Tag Archives: Hong Kong

What A Week!

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Dear Family and Friends,

This last week I could Honestly say was the most successful week of my mission! To give you a quick summary we are now working with three families and two will for sure be baptized! We found a lady who is likely to help us start a Branch in Tai O and We got to top the week off with Ho Siu Ming being baptized. The Lord rained down his blessing on us this last week. Me and my companion where brought humbly to our knees many times last week. I have no idea why its taken me so long to figure missionary work out and the saddest thing is now I am about to head home. Luckly I can apply what I learned anywhere I go. The mission has changed my life in Dramatic ways. I see now from a perspective that I never even could have comprehended. I really can reflect on my mission and see how all the experiences that I have had on my mission which where all so vital in slowly shaping and humbling me to the mold the lord would have. I know that God lives with all my heart and his love for each one of us is so deep and so strong.

We first have been working with a member in our ward who has been working with a Less Active and we helped him home teach a few weeks back and because of the way we taught we really earned his trust and so then he introduced us to another part member less active family and now that whole family has come to church except one daughter but we will see them again this next week. We taught them all twice last week and they are so awesome! 3 kids 15,16, and 17. Which is great because the branch could use some more in those age groups.

Another Part Member Less Active Family we found through our own efforts as Elder Dale simple invited this Sister we see all the time to church. She then came and with her kids as well then last week went to her house and taught her whole family and even her husband and set all the kids dates. The husband has not accepted yet but we will get him. They have 3 kids as well.

We also Helped a struggling Recently Reactivated member, whose wife is one of our Recent Converts, commit to keeping the Sabbath Day. Its a huge struggle in this branch among the brothren to not work on sunday and this brother had not come to church in 3 weeks. Which is totally his choice because he runs his own business. But after a powerful lesson and a lot of overcoming excuses, bearing testimony, and promising blessings I never seen anyone more excited to keep the Sabbath Day Holy. I love sharing the story of my own father and his own acts of faith keeping the Sabbath because many people here think Hong Kong is different than america, when really its the same.

We also got introduced to one of the nicest ladies in all of Hong Kong. She is this 65 year old woman named Diana who lives in the Stilt homes in Tai O. She is so popular among the Locals. Thanks to the Senior Missionaries the Chamberlains who found her on their own P-day. We went and visited her and her home already feels like a members home and she already has Christ in her countenance. We taught a powerful lesson and then she went and introduced us to the whole village we were in several other peoples homes. its amazing how nice and open people are when your friends with one of their friends. There is so much potential here. She will be coming to a ward activity this week.

I could keep going but really there is so much exciting things to be done in missionary work if we just open our eyes humble ourselves before the lord and don’t get in the way of our most creative creator, by really on the strick narrow minded tactics of the world. We really feel we have caught the vision and we met with the sisters last week to talk about how we could keep trying to help the other missionaries to do the same.

But the Success we have had is only possible because of the unity we have with the sister training leaders! We have worked so well that both of our companionships have seen so many miracles! Because we just bounce off of each other and fill each other in on our success which then gives us more ideas. We have been able to help so many others catch the vision as well.

Anyways I love you all and I want to bear my Simple testimony that Jesus Christ really is the way to true happiness.

Love,
Elder Jared Cordon

Temple Day

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Dear Family & Friends,

Today was amazing! I love the Hong Kong temple it really is such a special place and I feel so blessed to have so many opportunities to be able to go! Also we had interviews today and I really love president and Sister Lam they are really so amazing!

This last week was truly amazing and it felt really long but was very event filled! Being with summer missionaries was challenging in a great way it taught me so much and I really grew a lot. I really feel like the summer missionary program is amazing and a wonderful way to build more unity between members and missionaries because both of those brothers are going home with a new determination to do more missionary work in their own wards! Also us missionaries learn to appreciate more and more the members of Hong Kong!

