Tag Archives: Elder Cordon

Service Helps! And So Does Chili :) – Joshua

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Dear Family and Friends,

I had many great experiences this past week. This first one I wanted to mention is about a less-active sister in our ward. We went by her house two weeks ago and at the end of the lesson we asked if we could have some more of her amazing cooking. She loves to cook (and we knew that) so she readily accepted. The result was DELICIOUS! Southern cooking is a hoot! (that means it is really good in southernese) I have come to find that one of my favorite southern dishes though is creamed corn, and acres peas. It is probably on the healthier side of the southern cuisine, which is good for a guy who eats as much as I do. (After my performance at a members home on Thursday I have received several comments haha.) Also the dinner gave us a good chance to invite her to church and talk some gospel with her.

On Wednesday I had an exchange with Elder Lake from Price Creek. During our trade-off with another member in our ward we found ourselves stuck in a pickle after striking out on all my plans. While praying silently for some direction I felt that we should visit the Greens. Upon arriving it seemed like their daughter was going to chase us off, but I stood my ground and insisted on doing some service for them. Once they realized that we were serious, they accepted. We proceeded to till and rake their garden for the next hour. The result was a gift bag of microwave meals and frozen deer leg, dirty hands, and softened hearts. They asked if we could come back Saturday and help finish the project. After that service project we part of the family according to their 38 year old daughter Michelle. They experienced some real hard ship two nights ago with the passing of their grandson/nephew though so if you could keep them in your prayers that would be great.

Lastly, we had some awesome success with the Fall Festival this past week. By the grace of God we were able to get Nick there are Camekco(who brought her sister). They both had a great time as we enjoyed some great conversation with great people, while eating great chili. Seeing things come together so well is such a great feeling!

All in all it was a terrific week and I hope it was for the rest of ya’ll!

Have a great week and don’t forget to pray. One simple prayer opened the doorway to some great service and new friends!

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

TRAVELL PLANSS!!! – Jared

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Wait what is that?

I think.. wait what.. that’s MY TRAVEL PLANS!!! YEAH! YEAHHHH!!!!

I can’t believe its almost here!! Next time you here from me I will be in Hong Kong!

Am I ready?… NO

Am I scared?… Not one bit!

If there is one thing I have learned in the MTC is this is the Lords work and he has proven time and time again that it doesn’t matter what the language is, when his missionaries obey he will fill in whatever they are lacking. Which for me might be just about everything except for Faith.

So first I hope everyone is doing okay I know its gonna be hard not hearing about the boring MTC life but, don’t worry it will get better, I promise. This last week was a blast!! I got to Host for the first time which was so great! I had the privilege of scaring new young Elders about the Horrors of the MTC. I am sure they will be relived when they fined out everything I said was true… 😉 haha. Also another great time was TRC!! It’s lesson we give to volunteers every Saturday morning. They Sister we taught just got back from her mission to Hong Kong also like 5 others who just got back where there. So after our lesson my companion and I talked with them for a good 40 mins. All about what to expect. They gave me some great advice never let the thought of going home come into your mind for one it will take over and start wasting a lot of time; because the moment I step off the plane coming home I am gonna be wishing I was right back in Hong Kong.

Sunday might have been one of the most spiritually uplifting days of my life! Some things I wanna tell you all is: I know that Thomas S. Monson from a very young age was being prepared to be our Prophet and he is truly an inspired man of God. Go to the mormonchannel.org and watch his video! Also I have seen the most mission changing talk of my life. Sadly you can’t read because its one they only replay in the MTC. It’s Elder Bednars Doctrine, Principles, and Applications. The problem with most members is everyone only studies the Application like lets set new goals or the answer to better Home teaching is to bake a cake. Doctrine is Always the Answer, and True Doctrine understood changes attitude and behavior. When someone gives you a question like why can’t we drink alcohol, well most Mormons as well would I is to immediately give them and application response, for example, well its been scientifically proven…. well instead given them a doctrine response like go read section 89 of the D&C and get back to me. True Doctrine understood changes attitude and behavior. So I challenge everyone to know there doctrine better.

Sadly this is the time were I say farewell for longer than normal.. But don’t cry I will be back soon!

I love all of you and hope your lives are fantastic!

Love Elder Jared 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

So close you could almost taste it! Release your inhibition!

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Well hello there!

Alright 2 more weeks to go then Hong Kong here I come! There have been some nice mix ups this last week to remind me the importance of the MTC and other things just make me really wanna leave!

