Dear Family and Friends,

Before I do anything else, I would invite all of you to get on Facebook and join the group called to share. We are having event number 2 come online tomorrow and we need your help this week to make it big! It is called #searchthebook. It is pretty simple. Post a picture of you reading the book of Mormon in your favorite reading spot. Then post it with the #searchthebook and one of your favorite verses or something. Last week the event was trending on facebook, we got several celebrities to take part, and mormon.org even did a write-up on it. You don’t want to miss this 🙂

This last week has been a real trial of our faith though (Ether 12:6). Here we are setting a goal of finding someone who we can teach and get baptized in the month of June. In order for the lord to trust us with one of his beloved sons or daughters we need to do our part. Which in my mind is putting in the ample amount of time to find. Well, this past week we were fed 8 dinners and 3 lunches with members, which is absolutely a huge blessing (the most meals I have ever had in one week my whole mission), but it means you can’t skip meals or take a quick lunch, and considering the crunch time, that was the plan. Apparently the lord wanted to make sure we ate! Are car also got put in the shop on Monday, which normally isn’t bad, but we had made all our plans with the mindset that we would have a car. So not having one through a lot of things into a big pot of crazy as we scrambled to adjust our scheduled appointments to make room for travel time. We also had a lot of members ask for service from us, which is also a huge blessing, but we didn’t expect to do so much in one week haha. On top of that we had two exchanges to do, which once again is another blessing. All of these things combined just made it hard to donate much of any time to finding. Yet we found the time regardless.

In order for someone to get baptized though they have to come to church three times. Considering the fact that we only had 3 Sundays left this month, that person had to come to church Sunday. We had a few potentials who had committed to come, but one by one they fell off of the face of the earth. We still had one brother named Mobile who was committed, but he didn’t have a ride. We tried for two hours Sunday morning to get him a ride, but not a soul in the world would answer their phone. 15 minutes before church starts we get news that he found himself a ride and a few minutes later he comes rolling into the parking lot in a rickety old SUV with a non-member friend a recent convert. It was a beautiful sight to see them all come walking up to the chapel in their Sunday best, knowing that God had provided us that soul that we had been fighting for! The 3 of them and Solomon on the pew was a beautiful sight to see. I believe in a god of miracles!

Some background on Mobile. He is one of the lost boys of Sudan. His cousin is Solomon who i baptized back in December. And his other cousin is a man elder Frazier baptized back in December as well who moved to this area shortly after Elder Frazier came here. He is really tall and very funny. His English isn’t too great but it is getting better. Hearing the story of what those men went through back in their country is really incredible. Despite the very traumatic events that naturally following joining the military at the early ages of 10-15, they are all so very happy! It really puts your life into perspective and helps you learn to pick what is worth being sad about. He continues to inspire me one day at a time! I love that brother!

I got told that I will be able to go to the temple this week! Wohoo! I am excited! It also happens to be the same day that my recent convert Jim will be going which will pretty awesome! I hopefully will see him down there!

Have a great week! I love y’all!

Elder Joshua CordonA