Some other eventful things is on Friday we ran into the Branch President as he was cleaning the chapel! And after talking for a short time we were able to plan a BBQ for the next day. It was a bit of a rush, and when the BBQ started there was only one person there other than us but shortly later we had a lot of people show up. It was all the younger men of the branch and the Branch president. We had a Less Active a recent convert and 3 investigators there and they all loved it. It was a wonderful success and it was a wonderful time to get some relationships start building. I really feel that the branches or wards that embrace lots of activities really have better unity!

I love working with the branch and we are seeing a lot of members open up to us more!

The Home teaching plan and action is working so well! The whole zone is doing amazing! We had set a goal for 80 lessons at homes but we already have 93 and still another week to go! When we started this plan Elder Dale prophesied to the whole zone that we would see miracles in teaching families and that has totally come true! We really reached hi when we set our family lesson goal and we are on track to be making it. we are seeing that almost every unit is working at least one family now. I know that getting more families in the church is really whats going to boost the work in Hong Kong, because peoples spiritual potential is so limited without families!

Really the mission life is the best life I am loving and just want to enjoy every minute that I have left!

Thank you all for being so supportive.

Elder Jared Cordon

A Lot of New

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Dear Family and Friends,

We got summer missionaries, priority is to strengthen them and help them want to serve full missions!   

 We are already seeing miracles in the part member family area of this Branch. One Sister wants us to help her Husband who has been staying away for over 20 years! But he has just had a big change of heart and is searching for more in Life! So we have followed our mission Presidents advice and strengthened that sister and she is really doing all the work! It would be great if he could meet him later.

Well work in Tung Chung is flourishing and it seems to keep getting better. We have 6 baptismal Dates and 3 of them will get baptized next week! All of which are very excited about their Dates and its a great motivation for the Branch. Our other dates are not that solid but this last week we saw two of our other dates who were laying pretty low start taking off! Both were because of of cool miracles, One we had a bunch of stuff change our schedule but it ended up that we ran into him on the street and he had a total change of perspective. The other we had a last minute member willing to help teach so we taught at their house and it was really good they will be great new long term fellowshippers.

We had a great church miracle yesterday we brought this kid to church and he has come before but he thought it was boring but yesterday he became good friends with another young men and now he loves church! Real friends makes all the difference!

Everything is going so well! We are really so blessed.

Love Elder Cordon

Awesome Less Active Finding

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Dear Family & Friends,

Well it has not been to long since we were last on. But some good stuff has happened between now and then. We were able to get our plans put together for zone training, it will be good we are focusing a lot on teaching skills borrowing heavily from what you taught at zone conference.

We have also been able to use our time to be able to complete some assignments from the ward. Its good we have a good relationship with them and they are constantly thinking of new ideas. One big the ward is working on is utilizing the RM’s because we have about 15 of them, so the idea is to put them in a committee and have them prepare missionary focused activities.

Still getting better everyday, one thing we have been trying to focus on more as a companionship is something from the China Dedicatory Prayer, which is: Making the proper appeal to the Chinese mindset. In the prayer he prays that missionaries will be able to understand the Chinese people more and the way they think. we have been trying to work on showing even more love and interest in these people so we can truly understand their concerns and be able to teach how they think. Its not an easy task but its one we are praying about and trying to apply in our teaching and finding.

Elder Williams really has been teaching me so much. Maybe he hasn’t had the opportunity to train someone who just got out of the MTC but he is training me. One of the biggest things he has awoken inside me is finding. Although people might say that TST is a hard Finding area I think its great! Elder Williams doesn’t teach as much with words as he does with actions though, which is why i think I am learning so much from him.

Our investigators are moving along well, We had two with dates come to church, one being Bro Mak. He is doing really well and very receptive, we moved his date back a week so we can make sure he can have time to apply the commandments well in his life, but he seems to be doing awesome. Emily is still pretty new but she came as well, church was not too good because she was so tired so hopefully she can have a good experience next time. The ward actually invited her to a singles activity without us even knowing so thats cool. She is getting to know the members well from the beginning. Frankie also came to church and he is making great progress he is doing well at getting to know the ward members so hopefully he can make some great friends.