This week Elder Cederlof and I have been able to see what it feels like to truly work through the Lord with our investigators! We have been struggling along with one. She didn’t feel our messages relation to her and she wasn’t experiencing what we were saying!

So finally we buckled down and decided we need to hit straight from the source! We prepared a lesson about the love of Christ! Although it was not exactly how we planned, she felt the love of Christ! (I want to remind everyone this is not a real investigator) but, the Spirit there was!

She has been complaining about her knee hurting and making work bad for her. So we felt prompted to show her the Bible video about Jesus healing the palsy stricken man. Then we shared testimonies about Christ healing us through blessings we have received. She started tearing up, then we were prompted to ask her if she had faith enough to be healed, she started crying again, and said whimpering yes I do. After the blessing we knew the spirit was there and God answered our prayer! We then being prompted told her about baptism and how the spirit she is feeling could be with her always! We then invited her after more testimonies, she started balling again, after a long long silence she said yes!

That lesson was amazing the spirit was so strong and I could definitely feel the spirit working through me! We now know what it feels like to have our investigator experience the discussion!

Whats been hard this week is we ended up not moving to WyView. My whole branch did but us Cantonese, we are sadly getting moved to a new branch. So after saying all these goodbyes I feel like I should be on a plane right now. sadly that is not until 2 weeks. But I did get my Chinese tags with my Chinese name in Characters! I do know how to read that one at least!

Also after long discussions with the Elders from Hong Kong I can not wait! All my experiences with the Hong Kong people have really helped me develop a love for them!

The work is Hastening and as my brother said the miracle will not only be through Missionaries but also members! Open your mouth and The Lord will fill it for you!

Everyone Take Luck

Love Elder Jared 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

Slow Start, Strong Finish! – Joshua

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Dear Family and Friends,

Things went really well this week. We started the week off with some really low numbers, though we still experienced some great moments, but from Thursday on, things really took off.

One of the early miracles was with Mati. We have been working with her for about 2 months and in all that time have only had 1 complete lesson with her. We were in her area Monday night so i decided to shoot her a text asking if we could come over. To my great surprise, she said yes. We quickly made our way over there to have a lesson with her. She told us when we got there that she had no sooner finished praying for guidance and help when the phone buzzed with my text. I had no idea at the time that it was a prompting from the spirit to send her a text, to me it was just a good idea. Nevertheless it was a spiritual prompting and it got her into tears as she shared it with us. We then set a baptismal date with her for the 19th of October. The spirit was so strong in that lesson, and she kept saying how much peace she felt. I love this gospel!

The pivotal point this week was a humble moment of prayer. Thursday night heavily relied on the fact that one or both of the members who agreed to go on trade-offs that night would still be able to make it, which is why it was so devastating that they both called and said they couldn’t make it that night. Granted they both were pretty legitimate excuses, but it was nonetheless very frustrating. I was lost… I had no idea what were were going to do for the last 3 hours of the evening. It was at this point that Elder Barcala, offered the humble advice of biking down a side street, to do a kneeling prayer and beg for help. That is what we did. After standing up after the prayer, an incredible feeling of peace fell upon me. I still didn’t know where to go, but I knew that God was in charge. We got back on our bikes, and just started heading down the street. We talked to everyone we saw…everyone. And it paid off. We taught four great lessons, and got two new investigators in only three hours. Those are good numbers for a days work.

Another miracle we had this week was that on Saturday after two great sessions of Stake Conference, we decided to go and visit a former investigator. We happened to pull up to his house the same time he did, which was a miracle because he is never home. We talked to him for a bit and then he ended up offering us a ride home. We had a great conversation with him and he made several comments about how he was looking for a church that he was be comforted in. Seeing how he is a pretty bright guy, I am sure he had to have known what kind of reaction that missionaries would have to such a comment. Either he is pulling our leg or he is interested in investigating the church again. I pray it is the latter.

On Sunday, Nick and the Suttons were all able to come to Stake Conference and it made it such a great session. They all had great experiences and we are expecting to see their faces there quite frequently. It surprised Nick to find out how many Mormons he knew. He ended up talking with people for a solid 15 minutes after conference ended. We worked hard for the rest of the day and had two really great lessons with one of them resulting in a new investigator. Her name is Kim. She has two children in the military which was our original connection point. We went over there on Sunday and stood on her porch for an hour and one of the more spiritual lessons of my mission. She readily agreed for us to come back.

I have no doubt in my mind that Heavenly Father cares about every single one of us. He proves that by making time for everyone of us, so that whenever we want to talk to him through prayer, he is listening. Listening with pure understanding and love. I know Heavenly Father hears our prayers, and he proves it by answering every sincere prayer we humbly offer. He wants to hear from us, so talk to him tonight.

