Tag Archives: feeling the spirit

Let Him Lead

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Dear Family and Friends,

Well it certainly was a great week. It was a temple week and we had a baptism. Which also made the week a very busy, and spirit filled week. The temple is such a wonderful place to to be able to be bless to go on my mission is such a wonderful gift. The only other place outside of temples that I have been able to feel the spirit as strong is at the sacred grove. The difference is that temples are dedicated homes to the Lord, and we are given promises and blessings and light and knowledge in the temples when we seek for it. What a great blessing for the mission to be able to receive light and knowledge for the areas that we are in.

Had a really cool experience this week with getting a haircut and taking the time to talk to her about the Plan of Salvation. There are some many moments in our lives that we have peoples attention that we can share simple and small truths about the gospel. The question is are we taking advantage of them all. It was a lesson to me of how easy it was to take advantage of the time that I had while she was cutting my hair to direct the conversation to the gospel.

Come to find out that her mom has recently passed away and she has been doing A LOT of researching into afterlife and what is really waiting for us. I was then easily able to share with her the wonderful truth that we know about the life to come. I also was able to share with her how we know this because we have prophets and God still talks to the world through them so that we know of these wonderful truths.
When are truly willing to take advantage of every moment that is given to share truths of the gospel and build up His children. Then He will be willing and able to guide even the plans you make and the steps you take to give you the moments to build his kingdom and his children. The willingness to give him everything is the price, and the reward is more then could ever be dreamed about.

Life becomes so easy when everything is guided by Him. So that is the question are we letting Him guide us everyday?

I Love You All
Thank you for everything that you have done in my life.

Elder S Cordon

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Bring on the rain!!

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Dear Family and Friends,

Well, Hurricane season is officially here. The wise old patriarch of the ward strongly urged all of us to be ready. Don’t worry though, we are. We have been stocking up on food for the last little while. The cupboards are full and we have food for at least three months. Also, if anything does happen, what a great opportunity it will be to serve those around us. It will also make it easier to baptize if the streets are full of water. Of course I am only slightly joking! It did storm rather heavy every single day last week! We even had nickel sized hail several times.

Moving on.

Some really good things happened this past week! Not the least of which is the mission leadership council meeting that we had in which a lot of good things are coming about. I really love where President Craig is moving the focus and I am excited to exoerience all the good that will follow. For me personally, that meeting was very inspiring. I left with my expectations raised and my vision expanded. I realized I hadn’t been stretching myself enough, but that is going to change! Starting with my online proselyting, which is something that I have completely neglected these past few months. I have been looking for ways to improve and now I finally feel like I have concrete direction on how I am going to do that!

An exciting thing that happened this week was that Alfred had a change of heart. A week ago he was pretty down and he wasn’t his normal cheery self. He didn’t come to church last week because he was so down. He started to have a lot of doubts in what we were teaching because he still hadn’t had a spiritual witness of the Book of Mormon. We set out this week to help him have one. On Wednesday we talked a lot about prayer with him, we knew that if he could understand how prayer works then getting an answer will be easy. Near the end of our lesson he seemed to have a really good understanding of prayer. We then challenged him to pray right then and there and ask god if the Book of Mormon is true. He was a bit hesitant, but he agreed. After praying we had us just sit in silence for a few minutes so he could pay attention to the way that he felt. Needless to say, Alfred finally can recognize what the spirit felt like! It was pretty incredible! This Sunday at church he just kept saying, I feel the spirit and I can’t help but smile!

And on that note I want to end by saying, if you are looking to smile a little more in your life, then do something that will invite the spirit, and soon enough, I promise you, you will be smiling! It happens to me every single day!

I love y’all!!

Elder Joshua Cordon

A Lesson Of The Mission

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Dear Family and Friends,

These last couple of days have been pretty interesting.

I had the opportunity to meet with a pastor from another faith. It was really interesting too because previously we had met him and had scheduled a time but for some reason we never met up and I had not cared too much to see him but then one day Elder Au just had this feeling to go to this village called Lung Gu Taan. Now this man lives there with his family and when we were there I saw his house and didn’t want to bother knocking on his door. He is really nice but he is pretty dedicated to his belief.

Our time there was kinda of a bust until we were leaving then we saw this man and his family pull up in there car. So we spoke for a second and he was super nice and wanted to meet back up. It struck us at this point that maybe that’s why we needed to go to Lung Gu Taan. So that time was last Friday. When we first met him he had posed the question how can someone read the gospel of John–he said its his favorite book–and be led to believe in our church then he told us to study it. Well this is pretty funny cause his name is John Johnson. But I added that to my study and man I never been more convinced that someone with the gift of the spirit can led to believe more deeply that this gospel the Church of Jesus Christ teaches is true. Now I knew that he wouldn’t put that question to us unless he had a reason someone couldn’t.

