Our sister, Micaela Cordon, has been called to labor in the Ecuador Quito Mission. She will be learning and teaching the gospel in Spanish. She will report to the Columbia MTC on May 6, 2015. We are so proud of her.
Dear Family and Friends,
An interesting quote from C. S. Lewis to inform your day that My Mission President shared:
“Repentance is not something God demands of you before He will take you back, and which He could let you off if He chose; it is simple a description of what going back is like”
Well the last week was awesome! Since we saw you last we have seen a huge boost in our finding. We have been working on making the adjustment to short power statements and right to reschedule for a sit down lesson. Its been hard changing our habits and our approaches at first it was awkward we wondered if it was better but, we persisted and now it feels a whole lot better. Our struggle for a long time has been new investigators but just within the last two days we have rescheduled 3 people. We do realize that everyone that schedules wont always show up but, unless you reschedule someone no one will show up. This has been a good change and it came from pray and practice. The Kwok Family is really moving a long we went to dinner with bishop last night and brought them along. They really enjoyed it and then after we had everyone bare their testimonies it was powerful and Sister Kwok commented how she always feel so happy whenever she is at church or with members. She is moving along great and we committed them to family prayer and scripture study. As soon as they can make the necessary changes in their lives they will be great members. Sadly the dad is not involved they are not divorced but they are separated. If we were to move towards baptism would we need the fathers permission?
We have been working on some plans to really build more unity in the ward from the similar Idea of what the Pok fu Lam Elders and Sisters have been doing. Sadly we are finding it quite difficult to schedule members, not sure why but besides about 3 families it doesn’t seem like we can schedule a visit, we also made it clear that we dont need a meal appointment just 20 mins to sit down. So we are working on some ways to figure that one out.
I have really seen the blessings of using my language study everyday it has been a huge improvement and characteristic of my time here in Aberdeen and the biggest blessings are after the consistency over a long period of time.
I said I would make a prayer journal and take ten minutes in the evenings to ponder how the lord has answered my prayers. Doing this has really increased my awareness to his blessing. It just seems like my simple ones that I have always asked for I have been taken for granted. The little blessings are sometimes the most miraculous.
Elder Jared Cordon
Dear Family and Friends,
Such wonderful miracles this week. We have been teaching two Part Member Families that live together for a while now and making slow progress until this week. Seth and Liz, and Monty and Deedee are the two pairs. Well Seth and Liz just had a baby and it is incredible how life events like that can really change people instantaneously. The Book of Mormon has also been being read throughout the house, and this week Seth and Monty were at church and all four will be there this coming week. I am so grateful for the miracles that I have been able to witness with this family and cannot wait to see Liz and Monty get baptized and then to see them All go to the temple to be sealed as families.
That is what this work is about sealing families together forever. The goal is and always should be the temple. The missionary propose ends with endure to the end not baptism.
I cannot wait for the miracles that await this family as they progress toward Heavenly Father. That is the moat rewarding part of missionary work is to have first row seats to the miracles of God. To be able to see just how open God is with miracles in our day. Especially when there are so many people that dont believe in God let alone miracles.
I am grateful for the wonderful mission that I am able to take part in and dont wish to be anywhere else.
Thank you for you wonderful support and prayers. I love you all so much.
Elder S Cordon
Dear Family and Friends,
This weekend marked another wonderful point in my mission. Like always far more happens then I could ever truly share in a simple email, but I will do my best to capture the amazing store of at least one man.
The story from my perspective really began with his daughter. She is one amazing person and I am grateful that I have been blessed to be part of her story. When I first got to this ward she had just been baptized into the YSA (Young Single Adult) ward. She had friends in this ward though and felt that she would do better in a family ward until she got her feet under her. We begun working with her though and teaching the new member lessons. Considering that nobody is perfect and that even after baptism most people have a long way to go before they are firm in the church. We worked with her a lot to help her develop habits of daily scripture study and prayer. As she strengthened her testimony the desire grew within her to share this message with her dad and her brother. If I could only describe the transformation that she has had since I have been working with her it would blow you away. Her transformation was so incredible that her Dad who never has been active in any church even though he has considered himself catholic all his life decided to join us one Sunday for church. He came for the first time last October. The spirit was so strong that he said that from the first moment he walked into the building he knew there was something different. At the same time her younger brother started getting active in the scouting program. After some time he had finally made the changes in his life to prepare him for baptism. He knew right from the beginning it is what he needed to do and he understood that it would be a lifestyle change, so now that he has finally been baptized he is in for good. The baptism went very smoothly and all his brothers and his children came to the baptism. Even his very strong catholic mom came and very much enjoyed the baptism.
