Tag Archives: LDS

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

Short and Sweet!! -Joshua

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Dear Family and Friends,

This past week was definitely an interesting one. While it felt a little like Christmas, it just wasn’t the same. Maybe the fact that we were wearing short sleeves for a lot of last week and well we just taught everyday. All in all there is still nothing better than serving the Lord.

Seeing as how I don’t really have any interesting stories for you at the moment I will just talk about a few things that have been on my mind. It seems to be that I have really come to understand what it means when it says that faith, hope, charity, and an eye single to the glory of god qualify you for the work. If a missionary can only master those few points EVERYTHING else would fall into place. I find myself lately feeling that those are the only things that I want to study or even think about. When I measure myself in those categories against what I could become I feel very motivated to improve. As we were considering some of the things that we could train on in Zone Meeting this week we realized that it all comes down to the fundamentals. Kinda like what coach Vince Lombardi would teach. And the fundamentals are what I have mentioned above. I am probably just rambling, but that is just what has been on my mind this week. Sorry for the short letter but that is all I got.

Love Ya’ll!! Happy New Year!!

Elder Joshua Cordon

Also checkout his blog post for a wonderful perspective on New Years goal setting. arippleoflight.blogspot.com

Another week into the rest of my life.

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Dear Family and Friends,

So this past week was a good one. It definitely kept me on my toes as each day presented some unique experience. I would have it no other way though!

I did my first exchange as a zone leader with a district leader, and though I am sure it should have been the other way I learned a bunch on that exchange. Elder Feliz is such a terrific missionary. He has been out a lot longer, and is very humble. He is a convert from the Dominican Republic, and he one of best missionaries in the mission. One thing that I learned from him that I really appreciated was his selflessness. He is a YSA missionary which means he works with all the young single adults in his area. Nevertheless, during our exchange he still talked to everybody regardless of their age or relationship status. We ended up finding a family and a single guy that were both very interested, but he immediately handed them over to the missionaries who are supposed to teach them without even flinching. (I say that example because it is proving to be the exception rather than the rule) All in all it was a great experience for me.

Another wonderful experience was that we found this awesome Haitian family. They are both very intelligent and they have an incredible desire to learn. We had our return appointment lesson with them last night and it went really well. They had a bunch of questions from when they read the Book of Mormon, and they are excited to learn a lot more about the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Their names are Gabon and Emmanuela. I am looking forward to our lesson with them tomorrow.

All in all it was a great week. I feel like I have so many wonderful experiences everyday that I would never be able to talk about all of them, but when it comes to writing this email it seems that a lot of it escapes me haha so well that is it for this week!

I love ya’ll! Merry Christmas!

Elder Joshua Cordon

A Message of Thanks

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Hello Family and Friends,

Hey sorry the missed email last week! We had a bit of a mix up! Well the work has been hard and it has been slow. But we are always seeing new miracles! One thing I would like to tell you about thats special to Hong Kong members. Its All the helpers that come from south east asia.

I have had the priviledge in being able to bless the sacrament for the saturday branch and to be able to be a witness for a baptism. These branches being almost entirely women are from tuesday to sunday. These sisters will leave there families to come to Hong Kong and become domestic helpers. They only have one day a week off and they dont decide when. So they will help them by having meetings all week. I have never felt a greater spirit in a sacrament meeting than in the one with these sisters, they truly have humbled themselves before god and he has worked many miracles in all there lives. Many of these sisters have seen greater challenges than most would ever hope to endure but through it I have seen some the most amazing members. Although there time off is very little every week and they give most of their day to church You will still find them going out to parks and inviting others to come to church or by standing on the street trying to talk to people. If all the members in the church were to have this kind of love or faith, how great would be the harvest of souls, and the growth in the kingdom of god. So I just want to give a shout out to them and their amazing faith and encourage all to learn from their example and follow the words of our prophet in remembering what kind of a gift our Lord would want for his brithday.

I love you All!

Elder Jared 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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Well a Pretty Crazy Week of Gratitude -Jared

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Dear Family and Friends,

I am so grateful for this opportunity, I am grateful for my companion, I am grateful I have had so many blessings in learning this language, I am grateful for the blessed Causeway Bay ward, Amazing food and Amazing missionaries, My amazing Mom!

