Tag Archives: Holy Ghost

Back to the Basics

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Dear Family and Friends,

The very fact that I am writing this on a Thursday is evidence of the busy week it has been. Busy as a missionary is a wonderful thing though! I wouldn’t trade it for anything!

The absolute highlight of the past week and a half was the brief mission tour of Elder Golden who is a member of the First Quorum of the Seventy. He is from South Africa and so we all enjoyed not only his spiritual knowledge but hearing his accent as well. He arrived this past Sunday and left on Tuesday so his stay wasn’t a very long one. However, he definitely made the most of his time here. On Sunday we had a meeting for the mission leadership and then on Monday and Tuesday we had ones with the varying zones. I had the blessing of attending all three of them and learning so very much. While there were a few constants each meeting provided a unique dose of spiritual nourishment. By the time it was all over the feeling I had was a combination of spiritual high and physical exhaustion, considering the fact that the most of my mission can be described that way, the contrast is found in the fact that this is one of notable intensity. I believe my favorite part of the whole thing was his definition of faith.

Faith is a very basic principle in that it is foundational to many things, but it is also fairly profound and, as a result, very misunderstood by the Christian and non-Christian worlds. For many faith is simply a declaration of belief, but for those who understand the gospel of Jesus Christ it is something far greater.

Faith is an action word, but even more than that Faith=Personal Righteousness. When I had that explained to me it brought a lot of clarity to the subject. If the world could understand that, then it would eliminate a lot of confusion behind the verses in the bible that seem to say that man is saved by faith alone. This definition of faith helps us understand that it is not merely good enough to believe in Jesus Christ, we must believe him too. We must believe that if we do what he asked, we model our lives after him, and try our best to be our best, then he would make up he rest. We must believe and have a hope that if we sacrificed everything to be good person and to not compromise our standards when pressured by worldly temptations–even if it very difficult to do and we are put in very rough situations as a result– that we will not only have a lasting sense of peace and purpose in this life, but we will also be raised up to live with God and have eternal happiness in the life to come. Not only must we believe all these things we must do them too if we want to have true faith,

If any of what I said makes sense, then I hope it would also help you understand why then the restoration of the gospel was so important. Frequently, members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints are commended for our high standards and example of personal righteousness. This is not just a coincidence. The problem the world faced before Joseph Smith saw his incredible vision was that at the time nobody had enough commandments revealed to them by God that could produce enough faith in the life of any person that would be great enough to bring about their eternal salvation. Along with that, nobody had the gift of the Holy Ghost which not only reveals those commandments to us, but also helps to give us to the strength to live them. The fact that the church seems to have so many rules is in all actuality evidence of the truthfulness of this work, on top of that is the fact that the members of the church actually live them. Seeing as how faith is the first principle of the gospel if that is incomplete then it is no wonder why ever part of the gospel after that is very much misunderstood.

After hearing all of that in a much greater length of time and in a far more expounded way I had an even greater determination to live by every word of God. For if faith produces miracles, that means that personal righteousness is a pre-requisite to the blessings of heaven. Something that as a missionary and frankly as people in general we cannot live with out if we want to be truly happy.

I love y’all!

Elder Joshua Cordon

Our Team

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Dear Family and Friends,

I am so grateful for the opportunity I had this week to teach the lesson in Sunday School class. The lesson was on the Final Judgment, which normally has a lot of deep holes that you can drop down, thankfully I prepared with a fresh mindset. I was able to learn so much and the spirit was truly able to teach me, as I was preparing to teach. It is truly amazing the revelation that everyone is able to get through the Holy Ghost, as long as you are willing to empty your glass and receive what he has to offer then you can have a direct link to the Godhead.

So this week as I made sure that I emptied my glass, I loved what I was able to receive. There is a section in the lesson that is titled Who Will Judge Us. For me this was the section that meant the most to me, sadly it was the smallest section of the lesson but luckily I had my glass empty.

