Tag Archives: Book of Mormon

Another Great Week! -Jared

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Dear Family and Friends,

Well its been another interesting week with things just getting more interesting this week. First to start the week off right I did my first hike in Hong Kong and that was pretty unreal!! also the card reader for my card is not working so pictures will be sent promptly. But we have decided to drop our fist investigator. He is a nice old 83 year old man but when he says he can promise he won’t commit adultery, well then we must rethink how well our efforts have been working. So this week we will be meeting one last time, unless of course he decides to read the Book of Mormon and has a desire to learn and accept then of course we will teach him again.

But with him going down our other new investigator is on the climb and he will be receiving a baptismal date after new years for sure! Things get hard around new years cause everyone has work off and a lot of people go to mainland and a lot of tourist come here. So it will be interesting but after the short delay in the work we will be able to pick right back up.

On other news we have found way to successfully contact families which has a very large challenge so far. What you need is to have a family you know in a park then you play with them and all the other parents see how nice we are and then want to talk to us! It worked yesterday when we went to a park and found a father and daughter we had taught twice and then after playing with them earned the ears of there friends, So if all goes well we will have our first full family lesson this next week! I will keep you updated!

Well things are moving here everyone is having a lot of success recently. The lord has been leading us to his prepared people!

I love you all Have a great week and Happy New Year!

Elder Cordon

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

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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

I’m finer then a frog’s hair split four ways :-) – Joshua

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Dear Family and Friends,

Sorry for the scare last week, I always forget to mention when the following week is transfers. No promises that I will remember in the future though.

Everything is going great though! I am filled with a very sweet spirit today, which is a direct result of my comp and I growing closer as a companionship. For the first transfer and well for the first week of this one we would but heads all the time. Though we managed to temporally let it go for lessons, the spirit we brought was nevertheless affected by the friction that was so obviously there. This weekend we finally worked things out though.

It started with a serious talk where I finally established my role as the leader of the companionship, which should have been there the moment I became his trainer, but he wasn’t used to not being incharge. After we came to an agreement it still didn’t entirely eliminate the contention and finally Sunday afternoon we were both tired of it. We were doing a Revelation Sequence (Pray for guidance, read the Book of Mormon, write down spiritual impressions, and pray for confirmation) in 3 Nephi 12 and the part about forgiving thy brother hit us both very powerfully. For me is was verse 25. The agree with thine adversary to me was interpreted to mean, “You don’t have to win every arguement or always be right, just agree with him.” We openly talked about the issues we had been having and now we are good. A weight has been lifted off of both our shoulders, and there is much more powerful spirit between the two of us. Not to mention we are actually good friends now. Two cheers for the Book of Mormon anyone?

I felt like sharing that in case anyone else is looking for guidance on conflict resolution. And because it explains why I can be so dang happy regardless of the fact that no investigators came to church and that we have no baptismal dates. But hey that just means that miracles are just down the road.

We did have some really great experiences this week though. We managed to administer the sacrament to two sisters who are confined to their homes because of illness, and to be able to see Nick. Nick came to church twice back in September, but it had been over a month since we had a lesson with him. I was finally tired of it so we went over there on friday just hoping to catch him. Well it worked 🙂 We sat and talked for a few minutes before he had to leave. Then we went back–uninvited– to his house last night with the bishop and we ended up having a terrific lesson with him. He shared with us a few of the sermons he gave when he was pastoring, but once he finally talked himself out we got down to business talking about his concerns. The spirit was very strong and we know that he is so very close to accepting the invitation to be baptized. We will definitely do that the next lesson we have with him which will hopefully be tomorrow.

The week was full of many other miracles, I just don’t have time to share them, but trust me they happened.

I have made some good changes to my blog this week so that will be really nice. I am hoping to have another post up here in a few days so check it out at arippleoflight.blogspot.com.

Anyway I love ya’ll!

Elder Joshua Cordon

I’m As Busy As By-George I Reckin – Joshua

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Dear Family and Friends,

Sorry I didn’t write last week. Things got really crazy and we only got an hour to email. Anyhow and things are very crazy this week as well so it will have to be a short one. These past few weeks have been very crazy and a TON has happened!! But sadly I can barely scratch the surface! I will pick 3 experiences and tell those ones though.

For the first one I got a sweat recliner chair. It is so nice, but I only use it when I read in the morning so I almost feel like it is wasted, though it is thoroughly appreciated!