I could go on forever! I now realize how grateful I am for hot water, flushing toilets, kitchen sinks that drain, and gas in the stove. Haha the Lord decided to remind us of all the simple blessings we have every day. Our whole street flooded! A huge pipe burst and the water was coming out like a giezer all night long! I will send pictures next week.

I had a cool experience Yesterday, Elder Howell and I had both felt the prompting to go to this park (its one that has never been successful before). So we went about as planned and went through the whole park with no success. Well we finally get to the very last part of it and we see two little kids playing with a lady watching them.

We said hi and she said hi back in english and then went back to the kids, so we assumed she was a helper at work and went on our way. As we were leaving one of the kids called her mommy. Well I didnt think much of it, and me and Elder Howell went to the next area as we had planned.

Well the spirit spoke to Elder Howell because he felt very prompted to go back and talk to her, thinking heavily on the kids comment when we were leaving. So we went back and talked to her and she happen to be Japanese and that conversation turned out to be an amazing experience. We didn’t get a new investigator but that was the first she has ever heard of our Church and really even Jesus Christ. She may not have been ready at that moment but I got no doubt she will be later. It was a simple testimony to me that we need to listen to spiritual promptings and especially in this work. If my companion gets a prompting and I have not then I just have to trust him!

How you all have a wonderful week!

Love Elder 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

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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It’s About the Little Things -Jared

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This was another fun exciting week! We had our trio for a couple days and and now we got a sweet Bundeih (means a local missionary). Its a great benefit to helping me with the language.

Well I would like to share a quote that a great man told to me recently:

“At least I can walk, at least I can pray, at least I can learn.” -Jay Riding

Thats a great way to remember all the little blessings The Lord gives me in my life to act on my own agency everyday. Every week I can walk more, I can pray better, and I have to the ability to see more of what the Lord wants me to learn. Remember the little things and they surely will become great things.

The work in Hong Kong is progressing we are meeting amazing people everyday who are all being brought just a little closer to Christ. We also got another progressing investigator who during our lessons starting recalling how often the lord has reach out to him to accept this message in his life. He recalled after hardships he had met Elders and before a great miracle in his life he had met Elders, and now when he realized life wasn’t what he wanted he met some more Elders. The Lord does this work in his own way and his own time. Just keep walking praying and learning.

Elder Cordon

Do I Stay or Do I Go?? -Joshua

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Dear Family and Friends,

So this is the first transfer where I am actually completely uncertain as to whether I will stay here in the wonderful land of Lake City, or if I will go. I am personally okay with either option. If I stay I would probably be able to baptize my favorite investigators, seeing has how they are ripe for baptism here soon, but also I would welcome a change seeing as how this is the only place I have been thus far. I will get a teaser tonight if Elder Barcala gets a training call or not.

This last week was a fairly good week though. There are two highlights that I wish to mention.

The first is the surprising cold that hit us last Wednesday. Believe it or not, we had to bust out the gloves, coats, and scarfs in Florida haha. I was kinda looking forward to wearing my pea-coat the so I was happy. My companion on the other hand did not bring any cold weather clothing thinking that all of Florida was like Miami all the time haha. Luckily a merciful sister in the ward took us to the store and bought him a very nice coat, and some gloves and scarfs for the two of us. It definitely made biking around a lot better.

The other event was our Zone Conference. I thought we were suppose to rotate between Gainesville and here for Zone conference but seeing as how 3 in a row were in Gainesville that doesn’t seem to be the case. I don’t mind it though. We had to get flu shots while we were there and I think it made me a little sick, but it won’t stop me. The Zone Conference was great and I heard a lot of inspiring words. I just feel like this mission is one big family!

Something that I loved from my personal studies this past week was all the talk about how God will empower us with strength to overcome our weaknesses as we are obedient. That came from the talk that Elder Richard G. Scott gave in the latest general conference. SO GOOD! I would encourage all of you to read it 🙂

Have a wonderful week!

Love Ya’ll,

Elder Joshua Cordon

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