A crazy story that just happened this last week is we were LA finding and we met this man who was really old, first his wife answered and then she let us in and woke him up he came out of the room sat down and was quiet while we talked to the wife for a few minutes then he started talking. He said (in chinese) Joseph Smith is a prophet of God and this the true church, then he went on to tell us how he had a vision of joseph smith having the first vision before he met the missionaries then when the missionaries shared the first vision with him he knew it was true. Then he also told us how he fights with people who anti the church, because everyone thinks we are a wicked church so he goes around helps people know that we aren’t. He also fell off a 28 story building and lived and, he also prophecied Gordon B Hinckley’s death. I love LA finding.

Love you all have a great week.

Elder Jared Cordon

I Didn’t Even Realize It Was Raining…

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Dear Family and Friends,

It has been a pretty amazing week and a half. The work is moving along great and it humbles me more and more everyday as I see the lord at work. We hard 3 exchanges happen and so plenty of learning has taken place! We have also seen some cool success with our investigators!

The first exchange: I went with Elder Anderson(we share an apartment) to his area in Kowloon City. At the start of the exchange we set some lofty goals in contrast to the numbers that they had been seeing. But we were determined. We had a six hour finding block and we wanted to have 3 lessons and 2 of those rescheduled. Well the first hour and half burned by real quick. But as we were passing through a pretty quiet estate we saw a street cleaner resting in the shade we said hello and he didnt respond so we keep going. As we walked away I had this really strong impression that we had to go back and talk and I questioned the thought at firs, then I had the thought “this is a test go back and talk to him”. Well we went back and talked to him and we sparked a really good conversation. We were not able to get him to interested in listening but it brought a smile to all of our faces. 

After him it was only about a minute and we already contacting, later teaching someone else. We couldn’t reschedule, then right after we said good bye there was another lady that we contacted who was a former from Tai Po, we got here number, then we needed to head to a new area just shortly after being there we met someone just getting off work and taught him a lesson, we rescheduled him. At this point its raining really hard but, we didn’t care we were gonna reach our goal. Just shortly later almost out of finding we were teaching someone else and we were able to reschedule him. This exchange was great for the both of us and we really learned a lot, also a great blessing is one of those people is still meeting with those elders!

The second Exchange: This was with the Assistants and it was great! The day we switched Elder Williams and I had already been fonged by 7 people(thats a new record for me), but just right before we switched we went out to make up for our losses and taught two lessons and rescheduled both of them. Putting us in a great mood for exchanges. Elder Ly and I were able to teach another lesson that night as well. The next day was mainly teaching which was really good we had some great lesson and I was able to learn and absorb his great teaching skills. He is really good at being simple, bold, and too the point!

The Third Exchange: This one was was with Elder Ah Mu over in Tsuen Wan. We were also able to have a lot of great success together, given only about and hour of finding time we made several great contacts and taught two lessons. That area is really a great place to find. It was great as well being reminded of what its like training and focusing on a district as well. Elder Ah Mu really knows how to focus on other people. He really has excelled in his assignments. It was also really cool to see how the apartment was so focused that night we all had a really great discussion on teaching skills and how we could improve our studies. Elder Ah Mu came up with a great plan, using President Hawks advice and preach my gospel, on how to improve teaching skills. I took a copy and I am going to try it out over the next couple of days.

These exchanges were all very beneficial and very focused. Another interesting note is everyone that i went with entered the MTC with me. So it was really cool to see how we all have been progressing and working so hard. Truly you can see how the lord has shaped us all so differently!

On another note we saw two of our investigators really start moving along. Emiley a new one we been able to see a few times has accepted a date. Edward another who has been seeing missionaries for several months has finally come to church, although he missed sacrament he enjoyed the other stuff. Things are really going well here and we hope they just keep getting better.

It was an exciting time I love you all and hope you all have a wonderful week!

Love Elder Jared Cordon!