It talks about how Jesus Christ and his Apostles, current and old, will be our judges. Normally, and really until yesterday, I always compared our mortal judges to our immortal judges. Our mortal judges here on earth are here to cast judgment to the criminals that broke laws, to decide how large their punishment would be, I always saw that they were justice minded and no mercy at all. What an unfair light that I was pointing at our immortal judges.

What I was able to learn is that instead of the Final Judgment being a time of great repruking where the bar of justice is being throw down to call out out our sentance. For many, those that chose to use there agency and fight against God and never bend their knee; which the number of those we are told are more numorous then the sands of the sea and the stars in the sky. For those that are in that group we are told that there will be nashing of teeth and whelings as judgemnt is cast.

For those that have chosen to follow Christ and tried their best it will be a day to rejoice.

The most wonderful part is who are judges will be. They will be the biggest adivcates for our case, these are our brothers. Jesus Christ gave every day of his life being perfect so that he could complete the atonement. His Apostals gave their lives to the service of the Lord showing pure love to the people that they served, their brothers and sisters of there family. What better people then they could we ask for to be there with us and to determine and help us qualify for our gift that is offered to us that we have been striving for during this probation.

Jesus gave his life so that his brothers and sisters would have a way back to Heavenly Father, so that we could partake in every blessing that God wants us to have. His life purpose was to bring to pass the immortallity and eternal life of man. (moses 1:39) So if it is his purpose is he just going to ignore that at the Final Judgment? No, he is going to do everything that he can do to be merciful and just to make sure that we all can have eternal life and life as an eternal family.

Just as we are all working to have our eternal families together Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ also want their family back again and they are just as, and probably much more so, wanting to have that happen.

There is no one that is more determined for our success then our Father. I am so happy that I am a missionary and am able to help others come closer to Jesus Christ. I know that we have our oldest brother on our side. He has given his life for us so that we can earn our life with Heavenly Father. I am so grateful for the knowledge that I have of this gospel. It gives me the ability to keep perfecting and becoming more like Jesus Christ.

We all need to make sure that we keep our glasses empty ready to be filled be the Holy Ghost with what he has to share with you. That is our open line to the Godhead let us not waste that gift.

LOVE EACH AND EVERYONE OF YOU
Thank you for your prayers and support
Love Elders Steven Cordon

pictures are of what a member did to our car while we were at a service project
and then what we did to them in return 🙂 I love members and the relationships that we build so quickly with them it is amazing.

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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

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

Tried and Blessed This Week For Sure!!

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Dear Family and Friends,

It is interesting how much my mission can feel like a roller coaster ride. Last Monday we had a district bowling party which was awesome! I had a whopping score of 116, and beat my companion so he had to buy me ice cream. He makes all these bets with me and has literally lost every one of them. He would have had to buy groceries twice now if I wasn’t so nice.

So one of the highlight lessons this week was when we got our super awesome family, the Suttons, over to the home of one of our awesome families in the church, the Hergets. I was on trade-offs that day and Elder Newbold went with Br. Hand up to the North side of town and Br. Herget was my companion so I could be there for the lesson. They had dinner and the lesson went great! It was about how the Gospel of Jesus Christ (Faith, Repentence, Baptism, The Gift of the Holy Ghost, and [Enjoying] to the End) blesses families. They have kids that are the same age so that worked out really well and the spirit was very strong. Also I got the Hergets to teach most of the lesson, and I feel like they could be great friends. It is so great to work with members!

So I go from that on Thursday to the worst spiritual experience of my mission on Friday. We going to contact a potential on our records when we saw this guy in his front yard playing with his dogs. We decided to go and talk with them and as I was walking up I got this terrible feeling like something bad was going to happen. So I should have just got out of there, but I wasn’t sure of how to handle the situation. The guy invited us inside, and once again I had that feeling and I literally new exactly what was going to happen. I prayed for strength though rather than just getting out of there.

