat right so that we can have good bodies, we work
out and eat right to teach our spirits self-control and self-mastery.
The scriptures speak of our bodies being sanctified. To be sanctified
means to be without blemish, it means to be pure. As Paul stated "Know
ye not (he uses ye, he would make a great Newfoundlander) that ye are
the temple of God?" For us to feel the spirit we have to have a
sanctified body. This means what we do and what we eat must be pure.

We are continuing to see miracles in Grand Falls and throughout the
whole province. This past week we found another investigator who wants
to be baptized. We found Bonnie through using the area book. She was
taught three years ago and the elders never came back. If they had a
reason it wasn't written down so we thought we might as well go over
there and follow-up. I'm beginning to develop something called
'short-stops.' Very nerdy missionary thinking, but when we do our
weekly planning I like to create a large list of 20 potential
investigators and former investigators to follow-up on that week. This
increases our focus. We select a name and then plan a route of other
people to see using the former sheets and potential sheets with
everything organized by area. In addition to that we looked through
the knocking records and boom we have a nice list of 5 people to try
in half an hour who have all indicated that they want to learn more.
So Bonnie is great, she believes that Joseph Smith was prophet and
that prophets in modern times just makes sense. We taught her most of
the Restoration and she accepted to be baptized on October 17.

The other investigator we found was through visiting a less-active
from Cole Harbour. It was strange to meet a less-active all the way
from Cole Harbour. We dropped by and talked about the same people we
knew for a good 20 minutes. Her boyfriend Greg wants to marry her and
Samantha wants to get married in the temple. So thus Greg is also
committed to being baptized. We could go from 4 members of the church
to 9 members of the church before Christmas. The Lord is showering the
blessings in Grand Falls. Greg is great, he likes boxing and listening
to the bible. He's originally Salvation Army so he loves serving
others and being nice. He doesn't really know what he believes in, but
he wants to marry Samantha so he's pretty motivated to read the Book
of Mormon.


This past week we had our trip to Corner Brook that we do once a
month. It's a little bit harder to get members and investigators to
come on the road with us for two days, but we persevere. Helen didn't
want to come although she is progressing really well. She just
finished the Book of Mormon for the second time and now she is reading
the Doctrine and Covenants. Honestly one of the most solid people I
have ever taught. Right up there with Steven in Cole Harbour and the
Wamboldts in Bridgewater. The drive was just a little daunting to her,
but she comes to church other than that. Darren our other investigator
who's on date came along, but didn't really like it with all of the
driving. We got two members to come with us as well, so the faithful
band from Grand Falls made the trek to Corner Brook for the Branch
activity on Saturday night.

The activity was awesome! I along with several other missionaries got
screeched in. It was the experience of a life time. I got it all on
video but the internet is slow here, so I may just have to send it to
you next week. So stay tuned. A Screech in begins with putting on

fishermen clothes. We then have to recite a Newfoundland tongue
twister which was next to impossible. The older Newfie members were
kind with our Newfoundland accents so that wasn't the worst part. We
then had to drink cod liver oil which is about the grossest thing I
have ever consumed. It was worse than drinking paint thinner. This one
might be too far off for even mum to add to a shake in the morning.
Cod liver is nasty. We then had a shot of purity syrup which is the
mormon newfie way of doing a shot of screech (100 proof and only made
in Newfoundland). Purity syrup was way better than the cod liver oil.
Then was the climax of the screech in. The kissing of the cod. Yes I
gave it a good smoochin. Then some really dry newfie jokes (What's the
shortest conversation between two fishermen? arn? narn.) Then a
traditional Newfoundland jig I's the b'y

I'se The B'y that builds the boat and
I'se The B'y that sails her and
I'se The B'y that catches the fish and
Brings 'em home to Liza

Salts and rinds to cover your flake,
Cake and tea for supper
Cod fish in the spring of the year,
Fried in maggoty butter


Yes, don't worry. I have found my people. It was an incredible week.
We have hit the mission standard four weeks in a row. Just set a
mission record with the people we have on date. I am absolutely loving
my mission.

HURRAH FOR ISRAEL!

Love,

Elder McGuire

John 21:6-"He saith unto him a second time, Simon, son of Jonas, lovest thou me?  He saith unto him, Yea, Lord; thou knowest that I love thee.  He saith unto him, "Feed my sheep."

Branch activity was a success!

Dennis a recent convert busting out the accordion

photo bomb!

Exchanges in Corner Brook until Wednesday

Guess what we found in the apartment

Lord Increase Our Faith

Dear Family,

Thank you for your prayers and for your letters. I love being a
missionary. Every day is hard, frustrating work, but it's the most
important work we could ever be involved with. It is the same for the
apostles and the First Presidency. To be living and breathing the
gospel is such a surreal experience. We are probably the most prayed
over group of individuals in the church. I actually think it's neck

I love Grand Falls

and neck between us and general authorities in terms of prayers (not
that it's a competition). The Lord can do anything he wants with his
army with the amount of prayers that are said. Thank you for the faith
that you all have.

