Thank you for your letters, for your prayers, and for putting my name
on the temple prayer roll. I am so grateful for the family bond that
we share. I was debating about whether talking about my year mark, but
in reality I have to talk about my year mark because one of the
biggest miracles of my mission occurred. More on that later. I have
been studying lately about God the Father. Did you know that we are
the only church that teaches that God, Jesus Christ, and the Holy
Spirit are three separate beings? Repeatedly throughout the scriptures
we read that the Father and the Son are one. Even in Mosiah and the
testimony of the witnesses do we read that the Father, Son, and the
Holy Ghost are one God without end. Much of the time the first thing
we will teach people about is the Godhead and why that's important.
None of this really makes sense unless we understand and believe in
God. On occasion we will meet critics of the church who have read some
unfavorable material who attack our scriptural-based view of the
Godhead. Why is it important to understand the nature of the Godhead?
Who seriously cares that God, Jesus Christ, and the Holy Ghost are
three separate beings? We do. It's important to understand the nature
of the Godhead because then we will understand why we have the gospel,
why Jesus Christ needed to come to earth, why we should pray, why we
should do missionary work. We all are the Family of God. Literally His
offspring. It doesn't make sense to attack the family when the family
is the only thing that will be eternal at the end of the plan of
salvation.
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| Newfie phrase of the week "I's sweats gravy in da mornin!" (I like gravy) |
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| Elder Cox and I driving to Port Blandford to exchange with the St. John's Elders |
We began the week going to Port Blandford for exchanges with the St.
John's Elders. It's nice to be the zone leader because I get to travel
the rock. It's about 4 hours from Grand Falls to St. John's so we met
in the middle. The assistants are doing a visit with us this week so
that should be fun. I went with Elder Tincher to St. John's for two
days and there occurred some incredible experiences. We first began
with District Meeting in Bay Roberts which was excellent. Elder
Tincher trained about studying using Elder Bednar's talk "A Reservoir
of Living Water." Great way to study the scriptures that I am still
trying to figure out. I would encourage you to look up that talk. It
changed the way I study the scriptures. We then drove back to St.
John's for a session of street contacting. I love to street contact.
It's fun to approach strangers and talk about religion. Things were
going well with the contacts, we were just about finished when we
picked up two potentials that lived out by Bay Roberts, then we were
going to take supper. Then on the way back to the car we were stopping
people and this one man we stopped began to just rail on Joseph Smith.
If you want to make any missionary mad say something demeaning about
the prophet. As the conversation went on we learned that he used to go
to our church but he left about twenty years ago. He then started to
say that we kicked Christ out of church. At first I was thinking that
maybe he thought we weren't Christians or that our view of the bible
was wrong or something. No this man thought he was the Saviour. I
asked where his apostles were and where he got his priesthood. None of
these subjects made any sense to him. It's just amazing to me how two
19 year olds know more about the bible than the people who profess to
love it more than we do. Elder Tincher and I weren't happy.
The next day it rained like none other. St. John's gets lots of rain
and fog. We decided that our initial plan of going contacting next to
the university wasn't going to work. We had also forgot the phone in
Grand Falls. So there we are with no phone and not the best weather.
We went old school and drove down to the church to make phone calls to
former investigators. After a few uninterested formers and filling out
records the phone rings. Elder Tincher answered it. A man on the other
end asked "I'm here by the church can you meet right now?" Elder
Tincher asked who it was and the man just repeated that he was by the
church and he wanted to meet. After a hesitant yes we hung up the
phone and then went to the front entryway. After a few minutes a man
came through the parking lot and to the front door. We opened the door
and greeted him. Trevor was excommunicated 25 years ago because of a
mistake he made and he finally got the courage to call the church up
again and request to come back and repent. I listened to him tell us
his whole life story for an hour and then after a few moments so that
Elder Tincher and I could get our jaws off the floor we invited him to
be baptized and meet with the branch president. People calling the
church to be baptized doesn't just happen. Incredble miracle. Elder
Tincher and I both came out in the same group so it was a good year
mark miracle.
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| Comparing what I was doing a year ago (In the MTC) to today :D |
Other miracles occurred a few days later back in Grand Falls. We found
two new investigators this past week. We met Will through giving
service at the community center. He has awesome long blue hair. We
invited him to come to church and he came for all three hours and
contributed well in priesthood. Church sort of a let down with only 4
people there but Will really liked the service. The other investigator
we found and put on date for baptism is Helen. She met with
missionaries a year ago but she couldn't get baptized because she
never got off marijuana. So now we have a new date set and we are
going to try again. We have hit the mission standard two weeks in a
row which is just unheard of in the mission. I remember looking at the
standard in January thinking how on earth am I ever going to get
people to join this church? It's been a learning process, but the
church will grow in Grand Falls. We now have three people on date for
baptism. Darren, Gerald, and Helen. We can't be stopped!
I love you all
HURRAH FOR ISRAEL!
Elder McGuire
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| Our spaghetti game is on point |
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