Well we met up because I felt this is what the spirit was telling us to do. Well we didn’t really discuss the Gospel of John, I just had to defend my faith against the pride of the world. This meeting was interesting it provided me greater insight on the war of words this world is facing. In this meeting you had two people sitting on one side of the table who had gained their testimony of Jesus Christ through the power of the Holy Spirit in reverent prayer, while on the other side you had someone who gained his testimony from years and years of study starting from a degree in religion and then throughout his paid career.

I now understand why we needed to meet with this man, I know that all the words the world can throw at you have no effect compared to the quiet whispers of the Holy Spirit in prayer. This has been a great reminder of the kind of missionary and teacher I should be, I can never convert anybody that power is the responsibility and calling of the Holy Spirit. I must not forget who the real teacher is. The people of Hong Kong deserve a foundation of stone not sand.

I love you all and wish you the best.

Elder Jared Cordon

“That He Lives”

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Do the Butterfly!!!

Following an amazing 5 sessions of general conference, we were also blessed to witness a baptism in the Butterfly ward. The first baptism in 2 1/2 years!!

IMG_0752[1]It actually caught us off guard this last week when we got a call and the mandarin sisters asked Elder Falk to baptize a Mandarin girl he had found just before I got here. We had seen her at church a few times but we had no Idea it would be this soon. It was not our baptism but it was a ward baptism!

For our investigator Gary, well he is moving along Fantastically. He was having some hard times after last week when he received is baptism commitment, he was feeling baptism is to fast. After bumping heads a little with our ward mission leader over what to teach him we came to a fantastic compromise and taught him an awesome lesson and the spirit was very strong. We helped him overcome some big concerns then recommitted him to his date of May 11th. After conference he smiling definitely feeling the spirit. He will get there.

Other than the part where it was nice to see all the missionaries in the zone and get to spend all day in AC. Conference is sadly something that I know I took for granted before my mission. Now that I have a more clear understanding of our Apostles and Prophets role in Gods majestic plan, I am much more in tune with the spirit. General Conference is a true feasting upon the words.

This time though from the unknowing eye you wouldn’t think the Our Leaders shared any crazy revelation that would shake the world. BUT THEY DID!! The words they shared, if truly taken to heart and followed with exactness, would shake the world. We would see such an outpouring of Gods blessing, we then might be worthy enough to form Zion. Cause its the quality of Gods saints which is preventing us. The words they shared get down the core problem of every single sorrow our world faces. People ask “if God is real why does bad things happen”, well He just gave us the cure so lets take it.

Lets all become the disciple we are destined to be. Lets the Shake the World.

Love you all

Preach out

Elder Cordon
Tang Jeung Louh

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

I’m finer then a frog’s hair split four ways :-) – Joshua

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Dear Family and Friends,

Sorry for the scare last week, I always forget to mention when the following week is transfers. No promises that I will remember in the future though.

Everything is going great though! I am filled with a very sweet spirit today, which is a direct result of my comp and I growing closer as a companionship. For the first transfer and well for the first week of this one we would but heads all the time. Though we managed to temporally let it go for lessons, the spirit we brought was nevertheless affected by the friction that was so obviously there. This weekend we finally worked things out though.

It started with a serious talk where I finally established my role as the leader of the companionship, which should have been there the moment I became his trainer, but he wasn’t used to not being incharge. After we came to an agreement it still didn’t entirely eliminate the contention and finally Sunday afternoon we were both tired of it. We were doing a Revelation Sequence (Pray for guidance, read the Book of Mormon, write down spiritual impressions, and pray for confirmation) in 3 Nephi 12 and the part about forgiving thy brother hit us both very powerfully. For me is was verse 25. The agree with thine adversary to me was interpreted to mean, “You don’t have to win every arguement or always be right, just agree with him.” We openly talked about the issues we had been having and now we are good. A weight has been lifted off of both our shoulders, and there is much more powerful spirit between the two of us. Not to mention we are actually good friends now. Two cheers for the Book of Mormon anyone?

I felt like sharing that in case anyone else is looking for guidance on conflict resolution. And because it explains why I can be so dang happy regardless of the fact that no investigators came to church and that we have no baptismal dates. But hey that just means that miracles are just down the road.

We did have some really great experiences this week though. We managed to administer the sacrament to two sisters who are confined to their homes because of illness, and to be able to see Nick. Nick came to church twice back in September, but it had been over a month since we had a lesson with him. I was finally tired of it so we went over there on friday just hoping to catch him. Well it worked 🙂 We sat and talked for a few minutes before he had to leave. Then we went back–uninvited– to his house last night with the bishop and we ended up having a terrific lesson with him. He shared with us a few of the sermons he gave when he was pastoring, but once he finally talked himself out we got down to business talking about his concerns. The spirit was very strong and we know that he is so very close to accepting the invitation to be baptized. We will definitely do that the next lesson we have with him which will hopefully be tomorrow.

The week was full of many other miracles, I just don’t have time to share them, but trust me they happened.

I have made some good changes to my blog this week so that will be really nice. I am hoping to have another post up here in a few days so check it out at arippleoflight.blogspot.com.

Anyway I love ya’ll!

Elder Joshua Cordon