“An unseen power will aid me and you”… Electricity or WiFi anyone?!

Posted on January 27, 2014 by shalesecordon9

Dear family and friends,

Things got pretty exciting this last week when I was able to receive
my iPad mini. These things are awesome! It is definitely a huge bonus
to serving here in Jacksonville, Florida. To answer any questions,
these are not full functioning iPad. The church has modified them a
bit to upgrade security and so that there are no any games or anything
on them. We have access to all the churches apps and Google translate,
Skype, and Facebook, but that is about as much as we get. It is also
all we really need. There’s so much information in gospel Library
alone, has everything you could possibly imagine as far as missionary
work is concerned. I’m excited to see how I can use this to grow the
work in this area.

A cool miracle from this last week shows how we used the iPad in a
creative way that opened doors we wouldn’t have had otherwise. Last
Sunday when contacting in an apartment complex we met a man from
Albania. He couldn’t speak any English, so we gave him a pass along
card and wished him a good day. As I was walking away I just found
myself wishing that I could just speak to him because he seemed like
such a wonderful man. The next day we went to pick up some French
copies of the book of Mormon from outside of the mission office that
sister roads left for us when in the stack we found an Albanian copy
of the book of Mormon. We asked her why it was there and she said it
was an accident. I immediately thought of the man that we the day
before and I felt that this was no coincidence. We didn’t exactly know
where he lived, but we went to the same complex and said a mighty
prayer and began wondering hoping to find him. We knocked on a few
doors and did a regular approach and then asked if they knew any
Albanian people in the area. We were continually sent down several
dead end leads. However, we felt the spirit was with us,guiding us. As
we walked we felt that we should talk to some young man we saw sitting
at a picnic table. After having a short conversation with him and
giving him a Book of Mormon, we started to make our way back to the
car. Right then we saw the same Albanian man that before walking into
his apartment. We ran after him and knocked on the door just after it
shut. He opened it and as he saw us a big smile came across his face
and he invited us in. We held out the book of Mormon like we are
giving him a gift. He took it and you could tell from his facial
expressions and body language that he was very grateful that we had
given it to him. After using the translation book of Albanian to
English on his table to communicate we set up a return appointment for
Sunday at 5 o’clock. We did this keeping in mind we would have our
iPads by then and that they had a translation app. After receiving the
iPads be translated a listen into Albanian. Yesterday we went to his
house and we held out the lesson we had translated and pictures that
went along with it. While we could not communicate to know how he felt
we could see he understood very well. We agreed to teaching English on
Saturday if he came to the church so we can use the Wi-Fi. One amazing
gift is iPad!

Check out my new iPad mini

I hope you liked the story. I’m very happy here and I love my mission.
I know this gospel is true, I know God is part of this work, and I
know that if we do what he asks we can have the spirit as a guide. I
love this gospel so much! Have a wonderful week!

Love ya’ll!

Elder Joshua Cordon

Ushering in the Technology Age of MISSIONARY WORK- Joshua

Posted on January 21, 2014 by shalesecordon9

Dear Family and Friends,

BIG CHANGES ARE COMING TO JACKSONVILLE. This is an exciting time to be a missionary. Last week we were visited by Michael Hemingway who is charge of online proselyting in the missionary department (He also used to be the mission president in Rochester, NY). He came to usher in the new age of new tools. In an increasing effort to improve productivity and the ability of the missionaries to find and maintain contact with all of our investigators we will be issued I-pad minis. If all goes well I will be getting mine during leadership meeting this week. I am so pumped. I find myself thinking all the time if I only had an I-pad right now I could show them… you get the picture. So that is something to definitely be excited about.

So, remember that lady that I told you about last week who used some colorful language, well her neighbor is a member in our ward, and he heard about what happened. He went and talked to her for us. Well apparently the conversation went really well because when we were there yesterday she came up to us to apologize and asked for our forgiveness. Despite all that happened I couldn’t help but eagerly accept her apology and forgive her. She began to cry as she walked away. Reflecting on the experience, I realized how much wisdom God us given to us in the word of wisdom. Too often people do things they regret when they are under the influence of any number of drugs and chemicals. Regret is a painful thing, even when you have received forgiveness. I feel bad that she doesn’t have the light of the gospel in her life, and that she has yet to experience the joy that can be found in it.

