Tag Archives: Elder Cordon

Temple Work- Jared

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Dear Family and Friends,

This was another great couple of weeks! We really have been blessed this last week was temple day so that moved and shrunk my p-day. Which I am not complaining cause I got to go to the temple it jsut took away from me emailing you all.

These last 2 weeks we only had 3 days where we did not teach a lesson. So things are really picking up for us. We have 3 solid investigators now. One pretty new, the other should have a confirmed baptism date by the end of the week and the other is our 82 yeard old eternigator(he will come around as soon as he realizes God is better than horse racing). Things are really looking good. Its been a hard road opening up a new companionship for your first area, but by golly we have done it. Also a young man we found sitting on a park bench my first month got baptised yesterday. He is a Mandarin so we didn’t get to teach him, but man we sure found him! So I kinda count that as my first baptism haha.

We have learned a vital lesson that our president was tryin to teach us. Which is when you focus your priorities in order(the number 1 being the most important thing and 3 being the least important) you can recieve them all. As far as finding goes families are the 1 and then you have young people then old people. We have made it a big focus of ours to really shoot for those families. Its a principle that we tried and well it absolutly works. We have been finding a lot of families these last couple of weeks, also a lot of young people, and then of cours the poe poes and the soak soaks. When you align your priorities with the lord he absoluty makes them possible.

I know the lord loves us and I have seen miracles in peoples lives, this church isn’t just a christian church. Its the Church of Jesus Chirst where he leads it as surely as he lead it when he established during his minitstry. Its not where we learn about Christ, its where become like him and truly know him.

Love, Elder Jared Cordon

There is Good Chaos and Bad Chaos -Joshua

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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

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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

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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

Well a Pretty Crazy Week of Gratitude -Jared

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Dear Family and Friends,

I am so grateful for this opportunity, I am grateful for my companion, I am grateful I have had so many blessings in learning this language, I am grateful for the blessed Causeway Bay ward, Amazing food and Amazing missionaries, My amazing Mom!

I could go on forever! I now realize how grateful I am for hot water, flushing toilets, kitchen sinks that drain, and gas in the stove. Haha the Lord decided to remind us of all the simple blessings we have every day. Our whole street flooded! A huge pipe burst and the water was coming out like a giezer all night long! I will send pictures next week.

I had a cool experience Yesterday, Elder Howell and I had both felt the prompting to go to this park (its one that has never been successful before). So we went about as planned and went through the whole park with no success. Well we finally get to the very last part of it and we see two little kids playing with a lady watching them.

We said hi and she said hi back in english and then went back to the kids, so we assumed she was a helper at work and went on our way. As we were leaving one of the kids called her mommy. Well I didnt think much of it, and me and Elder Howell went to the next area as we had planned.

Well the spirit spoke to Elder Howell because he felt very prompted to go back and talk to her, thinking heavily on the kids comment when we were leaving. So we went back and talked to her and she happen to be Japanese and that conversation turned out to be an amazing experience. We didn’t get a new investigator but that was the first she has ever heard of our Church and really even Jesus Christ. She may not have been ready at that moment but I got no doubt she will be later. It was a simple testimony to me that we need to listen to spiritual promptings and especially in this work. If my companion gets a prompting and I have not then I just have to trust him!

How you all have a wonderful week!

Love Elder Cordon

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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

Big News and Big Changes!! – Joshua

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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

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Do I Stay or Do I Go?? -Joshua

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Dear Family and Friends,

So this is the first transfer where I am actually completely uncertain as to whether I will stay here in the wonderful land of Lake City, or if I will go. I am personally okay with either option. If I stay I would probably be able to baptize my favorite investigators, seeing has how they are ripe for baptism here soon, but also I would welcome a change seeing as how this is the only place I have been thus far. I will get a teaser tonight if Elder Barcala gets a training call or not.

This last week was a fairly good week though. There are two highlights that I wish to mention.

The first is the surprising cold that hit us last Wednesday. Believe it or not, we had to bust out the gloves, coats, and scarfs in Florida haha. I was kinda looking forward to wearing my pea-coat the so I was happy. My companion on the other hand did not bring any cold weather clothing thinking that all of Florida was like Miami all the time haha. Luckily a merciful sister in the ward took us to the store and bought him a very nice coat, and some gloves and scarfs for the two of us. It definitely made biking around a lot better.

The other event was our Zone Conference. I thought we were suppose to rotate between Gainesville and here for Zone conference but seeing as how 3 in a row were in Gainesville that doesn’t seem to be the case. I don’t mind it though. We had to get flu shots while we were there and I think it made me a little sick, but it won’t stop me. The Zone Conference was great and I heard a lot of inspiring words. I just feel like this mission is one big family!

