Tag Archives: Faith

I’m lovin it!! -Jared

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Hello Family and Friends,

This was a fast but very amazing week!

Our 1 investigator is starting to see the difference in his life after he started meeting us and is showing a lot more desire to accept our message. He said you and your companion are always so happy! I believe its because of your faith. I want that. Well he will get it, he knows he needs to give some things up and thats the first step.

We also added another number to the list of invetigators another old man who we met in the park taught a lesson, then again the next day, and brought him to church and I think he is really liking it. So we got two underway and if we can meet with four other very awesome people we had taught last week then we can be seeing some real growth.

A big lesson I learned this last week is the true need to have the spirit in all you do, the teaching, the finding, the studying and especially the planning. This last week at one of our nightly plannings we were pretty lazy about where we should go and kinda just picked. Well the next day we really felt the effects of that. We had a couple experiences and just really were not feeling the spirit and we didnt know what was wrong. Well we prayed to have the spirit and kept working but that didn’t seem to work. So finally we decided that maybe we should go where The Lord wants us to go. So we prayed, looked at the map book, and went to a new spot we both felt good about.

Well we then ended up having two very good street lessons to people who really needed it and we should hopefully be seeing them again this week. It taught me a lot about really and truly relying on the lord in all that we do!

I have a quick thought for you all.

You become what you think about.

Read Mosiah 4:30

“to a great extent we accomplish what we think about. Your life is influenced more by your own thoughts than anything else. How could a person possibly become what he is not thinking? Nor is any thought when persistantly entertained, too small to have its effect. The divinity that shaped our ends is indeed in ourselves” Spencer W. kimball

“A mans’ character is the complete some of all his thoughts, you can know a man soley on what he thinks about, when he doesn’t have to think.” Can’t remember

Just a good reminder to keep your thoughts on what’s most important in life!

Love you all!

Elder Jared Cordon

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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

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

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!

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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