Tag Archives: family

Another Transfer Down! -Josh

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Dear Family and Friends,

All is well here. We just had our transfer call last night and it looks like I have survived this one. In fact, most of the zone is staying put. We are getting another set of sister missionaries, making us the largest sisters zone in the mission. I am not entirely sure with the Lord is trying to teach me with this particular lesson. My companion is staying as well so we will be able to keep doing some good work in this area. We have a lot of awesome people and we are working with some wonderful people who are progressing towards greater things. It would’ve been heartbreaking to have to leave all this when there is so much that is about to happen.

Lily finally committed to a date, she will be baptized on March 30. The only reason that she hasn’t been baptized yet is because we have been waiting to find out when her grandma who lives in Mexico will be able to come. She was going to try for this past weekend but her grandma’s flight got delayed and then eventually canceled the next best time is the end of March. She is ready and has been for a long time. I feel like when we teach her that we are teaching a recent convert. It is amazing to see the transformation that she has gone through even since I’ve been here let alone the one that she’s gone through since elder Hamilton has been here.

We have been teaching this man Kevin since mid-December on a weekly basis, and just this past week he started bringing his wife to lessons with us. She has really liked it at this point it is funny to hear him tell us “eventually we will get her.” It is almost like we are having a member present lesson. One of the few things that is stopping Kevin from being baptized at this point is that he works every Sunday. Our lesson with him tomorrow will be about the Sabbath day and knowing him I am sure that he will try to make the necessary changes to be at church on Sunday. It has been a great experience teaching him. Because of extenuating circumstances we had started originally teaching him in the parking lot now that has moved to the church. Little by little they all know the truth eventually.

Among other amazing families that we are teaching There are the Conseillants, Bro. Colney, Bro. Gonzalez, Osmond and Viosa (the Albanian couple) and this young guy Mackenly and we started teaching yesterday. The Lord has been so very good to us and we are doing our best to be worthy of our hire and be good stewards with what we have been given. I have been so blessed to be able to develop so many wonderful friendships with a host of wonderful goodhearted people. To be surrounded by such incredible spirits really brightens my entire view of the whole world. That is a blessing I have learned as a missionary. While one could watch the news and see only negative in the world if they would only get out and knock a few doors and just see how many nice people there are out there you could really change your view entirely.

You don’t know your neighbors get to know them they could become some wonderful friends! Have a wonderful week.

And Happy Birthday Mom!

Love ya’ll!

Elder Joshua Cordon

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Daily Miracles :)

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Dear family and friends,

This past week was a good week.

Seems like every day we felt like we had experienced a miracle. That is always a great feeling! Some of the highlights where some lessons that we had with the conseillant family. They are an awesome family from Haiti, we have been working with them for about a month and a half now. Their names are Gabin and Emmanuella, they have three beautiful children, Alayna, Nala, and Gianni. They are like our best friends. I will definitely be keeping touch with them for the rest of my life. They would be wonderful members of the Church. Gabin is Apostle material. A huge step was made with them when we were talking about the disciples in 3 Nephi 19 in the Book of Mormon. Emmanuella was confused about something and we were struggling to help her understand it. That is when Gabin turned to her and in a perfect way explained it to her in a way we never could. It was a huge step because he has never tried to help explain some of our doctrine like that before. They give us marriage advice all the time, mostly for Elder Hamilton because we are predicting that he will be married by the end of the year haha. It is some really good stuff! They really know what they’re talking about.

I am loving every minute of my mission so far! I feel as if my morning studies have improved and I’m really loving the opportunity to tear apart the book of Mormon and just find so many nuggets of wisdom and truth. I have truly grown to love that book as I focus my studies around it. I really don’t care to read anywhere else right now. The Spirit it brings into my mornings alone is worth it. I feel as if anybody who doesn’t take time to study the book of Mormon every single day is missing out on a wonderful opportunity.

A fun thing that happened this week was a friendly competition that we had. On Saturday the assistance called us and asked if we could have lunch so we could talk about a few things. On our way to the restaurant Elder Hamilton and I were trying to guess what they were going to rebuke us for. Unable to think of anything that would give them ammunition we were curious as to what they wanted to talk about. About halfway through lunch and folded the plan before us. They told us that Sunday night from 5 to 9 we were going to compete to see who couldn’t score the most points. You could score points by knocking on doors, contacting people, getting new investigators, and setting baptismal dates. The prize was a golden eagle trophy they had found in the mission office. The Lord bless us with great success and they are going to give us the trophy sometime today. 🙂

I know that God is aware of our lives, and that he really does care about each and every single one of us. His hand is always extended, and we just have to reach out. We will find success and happiness in life as we turn everything over to him. It isn’t easy, but it’s not that hard either, and it is most definitely worth it! Have a great week!

