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Monday, January 26, 2015

Another Great Week!!

Dear Family,

This week was another amazing week here in Ghana. I hope you all know that i love my mission and if there is anyone out there considering it, i would highly recommend it!! we had a lot of adventures this week and i have learned so much from the experiences so ill try to share a few of them.
So we have been working closely with this couple we recently baptized. Hannah and Alex. this week we tried to focus on their family with them. Ghanaian family culture and the church family culture are very different. The tradition here is that the husband works and earns money and the wife does absolutely everything else. So when we taught them that husband and wife have and equal share in marriage that husbands are meant to help their wives and wives help their husbands, it was a little new to them. Hannah absolutely loved the idea and was excited. hahaha needless to say Alex wasnt all that ecstatic about it but he committed to helping his wife more. We will see how it goes.

While visiting one of our investigators this week a man passed by to buy something (our investigator owns a little provision shop). we were sitting inside and he noticed our name tags and was interested to find out what we believe. He began asking questions about our basic beliefs and how we do things in the church, after answering most of his questions he paused and asked "Well did you people just copy my church?" we asked him what church he went to and he told us his denomination. Not surprisingly he actually went to a church that was begun by a member who apostatized from our church (but we didnt tell him that;) So he finally came to the question about living prophets and apostles. He was against it completely.  He did not believe that they were important to the Church of Jesus Christ. As we quoted scripture after scripture he still found it hard to accept what we were saying. We bore testimony of the truthfulness of what we were saying and still it was difficult. It was amazing to me that with all the evidence he needed he still did not accept. We had done all we could to share the truth with him. It is so true when we read in the scriptures that in the last days people will be deceived by the craftiness of men. we see it every day! This man did commit to pray about what we said though and we look forward to our next appointment with him.

This week i have also learned so many wonderful amazing things about The Atonement of Jesus Christ, and also about the person i want to become. One of the elders in the apartment im in has a book called "The Continuous Atonement" by Brad Wilcox. It is a great book and i learned many new insights about the Atonement. Jesus Christ has done the most amazing thing for each and every one of us. the least we can do is Appreciate it by doing the simple things that he asks that we might experience the full blessings of its redeeming power. On top of that we received an amazing instruction from the Julanders( mission couple in takoradi) about setting goals for the future and living a life centered on Eternal truths. They spoke of the importance of making decisions based on Eternal truth rather that circumstance and how it can affect our lives if we do so. I Loved every second of it and learned a ton.

Those are a few of my favorite things that happened this week! i could write more but there would be no time to get it all! i love this work and i love this gospel! i hope you all have a great week!!! i love you!!!

love,
Elder McGuire

Monday, January 19, 2015

Happy Martin Luther King Day

Dear Family,

This week was a great one here in APOWA!!! the first full week was full in every sense of the word!! Tuesday was district meeting and it went great! Our district only has 6 missionaries in it so its pretty small, but we are all close and get along well together. We had a great instruction on our purpose as missionaries and i learned a lot.

Many of our days were absolutely full of lessons and contacting. we found a lot of great new people this week and we are excited to see what the future holds for them. One particular guy named michael was really good. we went to his house trying to meet with his sister but she "pretended" to be asleep on the couch, so he invited us in and asked us to teach him instead. We had a great lesson on the restoration and he understood it all! he especially loved the Book of Mormon and how it helped him understand the Bible. we are excited to keep working with him.
We also spent a lot of our time this week working with our baptismal candidates. We had Hannah, Alex, Robert, & Enoch. they have all been meeting with the missionaries for a long time and this week was their week!! President Stevenson came to interview 3 of them and they did well. Robert however didnt make it, i guess he had misunderstood that drinking coffee was against the word of wisdom. so he has been pushed off 2 weeks. but everyone else did great!!

So saturday we planned to have our baptism at 3:30. we planned everything out and assignments were made to fill the font and get clothes and towels and other things. when we arrived there was about 4 inches of water in the font and the pipe wasnt working!!! i felt like i was back in tarkwa!!!! thankfully we had water it was just coming out of a different pipe so we had to use buckets and fetch the water and carry it to the font, but with 10 people we had the thing full after about 30 minutes. The baptism went well and it was a great experience. I love being able to take part in such a wonderful ordinance!!!

Sunday they made that final step through that gate and onto the path leading to eternal life after they were confirmed members of the church. Sunday was sweet!! we left early so we could help all of those baptized so they would be to church, it involved helping clean up food, dishes, clothes, even fetching water from a well so the kids could take a bath. but by 9 we were all sitting under our pavilion in the sacrament hall.