Sorry for the short letter this week, but I hope ya’ll have a wonderful Martin Luther King Jr. Day!

Love,
Elder Cordon

There is Good Chaos and Bad Chaos -Joshua

Posted on January 14, 2014 by shalesecordon9

Dear Family and Friends,

There has yet be any consistency here in this area. No two weeks have been the same. There has always been something that has set the week apart and made it interesting to me in some way or another. I will have to say that that has definitely been the best part about serving as a Zone Leader here in this area.

Last Wednesday was transfers and I was wondering how that was going to effect us because it takes place in our Zone, but at the same time it doesn’t fall under the realm of any of our responsibilities. Wednesday morning came and we hadn’t heard anything so we were just expecting to have a full day of regular proselyting. Well then we got a call from one of our district leaders asking if he could have Elder Hamilton’s bike helmet because he is getting transferred to an area where he will need it and that he also needs our help jumping his car. So we called a quick audible in our plans and went and helped him out.

Just as we were finishing up there, the assistants called and asked if we could help them with getting one the APs bike from their apartment. We of course said yes and helped with that. We had a good chat with Elder Tuft as we rode in the car with him. (He has been the assistant for almost a year and he just got released, he is also my mission great-grandpa)

Once we finished up there we chatted for a bit with Sis. Craig and Elder & Sister Rhoads and snacked on the food they had their for transfers. We no sooner finished up that when those Elders we had helped earlier called asking if we could jump their car again.

Having completely ruined our morning plans we took a quick lunch and went and had a lesson with our recent convert Solomon. Just as we were finishing up the lesson President Craig called and asked rather urgently how quickly we could get to the Mandarin Chapel. We told him 10 minutes and got into the car and sped off to meet him. We then accompanied him to the airport to pick a Temple Square sister from Brazil who just got transferred here. He couldn’t go alone so he needed our help. It was great to be able to just relax and talk with President about random manly things like cars and sports as well as mission related topics. We had a good amount of time in the car with him and so there was no pressure at all.

All in all it was cool that the desire of my heart was met because I really wanted to take part in a bit of the chaos that surrounds the process of receiving new, sending home, and transferring missionaries.

We also had some great success and some crazy encounters this week as well. The success was seen in who came to church. We were able to see Lily there and she is still very excited about baptism in two weeks, and also one of investigators, a black sister named Genesis, was able to come. She brought two of her children and the ward just wrapped their arms around her. She loved it so much and is probably at this point already wanting to get baptized, I can’t blame her, this church is pretty great.

Something that happened Saturday though was that we were teaching one of our investigators, Wally, in front of his apartment, when this cookoo lady came walking up. She had what I hope was a cigarette in her hand and she waved it around and she rudely interrupted the lesson we were having. It didn’t help that my patience with her was non-existent due to previous encounters, as she proceeded to tell us that we are wasting our time here, “everyone on this street has been saved.” She then said, “In the name of Jesus Christ.” and then paused for a moment in strange mentally distant way, while I cringed at what might happen next. It seemed as if a she was shut down temporarily why and evil spirit took over as captain of the vessel. Then she proceed shout some of the most profane language referring the “sinners” across the street. I, completely baffled at what just took place, protested immediately the use of such language especially when accompanied with the name of the son of God. I no sooner finished when she turned on me and managed to use even more profane of language than I had heard before. I will not say what i was tempted to do at that moment. Luckily I managed to stay very calm as I looked at my investigator, patted him on the shoulder– all while under verbal fire– and told him, “well brother, have a good night.” We (Elder Hamilton and I, and a member that was with us) turned and just walked back to the car. The lady yelled the whole time we were walking to our which was much longer walk than I had hoped. After we had sufficiently distanced ourselves from the spawn of satan, I managed to get a chuckle out of the other guys by quoting the restoration movie in saying, “God’s grace is sufficient to save all sinners.” A good way to conclude the worst encounter of my mission yet. I guess as a missionary, you really do see the best and worst sides of the world.

