Tag Archives: Butterfly Ward

Great Time to Be Serving

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Dear Family and Friends,

Well it feels like yesterday but what happened for the last week and a half? that is a great question. We have been doing some solid work! We have been so blessed when it come to street finding because thats mainly all we have done for the last little bit. last week everybody was sick and out of town but its all good because they were feeling a lot better this week. We ran into Irene now for the 3rd time on the street and all three lessons she says she doesn’t have that much interest but we keep seeing her and she keeps listening… she’s getting baptized. We also ran into simon in central. That was super random since we were both far away from home on a very random street but it was good because we had not seen him for almost 2 weeks at that point but he came to an activity that the sisters planned. He likes speaking english which is good and all but i don’t know how to teach the gospel in english I talk to much I complicate things, thats probably why the lord called me cantonese speaking.

We also had a book of mormon find we gave out about 60 book of mormons in about an hour. That planted some great seeds and people were just walking up to us. Also planned a couple sweet ideas for the ward to really spark missionary. Well I guess they already got the spark just throwing some more wood on. But we are going to do a online missionary work training. Helping them use our email program, Facebook and other multimedia and mormon.org so it should be sweet.

The ward is really liking us and so is the bishop. Because we found the sweetest guy on the street and he came to church and next week he is going to bring his two kids and his wife! So things have been slow but now we got a family and simon coming to church the Lord is really blessin us right now!

I got a feeling I am gonna love this ward just like I loved butterfly. Speaking of butterfly the ward split two weeks ago so right after i left. A guy we found has a baptismal date and brother chan(my ward mission leader) is the new wards bishop. An eternal investigator that I prayed for so hard would be our december baptism is going to be baptised in december(answer to my prayers). He had a vision that told him he needed to be baptized. Also he has to quit smoking because he has a liver problem.

The work is good i love it. I also love the temple its an amazing experience everytime. Its such a wonderful blessing to be able to go as frequent as we do.

Oh also had a really cool zone conference last week. It was all about the mission culture and the kind of attitude that we are going to set for all new missionaries.

love you all have a great week!

Elder Jared Cordon

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Conference!! Sadly it’s only twice a year

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Dear Family and Friends

Conference I love it! It’s something that I feel I have wasted my entire life. So many hours staring at the TV with the words coming in one ear and right out the other. Now it’s a spiritual roller coaster. It’s so cool to take and learn the message they are sharing but also to be learning at the same time another lesson by the Holy Ghost. There is the things everyone needs to hear then there is the things that I (you) need to hear. Their words are truly scripture in the modern days while reading one talk can inspire you for one topic the entire conference altogether will tell you another.

This week overall was full of a lot of success! There is two people on the street that are seeming to stick and after 8 months it appears that its the right time to bring in new investigators. I think its because my overall goal has been to build this area and leave it better than I found it. With two baptisms to drain the teaching pool new people had to be on their way so as to keep the work going. The Lord has decided now I guess to bring them out. We now have 4 people with great great potential and a few others who are on the turning points. I would love more that anything to stay another transfer but it’s looking that next week may be my last in the Butterfly Ward. The Lord seems to do that, once we are on top and things are going great He takes us out of the situation probably to remind us that its all because of Him and we need to stay humble because if He chooses we could have nothing.

I have been so blessed to see the Lord work miracles during my time here.

Conference was so good because in Hong Kong everyone in the stake just goes to the church and watches it. So of course all the missionaries come and we all watch the English session together. President joined us for the sunday morning and an amazing sister prepared food for all us missionaries. Conference weekend is a holiday to be celebrated full of spiritual and physical feasting.

I love you all, take luck.

Elder Jared Cordon

Training!!

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Dear Family and Friends,

Well a wonderful week has passed by. I got my trainee last week and he is super awesome I love him he is so diligent and hardworking and fluent in the language and his teaching skills are awesome and we have fantastic unity. Well I think my job is done. Now comes the part were he starts training me. I really have learned a lot from my trainee already as far as teaching and preparing for lessons, not to mention the language. Its pretty awesome! One good thing is he hasn’t even had to go finding yet. We have been teaching so many lessons that sadly we haven’t had to be out in the heat sweating our brains out.

We also had our first ward activity in Butterfly ward and its been almost 6 months. It was a lot of fun and yielded some great results! A member brought along a family with him and they had a wonderful time and we were able to earn the trust of the husband its not to the stage of teaching yet but it will get there and then we also met a kid I have been hoping to see again he is so prepared!

Also got called as the district leader so I moved up a lot this last week from junior to senior, trainer, and district leader. Its a lot to take in all at once but Its been going pretty well so far and should keep getting better!

