Dear Family and Friends,

On Tuesday, I did my first exchange with the Zone Leaders because Elder Newbold is the district leader. I ended up going over to the neighboring area none as Cannon Creek. It is directly west of our area. The missionary crib in that area is actually really nice. It is this small house that is on the backside of a lot with a nicer house that nobody lives in… a bit of a waste if you ask me. At the end of the day though I was very glad that I am in Deep Creek. In my opinion our area is far more ripe even though we have twice as many missionaries in it. Elder Clark, who I did the exchange with is a great missionary! I made sure to take some time at the end of the exchange to get some specific advice from him on how I can be a better missionary. His tips really have made a difference! One of my favorites was to look for ways to serve your companion. I find that as I make the effort to do that I am far less prideful.

Apparently, getting an unusual amount of sleep last Sunday wasn’t enough because we had to get up an hour and half early this past Thursday for a Zone Conference in Gainesville. It was totally worth it though. We got there at a quarter to eight and found out pretty quickly that we have the best car of all the missionaries in the two zones. Which is the classy 2013 Ford Fusion. We are so very blessed 🙂

The Conference was very powerful though and was a great spiritually renewing experience. I got to see Elder Williams too, who was one of the Elders in my MTC district with me. He is doing really well which is great! One of the changes we found out from the conference is that we are expected to no longer fully share our area with the Sister Missionaries here, but rather we need to geographically cut it in half so we have individual jurisdiction over our parts. This is intended to prevent the missionaries from stepping on each other’s toes. I made sure to immediately set up a meeting with our bishop so that we can do that. The meeting is on Tuesday. Another terrific part of the conference was just hearing the testimony of many wonderful missionaries and being able to see and visit with President and Sister Craig! Those two are so awesome, and President Craig just has incredible vision for the future of the zone.

One of the terrific lessons we had this week was with Nick Harwell. He was a referral from his neighbor who said that he was a pastor for 10 years and would probably be open to hearing a message about Christ. Personally I love talking to pastors. It forces me to know what I am talking about and they actually understand scriptural language, and have read the Bible. This guy was awesome though when we first met him. So I was really excited to go back. When we went by, he let us right inside and we sat down at his table and proceeded to have one of the most powerful restoration lessons we have ever given. I believe it was because I relied on the spirit in fear that if I said something wrong that it would kill the spirit in the room. He agreed with everything and is really excited to dig into the Book of Mormon. He had a few questions about baptism, so we left him some chapters to read for homework. We are going to meet with him tonight at the church to play some basketball and follow up on his reading.

To finish it off. I found out on Saturday from President Craig that I will be training a new missionary next transfer which begins on the 4th of September. I am really excited to train. I just hope that I can be a great example and help this new Elder hit the ground running so that he wont feel like a new missionary. Also we find out tonight who is going to be district leader next month and if the district remains the same areas than it is either me or Elder Jensen. He has been out for a year now so it will probably be him. It is just interesting that at 3 months I has a 50/50 chance to be a district leader.

I love the work here! I wish I could say that we are baptizing someone this Saturday, but since we can’t get our investigators to church it will be a few weeks until we get one. All in due time though! I know that God is in charge here. I also know that nothing in the word makes me feel better than sharing the Gospel, reading the Book of Mormon, and bearing testimony! That feeling alone is absolute confirmation to me that this message I bear is true! I don’t doubt that for a minute! 🙂

I love ya’ll!

Elder Joshua Cordon