Love Ya’ll

Elder Joshua Cordon

New Year, New Mind -Joshua

Posted on January 7, 2014 by shalesecordon9

Dear Family and Friends,

I have this problem of not remembering anything that happened the week before when it comes to doing emailing. I guess that is why I keep a journal right? Yet somehow I still remember peoples names that I met a month ago. I think God is trying to show me where my priorities should be; not in the past, but in the present. I might share a little of the past with you though.

Church was great! It was packed! I have never seen it that full. People were actually looking for a seat. Luckily our investigators were there early 🙂 The Conseillants came! It was so awesome to see them there 🙂 Gabon had that big grin strapped on his face that he is always wearing when we come over to his apartment, and Emmanuela was paying attention to everything single detail, not to prove it wrong, but because she liked it so much! She was saying afterwards that she really loved relief society, and that they were actually good singers in there haha a nice contrast to sacrament meeting. Also Bruce came to church too! He really liked it as well. He is a character though. He has come two weeks in a row and we still haven’t taught him anything, and he wants to keep coming, but he doesn’t want to schedule any lessons… Ya I don’t understand either.

Also on Sunday we were contacting a referral from the sister missionaries and as we were walking up Rodney (the referral) was outside drinking and bbq’n and his boys were playing basketball. It was a bit weird at first, but we were determined to connect with him. Elder Hamilton then asked if he could play ball with kids ( by the way… he is really good), and so he challenged them to a game two on one. As they were playing Rodney who was just loving all of this said that we should have made a bet with them as he laughs at the fact that his boys are getting beat by one person in a shirt and tie. Then I shouted that if Elder Hamilton won then they had to come to church. After the game was over Rodney was like, “we will see you Sunday.” Haha It was really funny. We also connected really well with his family because of that. His boys want to come and be on the church ball team, which is good because our ward lost last Saturday.

So anyway, this past week I decided to make sure that I was making daily improvement toward my ultimate goal of returning with our Father in Heaven, so I decided to map out daily things that I could be doing to achieve that ultimate goal. It was a really eye opening experience and it gave me a lot of areas that I can improve upon, which was great because now I feel that I have a lot more focus than I did for the rest of my mission! Wohoo! IMPROVEMENT!

Anyway,

Love ya’ll!

Elder Joshua Cordon

Short and Sweet!! -Joshua

Posted on December 31, 2013 by shalesecordon9

Dear Family and Friends,

This past week was definitely an interesting one. While it felt a little like Christmas, it just wasn’t the same. Maybe the fact that we were wearing short sleeves for a lot of last week and well we just taught everyday. All in all there is still nothing better than serving the Lord.

Seeing as how I don’t really have any interesting stories for you at the moment I will just talk about a few things that have been on my mind. It seems to be that I have really come to understand what it means when it says that faith, hope, charity, and an eye single to the glory of god qualify you for the work. If a missionary can only master those few points EVERYTHING else would fall into place. I find myself lately feeling that those are the only things that I want to study or even think about. When I measure myself in those categories against what I could become I feel very motivated to improve. As we were considering some of the things that we could train on in Zone Meeting this week we realized that it all comes down to the fundamentals. Kinda like what coach Vince Lombardi would teach. And the fundamentals are what I have mentioned above. I am probably just rambling, but that is just what has been on my mind this week. Sorry for the short letter but that is all I got.

Love Ya’ll!! Happy New Year!!

Elder Joshua Cordon

Also checkout his blog post for a wonderful perspective on New Years goal setting. arippleoflight.blogspot.com

Who knew missionary work could be so INTENSE!!!