Love you all,

Elder Jared Cordon

Good Week

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Dear Family and Friends,

Well another wonderful week on the Lords Errand. The Butterfly ward is really feeling the blessings of the Lord as two people yesterday entered the waters of baptism! One lady was from the sisters and another lady was from the mandarin elders. Its amazing that after 2 and a half years of no baptism in a two month period we have seen 4 people come unto Christ. Its really the Lords pouring his blessing upon the area and I am truly blessed to witness this mighty change of hearts.

This last week spent with my summer missionary has been super awesome! He is an amazing man. He was baptized a year ago and is a killer missionary. I dont know if I have learned more in any previous week on my mission! His testimony is so powerful! This last week we have met a few people who I could picture in white! from when I first met them. We continue to see new miracles every single day.

Something that just happened this morning is when i was doing studies president called me and i was not sure why but he is asking me to train. this is by complete surprise because elder au has only a little time left and I have been here for quite some time now. But it will be an amazing opportunity and I hope to fulfill it to the best of my abilities!

Well love you all and remember that life is good.

Love Elder Jared Cordon

The Lord is Opening the Flood Gates

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Dear Family and Friends,

Last week was a busy one. For P-day I went and finally road a ferry. Also had the best gaak jai bang in hong kong. Gotta love mammies pancakes. It was a good day with a few upsets. One of the sisters got her card eaten in the ATM. But it was good times. Today we will be riding the worlds longest escalator.

Aaron has made some amazing progress we met him on Tuesday and then went to a dinner appointment. He is really set on serving a mission so he wants to help us teach and go finding. That night we decided to have him share the spiritual thought it went so well. The thought and impression really came to us that he is so ready now that we have no reason to wait until the 27th to baptize him. So we have moved him to this Sunday. He is more than happy. Its also really cool because he wants the Bishop to baptize him and the first counselor to do the confirmation. Its such a great way to get the members involved with these converts.

An amazing miracle has also happened on this very same day after teaching another investigator we heard a knock on the church door. Can it be that baptism are knocking on our doors? Well it just so happens that a lady feels very strongly that she must be baptized in our ward. She also wants her daughters family to be as well. So she came to english class than to church with her daughter and her kids and after church we taught them the first lesson and it went so well. That have committed to coming to church every week!

The young men in the ward have also stepped up their game. They showed up to church with two investigators that we have taught previously. Its great to see these boys start doing some missionary work.

Cheui HD (*editors note: HD means something similar to brother, so it would be Brother Cheui) a ward missionary also brought his dad, sister, and his sisters friend to church. We scheduled them for english class!

Heui HD also brought a relative to church He seemed to enjoy himself.

Things are going really really good here in the Butterfly Ward. Its crazy for me to think anyone ever could dislike this ward.

Also I got an amazing opportunity to attend the temple and man probably one of the best sessions I have ever had I am still on cloud nine!

Love you all,

Elder Jared Cordon

Baptism!!

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Dear Family and Friends,

Well, I wasn’t sure if this day was actually going to come. Butterfly Ward no longer has a curse. Those 2 1/2 years are over. It wasn’t by any means the work of me The Lord did it all. Gary starting interacting with missionaries over 30 years ago! It was a great day to see someone so happy to make the change. I haven’t seen someone so ready to change in so long. He was just glowing and kept saying this his new beginning!

It was a little stressful though cause on Saturday we went to confirm that Gary was still ready but, his phone was off the entire day we couldn’t reach him. Then the next morning we had tried to call him again and he wasn’t answering so our ward mission leader sent us to go get him. We went down and we wanted to go to his door but the security guard was being tough, so we tried the intercom. To our pleasant surprise he answered right away and he was actually heading down. He was more than happy to be heading to church. Before this since he is wheel chair bound he has always worn a loose shirt cause he thought it would be weird to wear sweats with a nice shirt, but today he had a white shirt and tie and was completely prepared.

Then to the other stressful part: we had planned for our other investigator Aaron and the sister missionaries investigator to play a violin duet and we had them practice once on Wednesday after that we couldn’t get a hold of him. So we were pretty nervous but thirty minutes before the baptism started they both showed up. MIRCALES!

Interesting enough, even with how stressful the situation seemed I never once really worried. I hard a strong confident feeling the entire time. Which is great cause I was just really happy and relaxed through the whole thing. What a blessing. Then after we celebrated with our recent convert and our investigator at a members house for dinner.

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That’s basically the best part of my week!

Oh and we had a really good Zone conference in the mission office! It was a combined one with the other zone so, it wast great to see some faces I haven’t seen in awhile!

Love you all

Elder Jared Cordon
Tang Jeung Louh

It’s Getting Close

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Dear Family and Friends,

This was a pretty exciting week here in Butterfly Ward. After 2 1/2 years and no baptisms, we got one lined up for this Sunday. Gary passed his baptismal interview with flying colors. With us trying to make sure he is truly ready we had to see him about 2 times a week outside of church. Its just so awesome to see the change made in people when they are truly eager and ready to take that next step into a life of discipleship. I have been blessed to help Gary reach this opportunity for him to make special covenants with God and recieve the wonderful gift of the Holy Ghost! He is wheelchair bound so its gonna be interesting on how we will execute it.

