He Denieth None that Come Unto Him

Happy Birthday Rwandan style!

Dear Family,
I'm sorry that myldsmail is being difficult lately. I was a bit

perturbed last week because I wasn't getting any emails, but it wasn't
for lack of effort on your end. I love hearing about your lives. Many
of you have changed over the past 18 months. That's the one thing
constant about our lives, change.

This past week I read a verse in the Book of Mormon that really struck
me. It reads:  "For none of these iniquities come of the Lord; for he
doeth that which is good among the children of men; and he doeth
nothing save it be plain unto the children of men; and he inviteth
them ball toccome unto him and partake of his goodness; and he denieth
none that come unto him, black and white,ebond and free, male and
female; and he remembereth the heathen; and all are alike unto God,
both Jew and Gentile." We are a worldwide church. There are more than
15 million members all over the world from Africa to Asia from Canada
to Australia. We are not an American church. We're not the Mormon club
where only white people from Utah reign. The church is growing so
rapidly in Africa that there are waiting lists for people to get
baptized. In fact, I meet more ethnic people that are more accepting
of the gospel than your standard average white person every day.
Diversity is the beauty of the earth. There are different colours,
different ideas, different people, different shapes. God loves all of
His children. He is our Father. I know that He created us with the
unique talents, gifts, and bodies for a purpose. I know that He is our
Father.

This past week we hit the grindstone. I've been working on my
contacting skills a lot. Most people appreciate it when you tell them
who you are, what you want, and why they should care in the first 10
seconds of the contact. They want to know what makes the church
different than every other religion out there. People live busy lives.
The amount of time it takes for a person to go through an article on
the internet is 17 seconds. People like it when things are quick and
to the point but relevant to them. With this, Elder Tincher and I have
been trying to perfect our door approach. Here's the thing about door
approaches. People hate door approaches. For whatever reason they are
just trained to say no to people that come to the door. I have knocked
on thousands of doors and talked to thousands of people on the street.
People just hate being interrupted. So we've been trying different
ways to get to the point with people. We knock on the door, say who we
are, and why they should allow us to continue talking to them. The
number one thing people want out of religion is feeling closer to God.
So we preyed on this subject and started telling them rather that we
share a message that will bless their family, but we share a message
that will bring them closer to God. Then the tricky part is responding
to all of the objections. Many people will simply say "I'm not
interested" and that's fine. But the other weak objections are "I've
got my own religion" or 'I'm busy" or "Just give me your literature"
or "I'm atheist, you'd be wasting your time talking to me" To these we
respond "How's your religion working for you?" "Do you really enjoy
being catholic?" "Could we grab your phone number and talk to you
another time?" 'What kind of literature would you be interested in?"
"Well then you're talking to the right people if you have no faith in
God!" It's worked decently. Normally we get about one-two potentials a
day. Doing it this way has gotten us more like 3-5 potentials a day. I
don't like door approaches, but we're getting pretty good at them.

The family from Rwanda is doing so great. We're going to be having a
baptism on the 20th! So get excited. I'm having to teach more simply
every time we go over there. The pamphlet is good to focus the lesson.
We taught the Restoration in three parts. We need to procure a Book of
Mormon in Kirwandan. That'll just come down to ordering one from
LDS.org. Other than that our teaching pool isn't that large at the
moment. The winter tends to be like this. We had 7 potential lessons
fall through on Saturday. Sometimes it just doesn't happen and that's
okay. We still worked hard this past week.

This upcoming week Elder Tincher and I are training all of the leaders
in the mission about effective communication. We got permission to use
inc.com, a business website that has some great articles. After a
couple of late nights and rock stars later, we've got a pretty solid
training put together. I'll share it to anyone that wants it. We're
going to have a blast. We're playing hedbanz with 50 plus people. Get
excited.









HURRAH FOR ISRAEL!

Love,

Elder McGuire