It was one of the sweetest moments of my mission. To see the father of a family that I have worked so closely with and have grown so close to finally make that step. His son David will soon follow and his son Tony has started showing a lot of interest lately so perhaps before I even know it the family will be getting sealed in the temple. It is the moments like this that help me feel that my mission has been paid in full everything else on top of that is just a bonus. I love this work so much and nothing brings me greater joy than watching a family heal and come closer together through the gospel of Jesus Christ. Truly that is what this work is all about.
I love y’all
Elder Joshua Cordon
Dear Family and Friends,
First things first a run down for the last week and a half. We have made great progress with Sister Gwok. We gave her a baptismal date for March 3rd. Still the big concern is her son liking church so that he can join her. We are working with the ward council to help him out. Brother Yip and Brother Leung are both moving slowly but surely we taught really powerful lessons to them this last week and are just trying to get them to get into the scriptures. Both are getting better everytime we see them. We also were able to go Less Active finding with our new ward Mission leader. Its great working with him because he is very motivated and we are learning a lot from his efforts.
It was a long week but I have been learning a lot recently about spiritual patterns. I have noticed that as we start doing something we may see some quick blessing come but then we see what seems like no blessings coming our way but really its that the Huge blessing that come from consistent good choices usually come way after the little small ones we see immediately after making some life changes.
I just finished the masters Art and it has given me some great inspiration on how I can improve my teaching. It was a really really good I am grateful my mission president was willing to share. There is a few quotes that Have stuck with me. “the best way to rid a bad habit is to fix a good one” and a simple one that i really like “say clearly one thing at a time”. The first has given me some good insight into looking towards the mark and ridding myself of all the many bad habits I have is to fix some good ones. One habit I wanted to rid was being unfocused in the evening hours after planning. So I am fixing the habit of immediately writing in my journal after planning and its helping to rid many other bad habits.
Love you all and remember True Joy is not reaching a certain point but the continuous pattern of overcoming of imperfection.
Elder Jared Cordon
Dear Family and Friends,
So prayer was my power moment of the week. I am so very grateful for pray, what a wonderful gift that has been given to us. God our father has given us a way to talk to him, to receive answer and comfort. To be able to build a relationship just like we would with our earthly parents. Keeping that relationship in mind is when pray because a very natural part of life, and something that you never want to miss. I love that I have been able to really build a relationship with my Heavenly Father, and come to know who he is and better understand what he desires of me.
I know that God hears and answers prayers. I know that He wants to heard from us, from the smallest details to the most painful struggles. He is happy when we are and is sad when we are sad. He is always there to comfort us. Prayer gives me such strength to know that I can talk to my Father when I need to.
So one of our investigators is having a baby this week. Super exciting I will send pictures next week.
I Love you all so much. Thank you for everything.
Elder S Cordon
Dear Family and Friends,
This past week was simply amazing!! It was full of incredible moments and opportunities. Elder Layton and I worked really hard for 6 months together to get the area where it is at right now. It was a lot of patient work with prepared people who just needed to time to overcome things that they have been going through. The patience is finally paying off. Elder Jorgensen and I are ready to finally begin harvesting. We set 5 new baptismal dates this week with wonderful individuals, and we had an incredible baptism this Sunday. With one coming up this Saturday.
The wonderful sisters name is Donna Pinto. She bore such a powerful testimony at the baptism of how she came to know that these things were true. She has been one who has been searching her whole life to find the truth. She has attended numerous congregations of varying sects of Christianity searching for what she didn’t have. Every single time she said, she sat there and told herself. “There has to be more than this, this can’t be all there is to it.” Eventually her visits to churches became less frequent until she wasn’t going anywhere at all. Then one sunny afternoon we came knocking on her door. She told us that we could come back and see her on Sunday afternoon. We didn’t think much of it because we people say we can come back all the time. It seemed promising but we weren’t sure what to make of it. When we came back on Sunday she had read a few chapters from her Book of Mormon (which we didn’t give her), had marked up some verses, and had plenty of questions for us. We thought we were dreaming. She came to church the next Sunday and hasn’t missed one since. She has been in many members homes and has already developed some great friendships. That was only about 5 weeks ago when we met her.
