Cheer and Bless and Brighten

Dear Family,

What an amazing week! I'm starting to love Maine more and more. When I
first showed up I was really missing Canada and all of its little
perks. I miss Newfoundland the most but Maine is growing on me. I
really love how no one here knows much about Canada, even New
Brunswick. It's really bizarre because New Brunswick is literally 20
minutes north. That's just how Americans are though.

I read a great talk this week by President Uchtdorf. In "It works
Wonderfully!" In there he makes the point that many questions people
ask often lead them to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day
Saints. I studied one of his questions this morning during personal
study. Do I really believe in God? Obviously I believe in God
otherwise I wouldn't be on a mission but I looked at it more as "Why
do I believe in God?" I want you to think why you believe in God. For
me it comes down to this. God is the most supreme and intelligent
being in the universe. He teaches us by calling prophets. By obeying
the words of prophets we can grow in knowledge and eventually become
Godlike. I know for sure that I believe in improvement and growth.
Becoming better to the point of being God (that's the goal), is the
reason why I believe in God (Mosiah 4:9)

This past week we were blessed to hit the mission standard. I haven't
hit the mission standard since the week before Christmas. Before that
I had hit it every week for 6 months. It was nice to get back on
track.

We found three new investigators this week. The first was a lady named
Carla. She's about Mum and Dad's age. She just went through a divorce
and moved out to Northern Maine and she was looking for a church to go
to. It was kind of cool how we found her. She's actually a former from
3 years ago and when we went by to her old address her ex-husband told
us to beat the feat and that he wasn't interested. Not really a
problem because that literally happens every day. We were then
contacting some other people up the road and while we were walking
back to the car her ex-husband yells out for us to help him push his
truck off the icy driveway. We went over and pushed him out and then
he said that we could have Carla's phone number. We then called it a
couple of hours later and Carla picked up. She gave us her address
which was a little outside of Caribou and then we drove up to teach
her last Friday. She accepted to be baptized and she came to church!

                                                                                  

Cats are everywhere in Maine. it's great

                                                                                 Now for one of the biggest miracles of my mission.

We get a text from Church Headquarters about a lady that wanted a Book
of Mormon. She lived out in Presque Isle which is 10 minutes from
Caribou. We don't have a gps but we have a map from the gas station so
we just headed out to Presque Isle on a prayer that we'd find the
house. After getting lost for half an hour we finally found the
address...to a trailer park which had dozens of trailers (I can see
your frustration with trailer parks Dad!) we didn't know which trailer
to knock on so we just tried a random one and BOOM. We found Tia and
Riley. Tia is originally from Cedar City, Utah. She was meeting with
the missionaries out there, but crap hit the fan with her family so
she ended up moving out to Presque Isle with her boyfriend. We taught
both of them and they are like a young power couple that want to serve
missions and get married in the temple. They are on date for the
weekend after general conference. skadoosh!

So yes it was a great week!

HURRAH FOR ISRAEL!

Love,

Zone Training in Fredericton! I didn't have to prepare it for once :D

Elder McGuire