Missionary work truly is divine and as time goes on it just keeps going faster and faster, i was sure things would slow down with the transfer and everything but it just doubled in speed!!! i am loving my mission though and doing my best to make the most of these last few precious days!! i hope you all have a great week!!! i love you!!!

love,
Bradley

My favorite meat in Ghana! Bush rat!! Only problem is that it is where ebola comes from so i havent had it for over a year :(


Pipe where the water comes from

The Full Font!

Elder Ukaegbu, Enoch, Alex, Hannah, & me!

Monday, January 12, 2015

New Area!!! and he sent PICTURES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Dear family,

This week was a great week but a hard one. First things first i got my
Christmas package which was great!! thankyou so much for the things
you sent me they were much needed. hahaha i took out that new shirt
and compared it to my shirts right now and....lets just say my idea of
white was a little different, all my shirts looked yellow compared to
it! so thankyou!!! today i also got a package from Krissy and Shar so
i am a happy boy!! hahaha thank you all so much!!

Saying goodbye to everyone was so difficult, i absolutely love the
people in swedru and i will miss them a ton, so tuesday as full of
saying goodbyes and takin pictures of everyone. We also had a combined
district meeting and Elder Mngoma and i gave an instruction about
sacrifice and it went really well.

Wednesday i was gone by 8 am with the ivies going into cape coast,
while there i ran into some old friends on mission like Elder Keetch,
i was soo happy to see him and he looked great he is a zone leader and
he is headed up to the bush in praso! hahaha but anyway after a few
hours there i was on a tro with a bunch of other missionaries headed
to takoradi. When we arrived my companion was waiting for me and we
went to our apartment. im in a 6 man apartment and its big! i like it
though and the missionaries in it are sweet! Our area is pretty big
and a lot like my last one. The branch i am in is extremely new and
extremely small. There are some powerful members though and it is a
sweet place to work. Our church is small and our sacrament hall is
under a pavilion hahaha its sweet! we are proselyting in 2 areas and 1
of them is on the beach!!!:D i was so happy when i found out! ive
never proselyted in an area near the beach so i am happy about that
too. There are a lot of great investigators we are working with and we
are having some baptisms this weekend too.

Thursday friday saturday and sunday were all the same, work, work,
work!!! it has felt so strange because no one has called me about
problems in the zone or had to report numbers or baptisms or anything
to me. why? oh yeah! im a regular missionary!!! still getting used to
it but its good. it means i get to focus more on the people im working
with.

Mom if you come here you wont see any blue sky, it is Dry season, but
this year i think they should call it dust season because the air
quality is horrible!!! you can look at the sun all day if you want to
because the haze is so bad! the dust is making everyone sick so we are
being extra careful not to get anything.

Life is good and i hope you are all happy and have a great week! i love you!!!

love,
Elder James Bradley McGuire

Christmas Package!!!

Me and Elder Ukaegbu!

Our Chapel....

...and... FUFU!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Monday, January 5, 2015

Transferring!!!!!

Dear Family,

This week has been a good one as usual for us. The work is progressing faster than ever out here and we are loving the opportunity to be a part of it. I have been working with Elder Brown in a newly created branch and it has been sweet. It is awesome for missionaries when new branches are created because all of the members get really excited and they all want to help and give referrals. so the work goes and it really goes fast.

Unfortunately im not gonna be here to see it all really get going, im being transferred! ive been released as Zone leader and i am being transferred to Takoradi i would say im going to be in the same zone that i started in but my first area is now a zone all on its own! when i was there we were the only missionaries, now its a zone!!! so awesome. So my area is called Apowa and its on the outskirts of the biggest city of the mission, the suburbs really so it should be sweet, ive proselyted there before on splits so i will luckily know a little about the area. My companion is Elder Ukegbu from Nigeria and he is going to be great to work wtih, im excited to learn from him and to become a better missionary.

So needless to say this whole week has been full of taking pictures and saying goodbyes. its so hard to be leaving. i have been here for 7 1/2 months now and its the longest area of my mission so far. I love the people here with all of my heart and i will miss this place a ton! it was especially great that the news came this weekend because a lot of people i met when i first came here had gone, but because of the holidays they had come back to their home so i got to say some goodbyes that i didnt think i would get to.

Some fun events this week were helping a woman kill a 7 foot long black mamba snake with a big piece of bamboo. it was super funny because everytime we swung the bamboo a bunch of people watching would cheer! it was hilarious! also this week we got fed a ton! when you leave everyone wants to cook for you! we have 2 meals planned tonight and like 3 more tomorrow hahaha. mission is sweet!;)

Anyway those are the main events of the week. im sure i will have a ton to write about next week so until then i hope you all make it a great one! i love you!

love,
Bradley