Good Week with Elder Williams

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Dear Family & Friends,

We had a good week this last week! I really do feel like the law of compensation is alive in our area. We did not have as much finding time as we would like but it seemed like the success came more from the time that we didn’t have to find. We found our new investigator A-Ming when we were walking back to the church after grabbing some food. We really are good about always talking to people when we can. Mainly its Elder Williams, he does it so easlily that I just cant help but join in.

It was busy having to prepare for zone training and MLC and it was hard trying to get zone training prepared in a way that it could be spiritually uplifting. But I think in the end we did well and we were able to give a training we felt was by the spirit. because we had sat down to plan and neither of us could get any revelation on how we should do our training, but we had a thought to head out and find and that was the right thing to do because after heading out we were able to get some good revelation on what we should train on and it seemed very clear to us. We decided to make it focused on true teaching and comitment inviting. We initially were going to train on effective ways to get referrals but it eventually came to us that there is really only one way to do it and its by the spiriy. So our training was teaching true doctrine, testifying, and inviting while the spirit is high will yield results in seeking for referrals. After Zone training we were not sure if our training was good or not but, once we did numbers it sounds like it worked for a few of the companionships.

The work is moving along great in the ward we have two pretty solid investigators one Mr. Mak with a date for 6/7 and then Frankie who should have a date this next week are both doing great and the ward is doing a fantastic job at fellowshipping them. I think a big help is that they are the same ages as a lot of the brothers in the ward. Our recent convert Ray is struggling a little with faith, which we are trying to help its just hard because there is not much support from the ward because no one there is his age. But we were able to help him and will keep seeing him reguaraly.

We have a good pool of other potentials and investigators that we hope to be drawing from and moving them to the progressing list. There also is two people that have been coming to church both brought by the members. One is a problem because she lives in Kowloon City ward and so does the Member who brings her to church. It would be awesome if they both moved over together because then she could go to the right ward be her fellowshipper and give her friend a chance to be baptized. The other lady who has been being brought to church is very nice and wants to learn more but for some reason the member who brought her is acting wierd about having us teach her. So we will work the member to figure out more of the situtation and see if we can help her friend start investigating.

But altogether we are getting along great and have great unity as far our purpuse goes just one thing we are working on will come from helping our teaching flow so we can keep improving which will come from good comp studies for sure.

Love you all

Cheers Elder Jared Cordon

Lessons Learned

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Dear Family and Friends,

A wonderful week! We had a branch find in this estate where we had 4 tents displays and games and a lot of people came to take a look. The Members here are amazing and so willing to do missionary work it truly is a blessing to serve them. They have a talk every week talking about achieving there goal of true Zion as a stake of the church. It will be wonderful when that goal is achieved. Here on May 17th the area presidency is coming over to make an announcement. Maybe it will be making Macau a district who knows?

Well I think one lesson I learned this week came to me this morning. Me and my companion were talking and then one thing lead to another and I shared a story about a lesson I learned when I was younger, but, then it dawned on me I have never actually thought of what I shared until just then. But it goes along the lines of weakness or imperfections in our lives. So for the family you know very well about my eyes and how we have spent so much time and energy and faith and prayers trying to get this problem fixed, yet in the end nothing has worked. So the question comes to mind was I not exerting faith? Isn’t the lord able to heal me? Well just today I feel like I was able to learn a lesson from this, that might be more valuable than having vision at this time. The lesson I feel like I have learned is that we all have challenges weaknesses and sometimes we get so caught up trying to fix these small imperfections that really wont make any difference in the eternal perspective of things, they occupy our prayers and our efforts and time, when really we should be focusing on more important things like eternal families and missionary work.

A connection story shared in the Liahona. A women was pregnant and she started having really bad headaches and she could not get rid of them no matter what she did but, once she had her baby though they went away. This was great but soon down the road when she was thinking about another child the thought came into her mind, don’t you remember the headaches you don’t want to deal with that again. So she prayed and fasted and waited for a confirmation that the headaches would not happen that being pregnant would be easy and the answer never came. Then she realized that she wants a child and really no problem or challenge would keep her from having such a great blessing so she had a child and the headaches came but as she focused on the eternal blessing and the big picture her trials seemed to disappear.