As for experience number two we have been meeting with this really awesome lady named Kim for the past little while. She is so nice and I always leave feeling full of the most peaceful spirit. We haven’t made much headway until this last lesson though. We taught her the Restoration and she believed it all! Which isn’t really that surprising because it is easy to believe the truth. Then we followed up to see if she watched any of the Mormon Messages (that was our last commitment for her) and she ended up watching half of the district!! (they are videos of real life missionary work that we use for training) Haha I think it is awesome though. She told us that she knows all of our secrets now 🙂

As for my last experience. About a month ago we ran into a guy named Dorian street contacting and we had a pretty good lesson with him. He was a really smart guy and very inquisitive. He had a few concerns but offered to read the Book of Mormon. Well we finally caught him last week and he has been reading and has a lot of questions for us. We had a terrific lesson, and he left the lesson feeling very pumped about reading the story of Enos. That is what happens when you show somebody how to study not to just read though 🙂

All in all it has been a terrific 2 weeks, but there is never enough time during p-days, so I got to go!

I love ya’ll!!

Elder Joshua Cordon

My worst week of finding since week 2! Other than that not too bad haha :) – Joshua

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Dear Family and Friends,

Contrary to popular belief, Florida does have enjoyable weather. WHO KNEW? It caught me surprise, I can tell you that. I actually love biking now. Not only does it feel great, but it means that more people are outside. Which is weird now that I think about it because well as my title suggests, we didn’t find much.

On other news, we did an exchange this last week and I went down to Price Creek which is out in the country and my companion stayed in Deep Creek. The best part about all this is that the elder who served with him for the day was his MTC companion which means they both had only been out for 4 weeks or so. The thought of the two newbies wandering the streets trying to figure out what they are going to do made me laugh. Not surprisingly they had interesting experience, but not in the way I expected.Here is what happened to them while I was down in the country. They started there day by helping with Bingo at the senior center, and then after they left they didn’t bike 300 feet before the elder who was borrowing my bike (which is a loaner bike from his companion) managed to cause the back sprocket to practically explode and render the bike unrideable. They walked about half a mile to the house of our ward mission leader who is currently in Vermont. They waited there for a ride for about 3 hours and then managed to get a ride for the rest of the night. I just feel bad for them.

Until my bike gets fixed I have been riding a bike that a sister in the ward loaned me. Luckily it wasn’t too girly and it is actually pretty nimble.

My miracle that I wanted to share this week comes from last Monday night. We hadn’t used our time very wisely and with a only an hour left in the night we felt like we had accomplished almost nothing. Recognizing that by our own efforts nothing would be accomplished we decided to say a prayer, begging for forgiveness and asking for direction. After the prayer ended I felt prompted to go and visit a referral nearby. When we got there this guy was standing outside waiting for a ride. We decided to verify with him if this was in fact the right house. He confirmed that it was, but that the guy we were looking for was in bed. Just then he asked what we were doing. We told him a little bit about the logistics of missionary work and how it all happens. Then he asked us for our information–which never happens! We exchanged information and he said he wanted us to come by and teach him. Then we got a text from him an hour later saying you will be hearing from me soon. So pumped! God is good!

Then we were finally able to get in touch with the lady who gave us her info at the library. Her name is Camekco and after a great first lesson she committed to be baptized on the 26th of October! 🙂 It was awesome 🙂

Just remember that prayer actually works!

I love ya’ll!

Elder Joshua Cordon

Wait a minute, you mean there is a better way then tracting! -Joshua

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Dear Family and Friends,

So the trademark of Elder Newbold and I’s 3 month companionship was tracting. I honestly feel like we knocked half the doors in Lake City. Though most people were not home, so we never actually talked to half the people in Lake City, but we are making up for it now. Our method, street contacting. Turns out that is far less intimidating to roll up on a bike and talk to somebody than to drive slowly and creepily through a neighborhood in our car having everybody immediately recieve wrong impressions of us. Being on bikes though has allowed us to implement the fail-proof finding method of talking to everybody. Although we are drenched in sweat and soaked by the rain we find we can quickly disarm people by flashing our pearly whites and giving them a friendly wave and a “hi sir\ma’m, how are you doing today”!

To back up my testimonial, the following is one of our success stories.

