Tag Archives: Elder Bednar

I <3 HK

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Dear Family and Friends,

Well I have had a good eventful week and a half since I last got on!

For starters picking up from the beginning of last week. President Hawks (mission president) called a special district leader meeting. He was a professor at BYU before his mission. He has influenced my life in so many ways! But because he was a professor, teaching means everything to him as it does to me. A missionary had introduced some videos (a link to 1 of 24 videos) by Elder Bednar and other general authorities, Teaching No Greater Call (a link to the website with ALL the material), to him and President Hawks is a man who is quick to observe. He felt every missionary needed to see these videos so he called the district leaders together to introduce the new district meeting plan for the next three months. After that truly mission changing meeting we were able to have a mission changing district meeting. Which set off a fantastic week where we were able to add two new baptismal dates to the teaching pool. They are both friends of a young man in the ward! He has introduced so many people to the church he is awesome!

Then this week we had a last minute meeting with a powerful group of men. Elder Rasband president of the seventy, Elder Allen Director of the missionary department, and the Asia Area presidency (Elder Gong, Elder Wong, & Elder Funk). So we were able to hear from five general authorities and there wives! Very powerful.

The the next day all the members in Hong Kong and all the missionaries got together in a stadium for an all day race event! It was fun I won one race!

Today we have the chance to attend the temple always one of my favorite things to do! Its such a spiritually uplifting experience!

Love you all,

Elder Jared Cordon

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I Love my Mission – Jared

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Family, Friends, Mormons lend me your ears!

Yes the weeks are long. Yes I wish I was in Hong Kong. Regardless I am still loving it here!

First with the interesting news, they are shipping us over to Wyview for the last two weeks of the MTC. This is kinda nice I wanted to experience the other campus because then we would have apartments, and we can go eat at restaurants near by. Downsides the gym time facilities are not that great okay, they are all outside, need I say more.

Also I gave the prayer for the devotional yesterday which was cool! There where 4000 missionaries but if you close your eyes, its no big deal. Where I was sitting made it so that I was in the screen the whole time Brother Jon Tanner was speaking. (Yes he is related to the very Jon Tanner the movie is after which was cool and he produced the movie Jon Tanner, The Stone Cutter, 17 miracles, and the new one Ephraims Rescue). I thought it was cool that he is an identical twin, because me and my companion both are twins. It was a pretty good devotional although not that mission motivating!

The one I saw after that for the Sunday evening films was, Elder Bednar’s “Becoming a Missionary”, It was super good. It was mainly about how to become a lifetime missionary, so even though my mission may be up in two years. It should be weird coming back.

Also I started reading Jesus the Christ this last week. Man even though I only have a little time that I can read it. No book has ever been so compelling I am on page 225 out of 800. I feel like I have already grown so much closer to Christ. I have never looked at his Ministry in such a way. I suggest all who are not sure how to increase their faith to read Jesus the Christ (Which was written in the celestial room, by an Appostle, so I consider it scripture).

I have not had the chance to recieve amazing miracles in the same my way my brother has but, I am walking testimony of God’s miracles in how I can speak as much cantonese as I can, with honestly as little effort I have put in. I know once I get to Hong Kong it will remind me how much more I have left to learn and how loving God will be to bless me. Cantonese is really really hard, but not to hard for The Lord.

Everyone I love you, stay tuned for the good stuff, its coming in 3 weeks;)

Elder Jared Cordon

First Week in the Field

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Dear Family and Friends,

Well to bring you all up to speed I’ll start with where I left off, the MTC. My last Sunday in the MTC was incredible. The Devotional was great, it was talking about how when you are teaching someone if you don’t understand each other than what you teach them will go right over there heads. So you have to make sure that you understand where they are coming from, and that they understand what your purpose is. After the devotional we went and watched the Character of Christ. It is a devotional given by David A. Bednar back on Christmas in 2011. It really put everything simply for me and gave me the proper perspective for my mission. To sum up the main message: Christ was the best missionary who ever lived, so if we want to be good missionaries we must be like Christ, and to be like Christ we cannot think about ourselves; basically we have to realize that it HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH US. I hope that I will be able to maintain this terrific attitude of selflessness my entire mission. I know that that is impossible, but I know by trying I will experience many miracles.