I want to tell you a story about a famous scientist, Thomas Edison. If
 you go on relative finder you will discover that you're probably
related to him. Thomas Edison tried over 2000 times to make a light
bulb. Over and over again Thomas Edison failed to make a light bulb.
At the end of his search he finally invented the light bulb. Wouldn't
it have been discouraging for Thomas to give up after the 1008 failed
attempt? That would have been terrible, we wouldn't have light bulbs.
Thomas Edison and his story of inventing the light bulb is a story of
faith. He had faith that one day he was going to invent the light bulb
and it was going to profoundly affect the human family. He saw in his
mind's eye a light bulb. That is faith. You do not see presently
yourself as a millionaire or a world-class pianist or an understanding
parent. By the world's standards you are a failure. To have faith
means to rely on God constantly. When we disconnect ourselves from the
doctrines and principles of the church then we disconnect ourselves
from salvation and miracles. You want to know the most unique thing
about our church? We have faith. Steven Covey said that a behavior
effective people have is that they start with the end in mind. To have
faith is to start with the end in mind. The end is the celestial
kingdom. When we have faith we see the end, we see us creating the
light bulb, or playing with the Boston Symphony, or most importantly
returning to live with our Father in Heaven, exaltation. So don't
hyperventilate when issues arise surrounding the church. Keep the end
in mind. If you ever lose faith then miracles will leave. It's a
simple equation. Miracles=God's teachings + us. The plus sign
signifies faith. If you get distracted you'll never invent the light
bulb.

We had a wonderful week in Grand Falls. We are beginning to teach so
many people that we  really have to make our finding time count
because we don't have too much time to find with all the teaching
that's going on. We found three new investigators this past week and
we have hit the mission standard three weeks in a row. The first two
we found were Dennis and Ellen who are some serious newfies. They come
from the northern bay where the english language hasn't progressed
past the 16th century. Elder Cox and I couldn't understand 80% of the
conversation because it was too quick and lax and there were words
that we haven't used for years thrown in there. Nevertheless Dennis
and Ellen are great. A member in Grand Falls was talking to them at
the Walmart and Dennis was complaining about how no one from the
Pentacostal church ever comes to visit anymore. Sister Borden told
them that she could send the missionaries to come see them. Bingo.  We
stopped by later that night and taught them about the Book of Mormon.
They really like the idea of more scripture beyond the bible. I'm
going to have to work on the bay language though because it is so
thick that I had to pray for the gift of tongues.

The next new investigator we found was Tina. One of my favorite ways
to find is to write down a route of stop-by visits to do in an hour or
two and then walk between doors talking to people in the neighborhood.
It's honestly the most effective way I have found to find because
sometimes street contacting and knocking don't pay the bill. We were
buzzing apartments when Tina let us in and we walked down the hallway
to meet her. Tina is great. She comes from a Catholic background and
has a hard time with gambling. It was a very short 15 minute visit
because we had more teaching to get done, but we testified that
baptism would help her change. I will not leave Newfoundland until
there is a branch in the town of Grand Falls-Windsor. This is probably
the most successful I have ever been on my mission.

We were teaching up a storm throughout the whole week. We set up
lessons back to back so when we brought Sister Borden with us we could
be more effective with our time. One of our investigators Helen is
just a rock. She contributes more in church than the members and she's
working her way through the Doctrine and Covenants. She knows the
church is true and she wants to be baptized it's just the hurdle of
addictions that we need to help her overcome. She was telling us the
other night that she wants to go to the temple in Halifax and I am
just amazed at how great the week was.

I feel as Alma did when he said 'Of my own strength I know that I am
nothing.' I think I have come to a realization in Newfoundland that
I've got nothing to lose with being bold with people. The assistants
came up from Halifax Wednesday morning at 2am. It was grueling to
drive on the road in the middle of night. Don't worry we didn't hit
any moose. We picked the assistants up from the airport and then had a
three hour power nap before working in Gander the next day. Wednesday
was a hard day because if you try and do a 16 hour work day running on
three hours of sleep you are going to have a rough time. Nevertheless
we persevered.

Lastly one of our other investigators Darren is coming along nicely.
We fasted for him this past week that he'd progress and our lesson on
Monday went really well. He was less stubborn and he was asking great
questions about the Book of Mormon. The key to any investigator's
success is follow-up follow-up follow-up. We had close to 20 teaching
appointments this past week. 4 times the standard in the North America
North East area and we are set to do it again. Tender mercies are
abounding and I attribute that to the Lord and to your prayers.

HURRAH FOR ISRAEL!

Love,

Elder McGuire

http://www.byutv.org/watch/90be2679-e6eb-4039-afa1-fee5477b0c20

https://www.lds.org/general-conference/2009/10/safety-for-the-soul?lang=eng