Posted on December 24, 2013 by shalesecordon9

Dear Family and Friends,

Well this week was truly a terrific week! So many great things happened and I have been blessed beyond measure. Anyone who thinks of their mission as a sacrifice doesn’t understand the bigger picture. It seems like there is this attitude of referring to missions as a sacrifice, but I never could even from the very first hour of my mission. Looking back I can’t help but just laugh at how I thought I knew the blessings that would come from a mission then, but oh how my mind as been opened to the beauties and blessings of the Gospel. I can’t wait to laugh at myself again 6 months from now. OH HOW BLESSED I AM TO BE HERE! I wish all of you could be experiencing this as well. On that same note, thank you Mom and Dad, Grandma and Grandpa, and my home ward, along with anyone else I have forgotten, for making sacrifices in your lives so that I could have this experience.

The experience I want to highlight this week was a lesson with the wonderful Lily. She is the 17 year old sister of Hugo, a recently reactivated member. My wonderful companion found them street contacting back in September and has been teaching them ever since. On Friday we felt that it was finally time to get her to commit to a baptismal date. They have tried in the past, but she always said that she wasn’t ready. Our last few lessons have all been really powerful and we just knew that the time was now. We also knew that it wasn’t going to be easy, and that without the spirit it would be impossible.

We started out with some ice-breaking gentile conversation to lighten things up. After a few minutes we got to business by inviting the spirit in with a wonderful prayer. After the prayer we began with our plan of reading Alma 32. When I say that that scripture was perfect, I am serious! There truly could not have been a better chapter of scripture that one at that time for her. It addressed all of her concerns and we knew as we read that the spirit was confirming with her the truthfulness of those words. After reading I transitioned the lesson to our main objective of committing her to a baptismal date by giving a short shpeal (not a word, i know) on the importance of goal setting. She saw right through us and new exactly what we were trying to do. Nevertheless, we pressed on as we talked about how we know that she is ready and that it is within her grasp. I knew that it wasn’t too well received so I called an audible and told her that what we are going to do is to have everybody close there eyes for thirty seconds and just feel the spirit in the room, and then I would read to her the baptismal covenant in Mosiah 18. As we sat in reverent silence the spirit thickened to the point of tangibility. In a hushed voice I read the covenant and then looked her in the eyes and said, “I know you love God, so why not show it to him by committing your life to him.” Elder Hamilton followed up by bearing a powerful testimony and then he introduced the date of Jan. 26 as the day for her to be baptized. She seemed still hesitant and then he said, why don’t you pray about it? She responded with “okay, I’ll do that,” thinking that she was off the hook. Then Elder Hamilton said you should pray about it right now. She surprisingly agreed and said that we should join her. So we all knelt in a circle as she gave a humble and sincere prayer. She even said in that prayer that she knew that what the Elders have taught is true. After the prayer we sat for a few seconds to let her think about the answer she received. After about 5 seconds she was like, alright I know that is what I need to do. OH MAN!! I so excited, but in an attempt to keep the spirit by not shrieking with joy, I just sat there with a grin on my face simply nodding my head in agreement. IT WAS SO GREAT!!

Anyway, I hope ya’ll enjoy the story and I hope you have a wonderful Christmas!

I love ya’ll!

Elder Joshua Cordon

Another week into the rest of my life.

Posted on December 16, 2013 by shalesecordon9

Dear Family and Friends,

So this past week was a good one. It definitely kept me on my toes as each day presented some unique experience. I would have it no other way though!

I did my first exchange as a zone leader with a district leader, and though I am sure it should have been the other way I learned a bunch on that exchange. Elder Feliz is such a terrific missionary. He has been out a lot longer, and is very humble. He is a convert from the Dominican Republic, and he one of best missionaries in the mission. One thing that I learned from him that I really appreciated was his selflessness. He is a YSA missionary which means he works with all the young single adults in his area. Nevertheless, during our exchange he still talked to everybody regardless of their age or relationship status. We ended up finding a family and a single guy that were both very interested, but he immediately handed them over to the missionaries who are supposed to teach them without even flinching. (I say that example because it is proving to be the exception rather than the rule) All in all it was a great experience for me.