I left the MTC on Tuesday, In order to catch my flight that morning I had to get up at 2:30 in the morning. Well that is when my alarm was set, but I didn’t actually get up until 2:45. Either way my companion and I clean up shop caught quick breakfast and was on the bus ready to go to the airport at 4:00. After we got to the airport and escaped the chaos upon getting through security we were able to breath easy for a little while before our flight. It was this time that we could call home and talk to our parents for a little bit. It was truly a blessing to talk to my parents knowing that our next conversation wouldn’t happen until Christmas. Because of delays and just a lot of flying we didn’t get to the Jacksonville airport until about 4:00 in the afternoon on Tuesday.

When I stepped outside the airport I thought I got a concussion from how thick the humidity was. Now that I have been here a few days though I feel like I have acclimated quite well. We had some orientation meetings on Tuesday, before going over the mission presidents home and eating some awesome dinner. It was about time I got to eat some good home cooked food. The MTC food was starting to take its toll on my system. That night the Elders in my MTC distict and I stayed at a local members home, just to get back to the church at 8:00 in the morning. For most of the day on wednesday it was more orientation meetings. Very informative and helpful, but very boring.

Finally it was time to meet our trainers. I got a great trainer who happens to be from Bountiful, Utah. His name is Elder Newbold and we get along great. Along with assigning us our trainers they also assigned us to our areas. We got assigned to the Deep Creek area, which is a new area. So not only are we opening, but I am also getting trained. The Deep Creak area is in the nice slow community of Lake City, Florida. It is really nice out here and the people in the Church are awesome. We are getting fed by members 6 out of the next 7 days. On top of all of that we have a nice new apartment and we get to drive around the classy 2013 Ford Fusion. That car had only 89 miles on it when we got it.
We do have a lot of work ahead of us though. We have before us the difficult task of building a teaching pool, and until then it is basically just a lot of knocking doors. We have had to miracles though that I would like to share with you.

Miracle #1
After going all day on Friday without accomplishing anything, and I mean anything (we didn’t talk to a single person and all our scheduled appointments fell through). We decided to talk to an in-active member named Br. Green. When we pulled up to his house he was sitting on his porch relaxing and mending a broken rib. We talked with him for a bit and asked if any of his neighbors would be interested in hearing our message. He pointed out two of his neighbors and told us about them. We thanked him and went a nearby appointment that ended canceling on us. We decided then to go meet Br. Greens neighbors. The first house was home to Karen G.. As she answered the door she was a bit reserved at first, but decided to let us in to teach her about our message (first lesson of my mission). We got to know her for a little while and found out pretty quickly that she has a very close relationship with God. We taught her about Restoration of the Gospel of Jesus Christ through the Prophet Joseph Smith, and then after talking about the book of Mormon and other things, taught her about God’s Plan of Happiness. I could feel the presence of the Holy Ghost so powerfully and constant the entire lesson, and she really liked our message. After about an 1 hr and 40 min we finally closed with a prayer and left her with the commitment to read and pray to know if the Book of Mormon was true. We plan on stopping by again this week.
Miracle #2

We were knocking doors yesterday after little success for the day and finally someone answered the door. This happy guy answered the door and accepted our offer to here a message about Jesus Christ. He rounded up his wife and son, turned the T.V. off and was ready to listen. After getting to know them a little more we found out that they were knew to the area and that they were originally from Louisiana. We also found out that he was pastor in Louisiana for over 10 years though he pastured for nearly every denomination from Methodist to Baptist. We shared our message about the Restoration of the Gospel of Jesus Christ through Joseph Smith and introduced the Book of Mormon. He was very open to our message and said that he knows that God sent us to his home to share that message with him and he was very eager for a return appointment. He also shared with us some wonderful words of encouragement and told us to never give up no matter how much rejection we face. And he said never complain about experiencing some hard times simply just say that you are “In between blessing.” I Really love that quote from him. We ended the lesson by leaving the Saviors peace and blessing on his home and family and he thanked us for the spirit that we brought into his home. O what a blessing it was to meet that family.
I know it was a lot, but a lot has happened. I hope everything is going well for y’all

Elder Joshua Cordon