Those are the moments that make endless hours of effort worth it. As it says in the Doctrine and Covenants section 18 verse 15: “and if it so be that you should labor all your days in crying repentance unto this people, and bring, save it be one soul unto me, how great shall be your joy with [her] in the kingdom of my Father.” That is how I feel right now. I am so blessed to be part of this amazing work!
Some other highlights of the week include seeing Elder Anderson speak. He was doing a road-trip through Florida basically and visiting numerous stakes along the way. Last wednesday he did a mission wide devotional which was an amazing opportunity. He talked about exactly what our mission needed to hear. He gave us encouragement that we can do better than we are currently doing, but promised us that it is indeed possible. I was very motivated to go and just make it happen. The next day while my companion was at the Temple I worked with one of the new missionaries and we had an awesome day. We had no plans going in but we ended up doing nonstop teaching basically. God truly provided.
On Sunday we finally had formal lesson with this woman named Ashley that we have been teaching. She is a single mom who is good friends now with some members in our ward and whose room-mate is a less active. They were moving to some apartments just down the road from us and so we helped out with the move. We managed to stay in touch with them over the next couple of weeks. We had dinner at that members house last week which they came to and we got to know her really well. She has come to church 2 times already and has really enjoyed it. Yesterday we had a really solid lesson with her and she is already read most of 1 Nephi. It is incredible how quickly she is progressing. We will set a baptismal date with her probably the next time we see her.
I can see more evidently than ever before that my heavenly Father loves me, and I am learning more and more each and everyday of the Grace of Jesus Christ. I know we don’t deserve the tremendous success that we are having, I don’t really know what I am doing most of the time. But the Lord provides, he has my whole life. He always finds a way to give me just what I need at just the moment I need it. I know that if we just turn things over to him, that our life will be filled with the sweetest joys that are available in this mortal life. It usually doesn’t come in the way that we expect or even want, but it does come and it is always what we really need. I say these things in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen.
Elder Joshua Cordon
Dear Family and Friends,
This week I have a simple invitation. The invitation is to study faith, from what ever source you wish, specifically how to increase faith and then what can happen with faith. Do this every day this week. Included with study is to then take time each day to share with someone your testimony of a living prophet, whether that is on facebook or in person, but it has to be specific to that person not just a wall post. Then if they ask any questions to your testimony invite them to learn more from the missionaries. That is the invitation. Let me know how it goes.
This was a good week things are going well here in the Wenatchee area. Stake president set a goal of 201 baptisms this year, and in the next six months the amount of missionaries are going to double in this area getting ready for the split. CRAZY STUFF. We have all of our investigators reading the Book of Mormon. That is the start to knowing that is is true. Reading everyday brings a power into your life that cannot be obtained by any other means, it brings so many blessings.
I am always very touched at how God fills my heart with love the very instant that I start sharing the gospel with them. I know that it is just a fraction of the love that he actually has, which amazes me even more.
Thank you all for you prays and wishes I love you all so much.
I pray for you often
Elder S Cordon.
Dear Family and Friends,
This week has just been non-stop awesome!! We are in a position where we rarely get a second to stop and think, it has been rather nice. I love being incredibly busy. However, at the same time a breather, where you can catch up on some things and gather your composure before going head first into the next week is always a nice thing. We have some exciting things ahead of this week. We have Elder Anderson of the quorum of the 12 Apostles doing a pitstop for a short mission devotional this week which will be a great experience and then the very next day we have another trip down to the temple. Then on Sunday our wonderful friend Donna will be baptized right after church. We are already filling practically every available crack with appointments. We are truly blessed with great prosperity right now. God really has been blessing us incredibly.