Another wonderful experience was that we found this awesome Haitian family. They are both very intelligent and they have an incredible desire to learn. We had our return appointment lesson with them last night and it went really well. They had a bunch of questions from when they read the Book of Mormon, and they are excited to learn a lot more about the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Their names are Gabon and Emmanuela. I am looking forward to our lesson with them tomorrow.

All in all it was a great week. I feel like I have so many wonderful experiences everyday that I would never be able to talk about all of them, but when it comes to writing this email it seems that a lot of it escapes me haha so well that is it for this week!

I love ya’ll! Merry Christmas!

Elder Joshua Cordon

GET OUT OF MY STATE!! haha I say that out of love :-)

Posted on December 9, 2013 by shalesecordon9

Dear Family and Friends,

First of all I love you all, especially my family. So when I say that I was in Florida first don’t take it the wrong way. I just still can’t get over the fact that you waited to go to Disney World until after I serve my mission IN FLORIDA. It is ok though, no hard feelings… ok maybe a little 😉 Thank goodness I am not in the Orlando mission haha.

On another note. Elder Hamilton and I are a power team! We motivate each other really well and just get work done. We took a challenge from the Assistants to the Presidents to find a ridiculous 30 new investigators (the standard of excellence in the mission is 5)) this past week. We worked like crazy and met so many wonderful children of God. Many of them have great potential! Basically God granted us 25 new people to teach. It changed my perspective of what inspired goals, complete faith, massive action, and an expectation for mighty miracles can do.

We also had a Zone Meeting last week that went really well. I had to give a 20 min training which I was really nervous for because we don’t really have that much time to prepare for things like that because we have to worry about preparing lessons for investigators and doing proselyting still. The spirit really helped me out though and felt as if it took over. I could tell it had a positive impact on the Zone. God truly is good. I couldn’t handle all that is on my plate without him.

I had the blessed opportunity to baptize a wonderful brother into the fold of God. He is a humble man who is from Sudan, Africa. He was put into the military at the age of 12 there, but was able to leave to America when he was 20. My companion found him 10 weeks ago and he hasn’t missed church once. He has an incredible amount of faith, and he is really is just a wonderful brother. His name is Solomon Deng Deng. He was given the name Solomon when he was baptized into the Catholic church shortly after he moved here. I was very humbled by the fact that he asked me to baptize him, and what a blessing that was.

Another cool thing that happened this last week was when we swung by the mission office to take care of some different items of business. Right as we walked in Elder Rhoads, the vehicle coordinator (yes, I do realize the irony there), told us that we were going to help him out by driving one of the 2014 Ford Fusions to the Uhaul to get a bike rack hitch. Of course I had no objections. What a beautiful car that is. It is similar to the one we had when I first came out but that was a 2013. I was really hoping they were going to give us that car in exchange for the crappy 2011 corolla they have us in. But hey I shouldn’t be complaining it is better than biking haha.

I really love this area. I love the people we have met, and I have already learned so much. I have no doubt that God cares for each and every one of us individually. And that he really has a plan for us.

A spiritual lesson that I learned this week is that God cares more about our spiritual well-being than he does our physical. Here is what I mean by that. I have been sick for going on 4 weeks now. It stinks really bad, I just want to better. However, I find that at the end of the day, when I have given my all, I didn’t even feel sick all day until I slowed down just before bed. Basically when I lose myself in the work I forget about all my problems. God understands that we will have physical problems, that is just a part of life, but what he really cares about is that we keep the faith through it all. Every challenge is an opportunity to grow, so rather than praying for a change in circumstances we should pray for a change in character that will allow us to conquer our circumstances. That is something that my companion taught me. That is what I did, and it made all the difference in the world.

I love you all so much!