I love ya’ll!

Elder Joshua Cordon

It’s been awhile! -Jared

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Dear Family and Friends,

Sorry for the laps of writing the last couple weeks the Holidays have been crazy here! And its only about to get worse with chinese new year around the corner! But the Lord has been sending a lot of blessing our way, we have been able to have some pretty amazing experiences!

Our wonderful investigator! Well he was moving along but we keep feeling stumped, Elder Howell and I decided to turn it to the Lord as always and we felt prompted to switch up our member present to a very unlikely canidate and well it turned out to be exactly what we needed. He was able to be the right amount of help of being able to put our words in the right kind of way, and help us analize the real need our investigator has. Also the ward gave a great refferal of a family that lives pretty close to us. They came to the ward Christmas party(which was a blast) and also english class while bringing a friend family too… so a pretty great christmas present from the Lord.

Speaking of english class Elder Howell had a great Idea to mix it up and we mad a christmas themed one about different Christmas carols and their vocabulary. Super Fun! We have have been able to have a pretty amazing holiday!

This week we also learned a great deal about stepping out of our comfort zone and we have been talking to people we normally would not have and we have seen some great miracles from it. We had our best finding day yet this week with four golden street lessons–of course they are outside of our area–but hey I dont care if I teach them just as long as they come!

So its been amazing and I love all those who read this I hope you all have a happy New Year!

Love Elder Cordon

GET OUT OF MY STATE!! haha I say that out of love :-)

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Dear Family and Friends,

First of all I love you all, especially my family. So when I say that I was in Florida first don’t take it the wrong way. I just still can’t get over the fact that you waited to go to Disney World until after I serve my mission IN FLORIDA. It is ok though, no hard feelings… ok maybe a little 😉 Thank goodness I am not in the Orlando mission haha.

On another note. Elder Hamilton and I are a power team! We motivate each other really well and just get work done. We took a challenge from the Assistants to the Presidents to find a ridiculous 30 new investigators (the standard of excellence in the mission is 5)) this past week. We worked like crazy and met so many wonderful children of God. Many of them have great potential! Basically God granted us 25 new people to teach. It changed my perspective of what inspired goals, complete faith, massive action, and an expectation for mighty miracles can do.

We also had a Zone Meeting last week that went really well. I had to give a 20 min training which I was really nervous for because we don’t really have that much time to prepare for things like that because we have to worry about preparing lessons for investigators and doing proselyting still. The spirit really helped me out though and felt as if it took over. I could tell it had a positive impact on the Zone. God truly is good. I couldn’t handle all that is on my plate without him.

I had the blessed opportunity to baptize a wonderful brother into the fold of God. He is a humble man who is from Sudan, Africa. He was put into the military at the age of 12 there, but was able to leave to America when he was 20. My companion found him 10 weeks ago and he hasn’t missed church once. He has an incredible amount of faith, and he is really is just a wonderful brother. His name is Solomon Deng Deng. He was given the name Solomon when he was baptized into the Catholic church shortly after he moved here. I was very humbled by the fact that he asked me to baptize him, and what a blessing that was.

Another cool thing that happened this last week was when we swung by the mission office to take care of some different items of business. Right as we walked in Elder Rhoads, the vehicle coordinator (yes, I do realize the irony there), told us that we were going to help him out by driving one of the 2014 Ford Fusions to the Uhaul to get a bike rack hitch. Of course I had no objections. What a beautiful car that is. It is similar to the one we had when I first came out but that was a 2013. I was really hoping they were going to give us that car in exchange for the crappy 2011 corolla they have us in. But hey I shouldn’t be complaining it is better than biking haha.

I really love this area. I love the people we have met, and I have already learned so much. I have no doubt that God cares for each and every one of us individually. And that he really has a plan for us.

A spiritual lesson that I learned this week is that God cares more about our spiritual well-being than he does our physical. Here is what I mean by that. I have been sick for going on 4 weeks now. It stinks really bad, I just want to better. However, I find that at the end of the day, when I have given my all, I didn’t even feel sick all day until I slowed down just before bed. Basically when I lose myself in the work I forget about all my problems. God understands that we will have physical problems, that is just a part of life, but what he really cares about is that we keep the faith through it all. Every challenge is an opportunity to grow, so rather than praying for a change in circumstances we should pray for a change in character that will allow us to conquer our circumstances. That is something that my companion taught me. That is what I did, and it made all the difference in the world.

I love you all so much!

Elder Joshua 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