So, we were biking home late friday night and passed a guy walking on the sidewalk. At first I did not stop justifying the heinous crime by saying that we were done with teaching for the night and it was time to go home. The spirit quickly worked these blaphemous thoughts out of my mind and I found myself squeezing the brake and turning the bike around. We approached the guy in our usual friendly manner, and began to converse about gentile things such as Star Wars–he had a tattoo of something star wars–and his particular line of work. We quickly navigated to the fact that we wanted to share with him the message of the restored gospel. His name is Blaze and he is one of our newest investigators. We are going back for our second appointment tomorrow.

As we kept biking home we passed a gentleman walked and eating a McDonalds hamburger. We informed him of who we were and ended up sharing with him the message of the restoration and being invited to come teach him at his house. All in all, street contacting is much more affective than tracting.

Some more great news is that Stefan Sutton before he has even been baptized taught a lesson to some of his co-workers during the lunch break about faith and he even used the Book of Mormon. 🙂 To all those who are NOT doing member missionary work… shame on you.

We also had the blessed opportunity to give talks in sacrament meeting. I made a deal with Br. Cook who was speaking with us that if I only left him 3 minutes he would buy us lunch. I agreed and prepared a long talk. When it came time to make good on my side of the deal, I forgot all my notes at the apartment. Luckily, the topic I had been chosen to speak on was prophets, and well, we spend all day teaching people about that. So I was still able to keep my side of the deal. I tried my best to stick to the New Testament during my talk because our investigator who came to church, Nick Harwell, was a preacher for ten years and I wanted him to relate. It made me really happy to hear that he enjoyed it. It was a great week though!

I just want to encourage ya’ll to speak to someone new each day this week. Just say hi, introduce yourself, give them a compliment, and it should flow very nicely from there, then when the setting is right invite them to hear the wonderful message of the Restored Gospel of Jesus Christ. If they say no, oh well, be there friend anyway!

Gospel means good news, and this message is the greatest news that anyone could hear because of how happy I know it will make them. Many of you have experienced the joy of the Gospel, so why wouldn’t you want to share it with friends or strangers. Whether they realize it or not. It is the ultimate expression of love! 🙂 Go out and be missionaries and spread the Love of Jesus Christ!!! Which simply starts with flashing your pearly whites and saying hey!

I love you ya’ll!!

Elder Joshua Cordon

A Very Crazy Week!! -Josh

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Dear Family and Friends,

This past week was very… Unique, to say the least. Monday and Tuesday were fairly normal I suppose, but then on Wednesday, another Elder I rode with a member down to Gainesville for a training meeting to prepare us to become trainers. It was great, a terrific way to put some spice into the week. BUT then on Friday morning we got a call from the zone leaders telling us to meet them at there ward building to pick up Elder largo because his companion just got called to be the next assistant to the mission president. Being in a trio is definitely a different experience. Elder Largo is a great missionary though, we were contacting a referral and the family was about to shut the door, but he spoke up and just bore his powerful testimony to them and they let us in and we had a powerful 45 minute lesson. The couples names are Lorenzo and Topeka. Lorenzo loves the Book of Mormon even though he is a deacon in his Holiness church. We will be back there soon.

Some wonderful miracles this week was that the Sutton’s came to church!!! Bro Sutton was supposed to work at 10 but he called his boss and told he is no longer working on Sundays because that is his day to go to church and be with his family! He is such a champion!! We had several powerful lessons with them this weekend. They even came to the sisters baptism on Sunday and Bro.Sutton said that he was so jealous that he couldn’t get baptized right then. He just needs to get married.

There are going to be a lot of changes starting tomorrow with a new companion, being on bikes, and smaller area and all, but I am excited. I will say that I am going to miss Elder Newbold, he was a great trainer and terrific companion. He is going on to bigger and better things though as he heads to Gainesville to be a zone leader.

Sorry for the short email, but things are crazy round here!

Love y’all!

Elder Joshua Cordon

Zone Conference in Gainesville

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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

Short one this week!

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Dear Family and Friends,

This past week was a terrific one. We stayed really busy and saw a lot of success. We managed to set 3 new baptismal dates and found 6 new investigators. The Lord truly is taking care of us.

I am all out of time though so I am just going to share a quick testimony.