Also this last week Aaron came back into the mix and He also has a baptism for June. But I really love this kid. This week I got him to play his violin for us, he is pretty amazing! We are going to try and get him to play it for Gary’s baptism! We are waiting on a response to that one.

But all is well here in Hong Kong. There is a lot of energy in the mission and we are seeing a lot of success in all the areas, everyone is getting really excited for July for us all to reach our goal!

Hey love you all hope all is well!

Elder Jared Cordon

Don’t Forget Him!

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Dear Family and Friends,

When you do work on a Monday and your mind thinks its P-day weird things start happening everybody in the district has been a little goofy and District meeting yesterday might have been the funniest district meeting I have had. Yet we all learned some great lessons. I did the training and nothing really went according to plan, but it ended up teaching some very valuable unplanned lessons about power statements which we took to use yesterday.

Yesterday was interesting and its also funny how the Lord does little things to remind us who is really in charge. When we first started looking for people to share the gospel with after district meeting, I am not sure why, but the constant no’s were getting at me more than normal. I started having all these thoughts come through my mind;

“Is this message really true nobody wants to hear it.”

Or

“Man why I am even trying these people just don’t get it.”

So it was pretty sad the thoughts going through my mind after doing that for a while and still not having success me and Elder Au said a prayer, rethought our approach and found one kid, who we taught and set up an appointment to come and teach him more. So that was cool. Then that evening after dinner, similar thoughts started haunting my mind, but I tried to shrug it off and keep looking for the people I was suppose to find. The Lord put three amazing people in our path 2 of which are new investigators. The lesson I learned is how quickly I forget the Lord sometimes but He doesn’t forget us, He picks us up when we are weak. We had 3 new investigators the same day I was thinking of quitting. That’s about the same amount of new investigators I had in my entire time in my first area. The Lord is pouring out a lot of blessings here in the Butterfly Ward and if all goes right we should have 3 baptisms in June with a few more for July!

Much Love
Elder Jared Cordon

Keep On Keepin’ On

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Dear Family and Friends,

Well A great week with my new companion and new district. I have seen a lot of blessings this week. We have one investigator who is really just taking off and progressing great! He should be baptized this next month. He was a former investigator a while ago and he reached out to us and we have been so blessed to teach him.

I got to really know our ward mission leaders family a lot better! I love that family! It is so nice to be able to sit at dinner with them and I can hold a great conversation about whatever in chinese! So much fun we got to eat with them yesterday while teaching a less active!

Also had an excellent young mens and young womens activity where we had an investigator and less active. I was worried that the games we planned would not be fun but man it was a blast! Kids are the same wherever you live!

This last week our ward mission leader came out with such a great energizing plan. Its a 21 day plan where all the members will be fasting and also making special commitments for the 21 days. Last time we did something like this was a 40 day fast and at the end the Butterfly ward saw a baptism after a 2 year drought. He has got a lot of faith and once we peace this all together I know its going to be big. It will start June 1st.

I have learned a great deal about faith from a lot of these members and seen the real importance and need to be acting as well as talking. Butterfly ward should be taking off here soon.

I love you all and hope all is well

Elder Jared Cordon

PS: Big buddha was really cool! I will send some pictures later on

Some Old Friends

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Dear Family and Friends,

Well this last week we saw a lot of change in the District and Zone. It was a pretty crazy moves call! I can say I was pretty surprised and also very excited about my new companion. His Name is Elder Au, he is a native from Sha Tin. He is super awesome I knew him before on the Island and told him when I left Cause Way Bay: “Hey you following me out to Butterfly next move”. Well that came true. Its so nice to have someone whose is fluent in the language. Even in the last couple of days my language has improved a lot. We have done some awesome things so far.

This last Saturday we went less active finding. We found a guy who hasn’t been in contact with the missionaries for over two years. So we knocked on his door and the parents where pretty mean and he wasn’t there so when we were heading back to the elevator, right when the doors where about to close, we saw him walk by and remembered him from the picture. So we jumped out after him and waited for a second in the hallway for him to come back. So we ended up stopping and chatting with him for a while, teaching a lesson and rescheduling another lesson with him. That was good timing! I know God puts us missionaries where we need to be, we also found out he can’t let his parents know we are meeting with him or they will disown him. So its perfect we met him outside of his house.

We have seen an abundant supply of miracles in such a short time together I thought I would share a little one.

Also speaking of friends, an even older friend an american in my district also in my apartment is Elder Connor Townsend we played football together back in the little league days. He is an awesome missionary and its gonna be fun living with him!

Love you all

Elder Jared Cordon
(Tang Jeung Louh)

Tang is my chinese last name and jeung louh means elder.