It's that time of the year again. I can't believe it's already
Christmas time. My time to skype you is coming up. Can you believe it
will be our third time skyping? Missions sure fly by. Doesn't really
feel that way at the beginning but once things pick up they just fly
by. It was an excellent week. The mission just went ballistic and got
so much work done. It's incredible how much you can accomplish when
you really work all hours of the day. We skipped most of our meal
breaks and finally we decided that we could only take one half an hour
in the afternoon to rest in order to get the standards that were asked
was just insane and overwhelming but it felt great to get done.
I studied faith every day this past week. Faith is a trust and
reliance on God. Our view of faith as Latter-day Saints differs than
the mainstream Christian way of thinking. The perspective we have on
faith transcends common religion because it is so universal that it
can be applied in every field of study. Faith is the correct
application of true principles. This is why our faith increases as we
search the scriptures and confirm them in our minds through prayer and
especially through obedience. To know and not to do is really not to
know. If we have faith in honesty then we won't steal, if we have
faith in tithing we will pay our tithing. We don't immediately
experience the blessings of commandments, they take time. Faith
precedes the miracle. You wouldn't wake up in the morning and go to
work if you didn't have faith that you were going to get paid. Faith
brings hope or in other words the expectation of blessings. Faith is
much more than a passive belief. It is action. The action of applying
a principle is faith. Once we understand that such an application
brings blessings we are endowed with knowledge. Alma teaches how faith
works with power and clarity in Alma 32. I know that it is by faith
that God works and frames worlds.
Each day this past week was a different challenge in the mission. On
Monday it was supposed to be who could get the most investigators and
less-actives out to family home evening but we dropped the ball on
that one and decided to go finding instead. We found an awesome couple
from El Salvador! Jose and Alma have known the church for the past 25
years. They had a lot of friends that were mormons in El Salvador but
when they moved to Canada the member support just wasn't there. They
even went to the temple lights in Ontario with friends that are
members out there. Really all they need here is the ward to reach out
to them and be their friend and they'll get baptized. It was so crazy
to find them right off the bat. Not a bad way to start blitz week with
two new investigators!
On Tuesday we tried to see who could invite the most people to be
baptized. This is something that the missions in Japan do while street
contacting. On average we talked to 150 people a day this past week.
People were so awkward when we invited them to be baptized, but it
really increased my faith in proselyting. One time when I went
knocking with President Leavitt back in St. Stephen he said before a
door "Why don't we just invite them to be members of our church?
That's what we want them to do any way!" I would say that despite the
straight-up rejections we got we did have a lot of fun extending the
commitment.
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| Brother Williams or should we say Elder Williams. He comes to literally every lesson with us and the Dieppe elders which is 20+ lessons a week. Great member missionary right there. And he makes funny faces |
Wednesday was supposed to be creative finding day but the weather was
not on our side. Freezing rain that turned into snow and covered the
whole city. We were going to take pictures of families downtown next
to the Nativity with signs that said #foreverfamilies and then post it
to Facebook, but the weather ruined that because no one was downtown.
We ended up calling members to see if they'd be willing to make
cookies that we could deliver to less-actives and non-members they
knew. We got a few members to say yes which was great.
Thursday was a rough day. We were on overdrive with proselyting and
the challenge that day was how many people we could teach the
restoration to involving the first vision. It's okay every now and
again to take a break especially in missionary work. We did find a lot
of potential investigators that day which was great. The next day was
"Flood the East Coast" day with the Book of Mormon. It was sort of a
faux challenge because the mission has a cap of 5 books per
companionship that we were allowed to hand out in a day. Sort of
cheated on that one because one lady wanted one in French so we passed
out 5 in English and one in French (My french is not the best, but I'm
getting by)
Saturday was the final stretch. The elders had a handicap throughout
the week to make things fair with the sisters. One of their points was
worth twice one of our points. Sort of unfair if you ask me. We were
down basically the whole week. On Saturday we just went as hard as we
could. We invited over 200 people to church (None of them came, but
surprisingly people were more open to church invites than other
invites). And then later that night we had the Moncton Christmas
dinner. It was just a solid week. One of our investigators, Joey
played the guitar and sang. He brought down the house. I'll attach a
video. We also put two more investigators on date for January 23rd,
Denis and Brady. We are determined to have a baptism that day. Just a
solid week. SO MUCH work but it was worth it.
HURRAH FOR ISRAEL!
Love,
Elder McGuire
D&C 58:28
28 For the power is in them, wherein they are agents unto themselves. And inasmuch as men do good they shall in nowise lose their reward.
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| We take Christmas seriously here in Moncton! |
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| Nativities while street contacting |
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| The dollar store had a great deal =D |
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| The Moncton Christmas dinner was a success! |
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