Something that I loved from my personal studies this past week was all the talk about how God will empower us with strength to overcome our weaknesses as we are obedient. That came from the talk that Elder Richard G. Scott gave in the latest general conference. SO GOOD! I would encourage all of you to read it 🙂

Have a wonderful week!

Love Ya’ll,

Elder Joshua Cordon

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Here It Goes Again- Jared

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Dear everyone!

I have another crazy week! The living situation with the 6 in the apartment has been a bit crazy but also fun, plus apparently Americans can develop a Hong Kong allergy haha. Don’t worry I was able to beat the system and find a cure. Its issues with wearing contacts and the bad air here. So all the missionaries have just resorted to wearing glasses, well given my eye situation I can’t wear glasses so after being blind for 2 days I was able to find the cure which was in these eye drops! Hooray I can see and the work can move forward.

This week we were able to get our first member present with our investigator, since he is 84 we got a man in the ward who is about the same age. They were best friends from the start, I love listening these 2 old Cantonese guys chat back and forth. I had no Idea what they were saying but I feel like it was helping haha. Also we have been blessed this week in being able to find a lot of Chinese men we could teach lessons to! It was great and we have a couple new investigators scheduled! I love being able to enjoy the fruit of my labors and not having to pass them off that was so hard! But this last week we were able to have dinner with a part member family and they have 2 little twin girls! Her story is amazing!

When she was married she found out she could not have children and that was something that was hard for her, but when she met the missionaries and started receiving lessons she was able to meet President Anderson and he told her she would have kids, well sure enough after she was baptized it wasn’t much longer until she was pregnant with twins!

This gospel is amazing and I love the change it has been able to make in families here and the lives it has truly blessed.

I love you all

Elder Cordon

Mission Conference with Elder Zwick!! – Joshua

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Dear Family and Friends,

This last week was definitely an interesting one! I don’t think it really got good until Thursday though. In order to keep missionaries out of trouble on Halloween they made a rule that we all had to be inside someone where by 6. It through and interesting twist into the scheme of things. We managed to stay busy for most of it. But we ended up getting a free hour in the apartment, at the end of it. We spent the time going through a Halloween gift basket that a wonderful sister in the ward put together for us, and I tied the first few notes of my paracord scripture case that I am making for Stefan (who had his baby this week!) as a baptism gift. It is going to be sweet! haha

Friday was simply amazing! We had the blessed opportunity to go to Gainesville for a spectacular Mission Conference that was very much enlightening. It was put on by Elder Zwick. He is the executive director of the Missionary Department. He is a very powerful speaker and he gave some very insightful comments. I got the opportunity to participate with Elder Barcala, by doing a brief training on listening to the spirit. It was a wonderful opportunity for me and I hope that it also helped somebody else. Besides being able to meet Elder Zwick, I got to see President and Sister Craig which is always a wonderful thing, as well as Elder Newbold! We got to chat it up as I filled him in on the latest and greatest that is happening in Deep Creek.

One of the highlights of the conference was the talk by Elder Zwick on sanctification. He taught that sanctification begins by living the Law of Sacrifice. He defined the Law of Sacrifice for missionaries as a perfect use of the Lord’s time. I did a lot of reflection about how I could use the Lord’s time in a more productive and effective way. He also showed us one of the fully loaded Ipad-minis that we will be getting very shortly which will be super awesome!

After the conference and before the evening devotional we got to go procelyting on UF’s campus! We had some good success actually. 2 new gators in only 1 1/2 hours 🙂

My miracle is that on saturday we were trying to contact a potential investigator, but his house was empty and apparently he had moved out only a few days before. We went over to talk to the neighbor who informed us and it turns out that he is a less-active member. He is actually one of the 3 Ensey brothers who we have ran into bumped into randomly over the last month. His brother Thomas actually just moved into the that he was at, and so we talked to them and met his fiance and her daughter. We also were able to give Thomas a blessing of healing for his ankle because he sprained it. We went back on Sunday and had a great lesson with them! and then they came to the CES dinner and broadcast at the stake center with us! We have another lesson with them today! Finally another family to work with! I love families! Plus their little girl Nevaeh is possibly one of the most darling 5 year olds I have ever met! God definitely put us in their path and they are so ready for the Gospel right now!

I love this work so much! I know that true happiness and peace in this life comes from living the gospel. I know from experience that this is true. I know with my whole heart that, “I am a disciple of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. I have been called of him to declare his word among his people, that they might have everlasting life.” (3 Nephi 5:13) I love you all and I hope that you have a great week!

Love Y’All

Elder Joshua Cordon