And He Shall Come into the World to Redeem His People

Richard McGuire

Dear Family,

Thank you for all of your prayers. Prayer is such a crucial element to obtaining the Spirit and the Spirit is the most important element in the Work of Salvation. Serving in Cole Harbour has its blessings and its challenges. We were able to clean the temple this morning and I got to work in the Celestial room cleaning the mirrors and polishing the lamps. The temple is the House of the Lord. My new companion, Elder Henderson got to escort one of his converts, Xi Gao for his endowments and I did two family names. I want to get to that point to where I get to sit in the celestial room with one of my converts. Such a goal. It's interesting, in Cole Harbour with the temple being around you would think that there would be a ton of members and it would be like New Utah and everyone be eating carrots in jello or whatever. However, this is still Nova Scotia. Not everyone is a member and in fact a lot of the people we meet have read some anti-mormon information about the temple and they have a large Spirit of contention with them. These things are spiritual. They just are. I can't convince anyone that there is a God, that the church has been restored, and that families can be together forever. I can only share with them what I know because I have prayed and fasted.

Do you ever wonder why there is a lot of anti-mormon information? Whenever we sin we sin. What keeps us in sin? Pride. I invite you to look up Beware of Pride by President Benson. Say we make some mistakes at work, or with money, or with other people. The church tells us that we must repent, make retribution, and change to become more like our Saviour. How many people actually want to do that. When people are in sin they either do two things: repent or look for information that will disprove the church. Such searching for a way to get out of eating healthy, get out of going to the temple, get out of not looking at pornography, get out of paying tithing, being kind to their spouse, spending time with their children, or anything else, mocks the atonement. Whenever we even think about taking a different stance on anything that is not in harmony with the church we mock the atonement. Christ descended above everything so that we could live again. When we look for fault in the church it is because we do not want to repent of something.

This week was an excellent week. Our investigator Lana, loves the Book of Mormon. She is willing to be exactly obedient and follow Jesus Christ. She even messaged us over Facebook "Are we allowed to eat chocolate?" "Yes Lana we are allowed to eat chocolate." She was reading about Lehi's family going out into the wilderness and she thought that she needed to go out into the wilderness. Not the brightest idea when we are in the middle of a Canadian winter, but I just love her willingness to repent and be baptized. She is going through a very difficult situation with her boyfriend and three kids. This is somewhat sad news, but she actually lives just outside of Cole Harbour in Dartmouth so we passed her off to the Dartmouth missionaries. So now we are still in need of finding new investigators. Will you all continue to pray for her? She is very exited to get baptized. I think it is better this way because the Dartmouth sister missionaries have been really struggling with even being missionaries and this will increase their confidence because Lana is very prepared.

I am looking forward to this upcoming zone conference. It's great to be a zone leader and have a better idea of what you are doing. Last transfer I was all over the place being in contact with every zone member rather than just working on my relationship with the district leaders. I have resolved that if I get into the mindset that I am the district leader of the district leaders then things will flow more smoothly and I'll be less-stressed. Reporting numbers was a gong show last night. We have three new district leaders and they just didn't get the memo that they needed to collect key indicators and evaluate their districts. After several phone calls and being on the phone with President Leavitt until 1 in the morning we finally got all of the standards in. We have also created some Facebook groups to promote communication between the district leaders and us.

Communication and thought is what will assist Heavenly Father move the work forward. Had some great revelation concerning chapter 8 of Preach My Gospel. We have to seriously consider the spiritual progression of others. What will help them progress, make a plan and then do it. Too many missionaries knock doors for 9 hours a day. There is a higher law. After each visit we write in the area book or member book about the visit. We write down "What did we learn, how did we feel? What's the plan?" Then transferring this information to the planner and doing some meaningful work. We visited with some less-actives last night. I won't go in to too many details, but we resolved that they want to come back, but they don't have the Spirit and they have had some bad experiences with elders in the past. So what's the plan? The plan is to follow up with them over Facebook in one week regarding their family history work and to also write them a thank you card. Then we will write down what happens in the area book and continue to see what we can do to help them.

So many ward councils fail to solve problems. They just go around and ask eachother if they have anything. No no no no no no! Talk about less-actives and how to help them, talk about recent-converts and how to help them, talk about potential members of the church and how to invite them to learn more about the restored gospel. The last thing that needs to be happening in a ward council meeting is talking about activities. Plans need to be made to determine how to help people. People fall away because others fail to love them.

I love you all

HURRAH FOR ISRAEL!

Elder McGuire 

Elder Corbett packing up and leaving 

There is a Scottish/Irish store in Halifax which is pretty great

It's Elder Henderson from Idaho! He has 6 weeks left

Sorry for the lack of pictures. It's difficult to take pictures when I'll get frostbite if my hands are out of my gloves for too long

I got my Christmas package. Christmas in February! I've got a lot of oils. I've got deep blue and serenity so I think I'm good. The stocking was awesome!!!! Don't think many cats would be out and about in minus 30 weather. Unless they were bears or something. Thank you thank thank you for sending me a Christmas package. You are the best.

Love,

Elder McGuire