We talked to him for a little bit and got to know him better, then suddenly the spirit leaves and the guy changes the subject and begins pegging us with these ridiculously worded and annoying questions. Trying to get us tangled in our words. He failed and it got him obviously frustrated. Then he starts to tell us how he had this experience where he went to turn the page of his friends Book of Mormon and he felt a feeling that he hasn’t felt since he did sorcery. And tells us that we simply haven’t asked enough questions or else we would see that our religion is false, and that he feels bad that we are going to hell and that he loves us more than we could possibly comprehend and that is the only reason he does this. I bore a short testimony about how I follow the spirit because it testifies of truth and that he didn’t speak truth. And that if he wanted to know, he could find out if the Book of Mormon was true but he has to read first, turning pages won’t do anything for you. Elder Newbold shared a testimony as well, and then we shook hands and departed. What a waste of a solid hour of prime proselyting time!

Also if anybody wants to know what that feeling was that he felt when went to turn the page, it was the same feeling Joseph Smith felt before his prayer in the grove.

After that experience we were totally drained of the spirit, so we gave each other blessings that night, and I was felt one of the most peaceful feelings I have ever felt. And the blessing gave me some wonderful counsel.

The following day went really well. And then Yesterday we had a baptism in the Ward! It wasn’t one of our investigators, but it is always good to see some one change their life for the better and come into the fold of God. God is great and he takes good care of those who listen to his counsel! I know this to be true and I can feel the blessings in my life as I try each and every day to align my will with God’s. Then only way that can happen is through sincere and earnest prayer, something that I am very grateful for!

I love you all!

Elder Joshua Cordon

P.S. this is the sixth week of my mission in the field which means that transfers is coming up! Here is a picture of the current zone though. I wonder how it will change.

 

First Zone of my mission.

First Zone of my mission.

Life is Good!

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Dear Friends & Family,
 
My time here at the MTC has been awesome!!! I have learned so much and I have already had the opportunity to hear two amazing devotionals. The first was by Ted Gibbons, who did a narative about Joseph Smith’s his finals days from the eyes of Willard Richards. They guy talked really fast and loud, but I was on the edge of my seat the entire time. It was one of those ones that when you get out you are completely speechless and you feel like you are walking on a cloud.
 
Then on Tuesday we had a devotional by Tad R. Callister of the Presidency of the Seventy. (I think it is really funny that the two devotionals are given by Ted and Tad. I hope the next guy is a Todd.) It was literally perfect for a Southern mission in the bible belt. I have never taken notes so furiously in my life. He gave scripture after scripture, and showed how the blueprints for Christ’s church can be found completely in the New Testament, and that we are the only church that matches those blueprints. My district and the Branch presidency collaborated for an hour afterwards, combining notes to make a handout for everyone to put in their scriptures.
 
On other news, our zone lost three districts on Tuesday, but we only had one show up. So our zone consists of only 22 people. Basically it is tiny it feels like. The new district seems really cool we just haven’t had much opportunity to interact with them.
 
I finally get to do some much needed laundery today. I personally hate re-wearing workout shirts, I am just saying.
 
One of the biggest lessons I have learned over the past week, is the role the Holy Ghost plays in my life. I am comforted by it everytime I pray and read the scriptures, but as far as it guiding my actions, I supposed I didn’t understand it fully. I wanted the Holy Ghost to either comfirm or chastise everyone of my actions, but more often than not I will be acting by the spirit and never even realize it. As Elder Bednar put it, “Be a good boy, honor your covenants, keep that commandments, and STOP worrying about it.” A lesson I very much need to learn.
 
I just want to say that I have such a powerful testimony of prayer. I know that if you prayer with a sincere heart, and a true desire for answers that you will receive answers. If you feel like this is not the case, I challenge you to pray tonight if your Heavenly Father loves, and ask with a true desire to know, and with faith that he will answer, and I promise that the Holy Ghost will confirm it to you.
 
I love you all!
 
Elder Joshua Cordon