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