I love ya’ll!

Elder Joshua Cordon

Here are some updated pictures of Joshua from his missions’ blog.

Crazy! Can you spot Elder (Josh) Cordon?

Just keep swimming! -Jared

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First and foremost the greatest thing that happened this week is I got to see my brother after a long 2 years! That may have been the quickest 30 minutes of my life! Also as far as the language goes I still kepted having thoughts that the language was growing really slowly.

Well I took some time this week and with another Elder and practiced baring my testimony! Well needless to say it is amazing how far I have come, I don’t think you realize how much you know until you put it to the test and I think my testimony could not have been a better way!

I have to say I really hope I get to serve in Macau because you get to go to bed at 11:30 and wake up at 7:30! Not to mention it looks so cool at night time!

I have started my adventure on the Character of Christ. It began one night while I read outside with the sound of BYU crushing Texas in the background! I have to say thought that It has helped me realize how much Christ has influenced the world with only so few verses about his ministry in the bible, we know very little about his minstry yet the world recognizes his life with such importance that our very year of living is based on the Years following his life. Its been ultimately decided that his existence is factual.

But non the less. I know Christ life was not easy and He was strong, so I have to be. Salvation wasn’t easy for him and it isn’t easy for us! Don’t give up do something more!

I love all of you!

Love Elder(Jared) Cordon

P.S. I am so bad at typing so my letters have been short but once I get to the field I will have more time to make this longer:)

Trio, Training, and Tracting with Bikes -Josh

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Dear Family and Friends,

This past week has been an interesting one. We finished out our trio of Elder Largo, Elder Newbold, and I. It was a lot of fun being in a trio but it made it harder to focus on the work. I learned a lot though nevertheless and we still managed to stay very productive. By the end of it all I felt like I had two good friends.

Having to say goodbye to Elder Newbold was bitter sweet. I felt like we have become good friends after 3 months and we taught really well together, as a result I had come to trust him a lot. Though I am excited to mix things up, it has proven difficult to regain that trust. It will come though, of that I am sure.

Elder Cordon with his new companion Elder Barcala

Elder Barcala and Elder Joshua Cordon

On Wednesday I got my new companion. His name is Elder Barcala. He is from Scottsdale, Arizona and he is a convert of 2 years. He is 22 and already has his bachelors in criminal justice from ASU. He has a terrific fire for the work and I hope that as his trainer that I can kindle that fire and help him become a very confident and powerful teacher.

Wednesday night we went over to a members house for dinner and afterwards did splits with him and his brother. So day one I have my new companion going out on his own. He did pretty good actually.

On Thursday the ward mission leader and his wife helped us out a ton by showing my companion around and helping get bikes. Being on bikes has been bitter sweet, while we drip in sweat biking in shirt and tie in the hot Florida sun it is easier to street contact when you are on bikes. It is far less intimidating to approach someone on bike than in a car. Also when we would drive slowly in a car down neighborhood streets it was hard to not think that we were the police.

We have gotten into the groove now though and we are starting to build up our teaching pool again. We have been working hard and it is paying off. We are meeting a lot of good people and I just hope that in some small way that we make their day a little brighter with every visit.

We were blessed to be able to catch Ben last night and we took him to the church to watch the CES fireside. Ben has been through a lot and is living in a terrible environment, but while we were watching the broadcast I could tell that a lot of the things hit him really powerfully, and I hope that he can put into action some of the incredible advice of Elder Russel M. Nelson. I was really grateful to be able to see it and it just made me so pumped that general conference in coming up.

I just love this work so much. I know now more than ever that God loves everyone of his children here on earth. I also know that by applying the wonderfully beautiful and simple principles of the gospel into ours that it will make us happier. This life is about growth and constant improvement. I think that one of the biggest sins of this generation is laziness and complacency. God wants us to achieve our wonderful potential, but he can’t force us to do it. It is our job, but you better believe that through the grace of Jesus Christ he will be there every step of the way strengthening us. Life is like climbing a mountain. Some people get tired and convince themselves they are satisfied with how far they have come so they set up camp. Others are disheartened by the steep climbs that lie ahead. But for those who want to make it to the top to see the stunning views above the tree line, Christ has offered to be our climbing partner. He has the made the climb before and if we trust him and do our part, them we can reach the summit of our potential. So get off of the couch and get climbing! Spiritually of course 😉

Love y’all
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