The lesson I learned this week is captured incredibly in a talk by Henry B. Eyring. It is called “Heavenly Father Reaches Out To His Children“. (*editors note: link is for an audio of the talk) In this talk he helps to explain how Heavenly Father can possibly stand watching so many of his children struggle and suffer. We think there is a lot of bad in the world and we cant even stand to watch, imagine seeing all of it happening at the same time and knowing each individual very personally. That sounds incredibly painful, yet that is what God experiences each and every moment. He tells us– and you must know that this is not at all doing justice to the talk and in no way replaces the benefit of actually hearing it for yourself– that the reason that Heavenly Father can stand it is because he has us. He has mortal servants down here who can reach the people and be an extension of Him in providing love and support during this difficult sojourn of life. He share a quote that is as follows, “it is against the order of Heaven for Angels to be sent to complete a task that can be accomplished by a mortal servant.”
The responsibility is ours. We most reach out and nourish and care for those around us. We cannot simply be concerned with our life alone but with the many lives that surround us each and every day. If we are sensitive to the needs of our loved ones and we are sensitive to the spirit we will see many opportunities to reach out and give support. It never has to be anything complicated, they simply need to know that you are there and that you love them. I am going to attach the link to the talk and I would encourage all of you to listen to it and to consider how you can be an extension of our heavenly father. As for me right now in my mission, these missionaries are my family. And I feel a great responsibility to reach out and to provide support and love to them. I hope God will guide me as I attempt to do just that.
I love y’all so much!
Elder Joshua Cordon
Dear Family & Friends,
Well this week might be short I am really short on time. But it was a really good week we have seen some amazing success with the efforts with the ward and growth with our investigators, its one of those weeks where I feel like you can take a sigh of relief that maybe your efforts are paying off. We had ward council this week and with the first one for the year the ward was very enthusiatic with many different ideas to step up there efforts. It was great to see that this time was much more focuses on missionary efforts. Especially the Relief Society president. She is such an example and that goes for all the women in the Relief Society here they are so awesome. They have made our investigator feel really welcomed and they are all so observant that without us even saying anything come and greet her and friendship her, invite her over for dinner, exchange numbers tell her all about the activities, make her kids feel welcomed. They are awesome! Our investigator is going to have her sister come to an activity soon, we met her before now its just bringing her in. The Elders Quorum is starting to follow there example they have really gotten so much better. Our investigators father came to church my himself even though his son didn’t come he said he is too busy to take the lessons but he loves elders Quorum so we will keep working with him. Referrals are the way to go for sure. Things are great I am great I am changing for the better everyday.
Love Elder Cordon.
“Not all those who wander are lost.” – J.R.R. Tolkien
Three brothers have dedicated two years of their lives sharing one message, a message of hope and happiness, that's found in the gospel of Jesus Christ, to the people of Hong Kong China, Washington State and Florida State. They will be servings as missionaries for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
Three brothers have dedicated two years of their lives sharing one message, a message of hope and happiness, that's found in the gospel of Jesus Christ, to the people of Hong Kong China, Washington State and Florida State. They will be servings as missionaries for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
Three brothers have dedicated two years of their lives sharing one message, a message of hope and happiness, that's found in the gospel of Jesus Christ, to the people of Hong Kong China, Washington State and Florida State. They will be servings as missionaries for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
Three brothers have dedicated two years of their lives sharing one message, a message of hope and happiness, that's found in the gospel of Jesus Christ, to the people of Hong Kong China, Washington State and Florida State. They will be servings as missionaries for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
Three brothers have dedicated two years of their lives sharing one message, a message of hope and happiness, that's found in the gospel of Jesus Christ, to the people of Hong Kong China, Washington State and Florida State. They will be servings as missionaries for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
Three brothers have dedicated two years of their lives sharing one message, a message of hope and happiness, that's found in the gospel of Jesus Christ, to the people of Hong Kong China, Washington State and Florida State. They will be servings as missionaries for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
Three brothers have dedicated two years of their lives sharing one message, a message of hope and happiness, that's found in the gospel of Jesus Christ, to the people of Hong Kong China, Washington State and Florida State. They will be servings as missionaries for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
Three brothers have dedicated two years of their lives sharing one message, a message of hope and happiness, that's found in the gospel of Jesus Christ, to the people of Hong Kong China, Washington State and Florida State. They will be servings as missionaries for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
Three brothers have dedicated two years of their lives sharing one message, a message of hope and happiness, that's found in the gospel of Jesus Christ, to the people of Hong Kong China, Washington State and Florida State. They will be servings as missionaries for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
Three Brothers... Two Countries... One Message 