I know with every ounce of my soul that this church is run by REAL Apostles and Prophets today. Men who truly do receive guidance and revelation for the world from God. I sustain these men and would serve in whatever capacity they asked me to do. I know that Joseph Smith was a prophet of God; that he truly did see God the Father and His Son, Jesus Christ. I know that Book of Mormon is the most correct book of earth. I know that if someone wants to experience true and lasting happiness than they need to live the commandments. I honestly believe that if people only knew about the happiness they could receive from living the Gospel that not a soul on earth would reject us at the door step. I also know though that God is working on everyone, and that our job as missionaries is to find those who are ready and direct them to wonderful gift that savior has given everybody.

I thought to myself this morning that the savior is like a father over a few month period has lost sleep and put all his energy into making some handmade gifts for his children to give them at Christmas. Each gift is personal and was made with love, and designed to bring great happiness to each child. On Christmas day this father offers his gifts to his children. The first child notices that the gift is in a small box and decides that it most not be that great and doesn’t open it. The next child opens the gift and sets it on his shelf where it gathers dust. But the last child takes the gift and cherishes it and allows it to make him happy everyday. Just like these children Christ has offered us a gift that will bring us ultimate happiness, but what are we going to do with it? What are we doing with it?

I know that our Father in Heaven and His Son, Jesus Christ love us and want nothing more than to see us be happy. I say these things in the name of Jesus Christ, Amen.

I love you all!!!

Elder Joshua Cordon

This week was crazy!!

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Dear Family and Friends,

I don’t even know where to begin…

Men Working

Last Tuesday after a great first district meeting as a new district, Elder Newbold and I put on the service clothes, grabbed a mower and got to work. We mowed 2 1/2 lawns in like 2 hours. The reason there is a half in there is because we started mowing and then the guy who the lady apparently hired (I guess she didn’t think we would actually mow her yard) pulled up and at first was annoyed because he thought we were stealing his yard. When he found out we were just missionaries doing service he relaxed and gave us some gatorade. He was a cool guy. He also finished the yard in 1/3 of the time haha. We tried to mow the Suttons yard without getting caught, but that is hard when they are home haha 🙂 So after we finished we had a lesson with them.

Choose the Right

On Wednesday we had a slow day before dinner, but then during dinner we split up and just read the Book of Mormon looking for direction. I found myself in Alma 39 (great chapter), and we both left the apartment ready to go! We found two new investigators that night!! Also that day we went to the senior center to do some volunteer work and ended up doing a chair exercise with some old ladies called sit-down dancing haha it was really funny!

DSC00170

Let me tell you about one of them. We were about to pull away from a street because the lady we intended to visit wasn’t home, but the spirit told me that we couldn’t leave yet. So we decided to knock a few doors. When we were standing in front of one house this lady came out and asked us about Joseph Smith. We ended having a great conversation, gave her a Book of Mormon and got a return appointment. This lady told us that we should go see her sister though that lives on the other side of town, but her mom (Jeana Hutto) wouldn’t be interested because she is hardcore southern baptist.

When we went and contacted the referral we showed up with working gloves hoping it would soften her mom’s heart. It worked. We actually just had dinner with her family yesterday. The lady grew up baptist, but recently stopped going to church because of a some doctrinal issues she had a problem with. Some being that she believes that Godhead to be three distinct individuals and that there has to be more scripture than the Bible.

On Saturday though we went by for a return appointment with Jeana’s daughter. As we pulled up to her house though I felt like we shouldn’t go, but that we should just leave. We both agreed and just pulled away. Come to find out yesterday that she had been drinking all weekend and Saturday was the worst. The spirit really knows what it is doing and I am glad I listened.

Yesterday was also a terrific day! Kayliah got confirmed a member during church and we found some great investigators!

Sleeping Children

This hangs on the outside of our door.

Now to explain that sign on our apartment door. (The one that reads: Sleeping Children DO NOT knock or they will wake up, Thank You, Chelsey and Robert) So we may or may not have told a guy where we live and we are very confident that he may try to rob us. So we said a prayer that he would forget and we had the sister missionaries write this sign for us so that we could throw-off the scent. Apparently it has worked so far. haha I just wonder what the neighbors think?

Anyhow, Sorry for the long sporadic email! There is actually a lot more to share but I have to stop somewhere.

Love Ya’ll!

Elder Joshua Cordon

Chris and Kayliah’s Baptism

He just received the Priesthood

This young man just received the Priesthood