This is a lot like people who want to join the church but there is too many trials to many things that wouldn’t be easy or members might say they want to give more but they are to caught up trying to solve trivial problems that waste time and energy. Me, that women, these other people have to remember that as we spend our energy and really focus on what matters it seems like the little imperfections, trials, and weaknesses just disappear as we remember we would do anything for the blessing of eternal life no matter the cost. Remember the words and of Moroni 7:41 and think where our hope really is. its not in having the perfect body or the most comfortable life now, its eternal life. I hope this made sense what I just shared. Because it did to me and its been a big eye opener for me on my mission that it really doesn’t
matter what happens I am willing to do anything for the lord to earn eternal life.

Instead of trying to work on reversing weaknesses we should just fill the holes with new eternal strengths.

I love you all have a wonderful week.

Elder Jared Cordon

Back in MACAU! 

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Dear Family and Friends, 

Well We had a great week! We were able to add 3 investigators to our teaching pool. Good in that area although none were able to make it to church. We will be working on that. The 2 of the 3 came from Elder Tam and Ferrar so we are very grateful for their hard work. We also got another from a contacted referral from last week and he is really cool we got him to institute last week and he really enjoyed it then after taught him a quick lesson about the restoration to get him a book of mormon. He was supposed to come to church but he was not able to make it. We will see him again at institute though. The lesson they taught last week was about the word of wisdom and he really like it and enjoyed how our church compared to his last one is so clear about commandments and how we can receive blessings. He has good potential. The other two turnovers also have alright potential one is really talkative and the other is pretty quite the thing they have in common is its been hard getting them to read. One is facing a lot of opposition from his church, His Preacher is sayin straight lies to him, I am not sure how a man who expects to earn money talking about Christ can feel good spreading such plainly false things.


A hou the Instigator that we already had is going down hill a bit. We are loosing him to video games. He was so awesome but he is becoming more and more addicted and falling slowly away from the church. We are getting members to work on him. He has a good relationship with the ward so they have a really good influence on him. 

We couldn’t get any meeting with less actives this last week. But we will keep working on that. I finished taking care of all our less active records they were such a mess but now they are beautifully organized and mapped out, I used a lot of personal time working on them because I just wanted to get them done. 

Our finding is pretty good we are finding a lot of unplanned opportunities to share the gospel. A big focus for who we find is dads and potential priesthood holders and we sure find a lot but most a lot of them are Mandarin. We also find ourselves going to the same places far to often so we are going to mix it up this week and find some other good spots to go. 

We just got a new Branch mission leader and we are excited to work with him. This last week we tried a lot harder and getting member involvement in our lessons and it was helpful. The younger members are pretty available to it makes it easy. Plus even the older ones are very willing as well. 

For the up coming weeks we are really focusing on getting our investigators in the Book of Mormon and then of course focusing on finding. We have two branch activities this Saturday! So its a great opportunity to get people to. One is the Branch street display which will have some games and food and then after there is a music fireside. Both will be great activities for families. 

Well had to head back to Hong Kong and come back to renew my visa buts it good to be back.

Sorry for no pictures the computer wont let me but I will be sure to send some as soon as I can.

Elder Jared Cordon

Stepping Stones

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Dear Family & Friends,

Hey well the work is moving a long nicely in Macau and I know that the long term benefits are going to come from the Baby Steps.

A big thing we have been working on these last two weeks is fixing the LA records. They were such a mess when I got here, there was a lot of them stuffed in a drawer and many just all over the place. lots of missing information as well. I am not sure why this is that way.. but we also found a pattern there were a lot of records that just had either 6 or 7 digit phone numbers. Apparently Macau used to have less numbers, so I figured out that if you just put 28 in front of the 6 digits and 6 in front of the seven digit numbers then they work. So its frustrating that a lot of the records got thrown away. Because we have been able to talk to a lot of people and we were able to meet with someone last week. His name is Micheal and he has decent potential for coming back if we stick with him, the branch knows and they will start helping him.