Elder Joshua Cordon

From Biking in the Boonies to Combing the City Blocks -Joshua

Posted on December 2, 2013 by shalesecordon9

Dear Family and Friends,

So this last week mixed a lot of things up for me. I wasn’t sure what to expect, but needless to say I haven’t been disappointed at all. Saying goodbye to everybody last week was hard, but change is always for the better. I get the wonderful pleasure of serving with one of the best Elders in the whole mission Elder Hamilton. He has been out a whole year longer than me and I am looking forward to the many lessons that he will undoubtedly teach me. We get along great which is perfect because we have too much on our plates to be worried about resolving petty arguments.

Being a Zone Leader isn’t as taxing on my time as much as I thought it would be, which is wonderful because we got to spend a lot of our time over the past couple of days in the act of finding. As a result, the Lord pored out blessing from on high and we found 4 new families to teach in only a matter of a few days. There is a lot of great work to do in this area and I am more than ready to hit the pavement to get things rolling. I am grateful for the work that has already been done here because I get the blessed opportunity of seeing one of our investigators get baptized this weekend. His name is Solomon and he is from Sudan. He is very humble and very excited to get baptized this weekend. He was inviting a bunch of people at church yesterday to his baptism.

Some of the good changes that I have experienced this week include: upgraded from crappy apartment to super nice one, upgraded from biking to car, upgraded from no gym to a gym every other day, upgraded from trailer park/ ghetto tracting to tracting in tons of apartment complexes. Those are just a few, but I appreciate every one of them. Luckily for me one of the fears I had was not realized which was that we would not be fed on Thanksgiving because we got fed twice.

I have big hopes here. There is a lot to do and we need to grow our teaching pool a lot more, but I have no doubt that as we labor diligently the Lord will bless us. He has been doing that my whole mission. We truly have a Father in Heaven who knows each and every one of us personally. My testimony of that has grown so immensely since the start of my mission. Another aspect of my testimony that has grown is that of the power that can be felt from reading the Book of Mormon. Every time I read it, I feel like I am getting a big hug from God, and Boy does that feel good!

Have a wonderful week! I love ya’ll!

Love,

Elder Joshua Cordon

Big News and Big Changes!! – Joshua

Posted on November 27, 2013 by shalesecordon9

Dear Family and Friends,

So I got a little teaser last Monday about whether or not I would be leaving and it didn’t come as expected. I thought that we were going to get a call from the Mission President asking Elder Barcala if he would be willing to train a new missionary, but instead he asked to speak to me. The fact that he wanted to speak to me was a shocker enough, but then he asked me to be a Zone Leader. I almost fainted. I was so stunned I almost forgot to reply to the President and tell him that I accepted. After he asked me all he heard on the other line was a……. wo…………………… o uh ya I would be honored President. I hope my reaction gave him a good laugh. He also told me right then I would be getting transferred which was nice to know because it gave me time to say goodbye to all my wonderful friends that I now have here in Lake City.

It truly has been a great adventure serving here in Deep Creek and I have met some truly amazing people that have made a lasting positive impact. The ward as become a family to me and I have no doubt that I have met some of my friends that I knew in the the pre-mortal existence. I wish everyone here the best and I plan to return after my mission and see them all again. The beauty of this world of technology is that it is very easy to keep in touch with people. Gotta love Facebook 🙂

As far as the next chapter of my mission, it will be spent in the beautiful and nice area of Mandarin, Jacksonville. It is a great area that not only has the Assistants to the President in it, but also the Mission Home. Looks like I get the blessing of seeing President and Sis. Craig more regularly. I also get the wonderful privilege of serving with Elder Hamilton. I have heard great things about him and I am looking forward our adventures together. Fun fact about him is that I worked with his older brother in college and he told me to look for him when I got here. He was hoping that he would train me, well he gets to be my Zone Leader Trainer haha.

Anyway, lots of Great things have happened hear that I will will praise the Lord forever for being able to experience. I definitely feel as if I have come here for a reason. But now that I am getting sent somewhere else I am embracing the wonderful advice I got in a fortune cookie once, it said, “Relish the transitions in your life, they will happen regardless.”

I love ya’ll! Have a great week!

Love,
Elder Joshua Cordon