Our finding has been going pretty well. We are talking to a lot of people and we have been getting some good contacts and hopefully some reschedules. We are not holding back teaching on the street but mainly we are looking to reschedule people. A lot of the situations we meet people in are not enough time to teach or the place is too distracting to teach these people how to pray. Right now we only have one Investigator A-Hou who we meet with once a week. But mainly our work is we are trying to find families which definitely is harder but it will produce more lasting results. Overall I know the numbers dont show it but I really feel like we are fulling our purpose out here. We have found quite a few people to turn over, and many others to reschedule.

A cool thing that happened is this last week on saturday we went out morning finding and and it was not going so well but we decided to go to a different place then we planned and we ended being able to contact 2 different families. Both of which we were able to talk to for quite some time. I just really want to build up the primary and youth in the ward.

We have also been meeting with about two members a week ether family or Single RCs. Usually at the church to share the worth of souls and now we are about to start some follow up visits I know they were excited and after talking to some it sounds like its going well. Their has been a few successes from some but they are all women for the sisters. So we will keep working and see if some come our way.

I feel like Elder Chu and I are getting along great. I dont know if I filled you guys back home in on his background yet he is from Hawaii he is full chinese both of his parents are from Hong Kong and the only members in their families. He was raised in america and didn’t speak any chinese before his mission. He also studied at BYU for 2 1/2 semesters before his mission. He has been out for about 5 months in the field. He is the second companion that I have had who is younger than me the other was my trainee is also living with me right now so thats awesome!

Really the work is moving a long and I really hope the work that we do will make a lasting impact on the area.

Mainly the challenges we are facing is getting new investigators Its never been a strong point in my mission since I have not gotten one for quite some time. But i really I can over my weakness and we can do a great work here.

Love,

Elder Jared Cordon

1 Word…. MACAU! 

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Dear Family and Friends, 

Well a lot of stuff went down last week we got a referral and it turned out to be Elder Wongs mom’s cousin and well she recognized him right away and it turns out she is a lost sheep from about 20 years back. She was anti’d by her family really bad and then went less active then fell off the radar and after having an amazing visit with her, she referred us to a bunch of others and I was very happy but even more than me elder wong is very happy because these are all his family! So we got the go from President Hawks and started working on them! 
Well last night we had to head to Wanchai to do our turn at this welcome center thing the church is trying here (its like a visiting center). Well right when we were wrapping up we went and got some dinner and then we get a call from the zone leaders saying Elder Wong will be leaving to Macau!! This is crazy we have only been together 3 weeks and something must have happened because its only our companionship and the Macau companionship that are affected. I was pretty happy for Elder Wong but he was not to happy because we just found all his family and he is really the key to it all working out. Well we forgot something at the church so we had to head back and as we walked down some stairs we ran into President and Sister Hawks just before they walked into the Elevator so we talked for a minute then I informed them that Elder Wong got the news and President asked him how he was feeling about it. Well Elder Wong was not gonna say he was not happy but you could tell he wasn’t too pleased to be leaving. 
Well we scheduled an appointment with his aunt so he could get a goodbye before he headed out and so hopefully I could get to know her better. Well when we were talking with her. We got a call from President and he asked what we were doing and we said we were in a lesson so he said okay I will call you back but when I call you don’t answer the phone (a little weird). Well he called and elder wong answered the phone anyway then president said I thought I told you not to answer the phone, but I am glad you did because I had the right companionship but the wrong Elder, Elder Cordon will be packing his bags. 
We’ll it was Ironic because when Elder wong was talking to president I was talking to his aunt telling her how I would love to switch Elder Wong places then he hangs up comes and grabs my shoulder and says well thats what just happened. I was very very surprised because I thought I had no hope in going to macau. Only the Uk and Locals get to go there, but sure enough I am going so it won’t be for more than 2 months but its happening! 

Well love you all! 
Elder Jared Cordon