Tag Archives: LDS

Striving for the Spirit

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Dear Family and Friends,

This week for the specialized training we got to have a training today on church tours and how to use them to help get our investigators to church. Getting people to church directly ties into investigators getting baptized. Church is so important it is where we go to partake in the sacrament which is the most important thing that we do on Sunday. It also allows for fellowship and helps them feel of the love of the ward family. It also helps them realize that going to church helps us strengthen our relationship with Jesus Christ because that is who we teach about, preach about, and worship too. The Sabbath is such a special day and time for us to grow closer to our Heavenly Father, and us as missionaries can use the tool of a church tour to help get people to church and then to the waters of baptism.

I would say that it was a GREAT training! I LEARNED SOOO MUCH!!

I love the spirit that is with me as I teach the gospel whether it is in a lesson with an investigator, or in a training doing a Role Play, the Spirit is there to testify of the truth of the gospel. That is such an amazing part of the mission, having the Spirit constantly testifying of the truthfulness of the work ad the gospel. I really cannot and will not ever truly understand how someone can serve a fulltime mission, (even if he was only semi obedient) and then come home and leave the church. To spend 2 years teaching people about the gospel and everytime having the Spirit witness to them that what they were saying is true and then to turn their back on it. I will never understand it.

I will never be able to honestly look at myself in the face and say that I don’t believe in this gospel EVER because I would just be lying.

I know without a doubt that this gospel and this work are TRUE! I know it because the Spirit has witnessed to ever fiber of my body.

I will share this truth forever! Sealed in the name of Jesus Christ.

I love you all so very much Thank you all for everything you do to help me on my mission.

LOVE
Elder S 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

#BELIEVE

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Dear Family and Friends, 

I am so very grateful for trails that allow us to become better. Life without the Gospel is very very possible, but that is just it this life is not it.  This life was not supposed to be to just try and figure out how to have achieve some level of desired happiness through all of the mess and then die hoping that you made a big enough dent somewhere that hopefully people would remember your name. 

Life was a time to develop faith in Christ, come to know what he has done, recognize the mercies of God, and to do the best you can with what you have been given. We have been commanded to be perfect, which no one can do, but that doesnt mean that we give up and dont try. The atonement is there and always will be, and “after all we can do” it will still be there to make up the difference. 

I am grateful to have both sides of the story, I have lived life on my own without ever given God a look. I now get to see the light in my life, that was missing for so long, grow brighter every single day.  I get to see that happen in others, I also get to see others choose not to have the light of their life grow any bigger and, like I used to be, stay wondering in darkness without ever even realizing it. God is there weather we want to believe it or not. Peoples disbelieve doesn’t remove God from there life, it only removes their life from God.

I love you all so very much you are all in my prayers.

LOVE 
Elder S Cordon

PS the videos are a dust devil that we found on our lunch break. It was awesome. It traveled for about a mile. It was awesome.  Pretty much a tornado.
1 of 2 Dirt Devil
2 of 2 Dirt Devil

Hello! 

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Dear Family and Friends,


This was an interesting week. We found ourselves engaged in a lot of service this past week which was a blessing for sure. We actually resolved that our focus is going to change. After much consideration we are going to put a greater focus in service and working with part member families. So the fact that we got a bunch of service right when we resolved to focus on it was an indication that we are on track. The nice thing to was that every service opportunity resulted from someone asking us for help. We already have two service projects lined up. Our goal is to get different people we are working with to help us with the service projects. 

A person that we are working with who really came along this past week is a girl named Shy. We have taught her the first three lessons already and she reads the Book of Mormon during her bus ride to work everyday. She told us that she has fallen in love with the book and that it has opened up her eyes to so many things. We invited her to be baptized at the end of May and she asked if she could do it sooner and set a date for the 16th of May. It was really awesome. She has already started teaching other people about the Book of Mormon and she is going to come to church this weekend. 

This Ward here is wonderful but it is really struggling in that there are 10 members who have been admitted to the hospital lately. We have an older congregation and it has been tough to try to meet everybody’s needs. However, it has been a strong motivator for us to go and work with more less actives and part member families so that we can strengthen what we have so that the ward can support growth.

Elder Curran and I continue to learn from our mistakes and from one another; as a result, we feel the lord continues to provide tender mercies that move the work along. One big tender mercy is embodied in the Estrella Family. We have been able to teach Ray a few times and he is just eating it up, along with Michelle. I can’t wait to see how the gospel will continue to bless their lives. 

Love y’all!
Elder Joshua Cordon


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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

Conference Answers Questions

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Dear Family and Friends,

This was among one of the most inpiring weeks of my life. The Friday trainee/trainer meeting and then a Saturday and Sunday of general conference answered so many of my questions about life I had to start thinking of new ones while conference was still going to continue to get the most out of it. I am so glad I took the advice and wrote down some questions. One of my favorite talks was Elder Eyring’s during priesthood session. I had asked a question on how to improve my prayers. I got more of an answer than I ever was expecting. I even had a question about college and just my future in general that I really wasn’t anticipating receiving an answer to, but God had other plans.

The week went really well. I will tell you about a few miracle men that we had. The first is this man Jeff. He was a miracle that we had several weeks ago when we had arrived at the apartment about 10 minutes early. Rather than going inside which I have never done. I told elder curran, we are not going home until we have a miracle. We began to walk and hopefully find someone outside. At exactly 9:00 this man yells from his porch, “are y’all missionaries?” And we of course went right over there and said yes. We replied with, “yes we are!” He told us that his dad is Mormon and that he has a lot of questions. We struggled for weeks to meet up with him. This past week we decided to give it one more try. He was home and we had a phenomenal lesson. He really did have a lot of questions. The next day we went back and he had read 50 pages and done tons of research. He said that a lot of people don’t support the church but he feels like this is where he is meant to be. He accepted the invitation to be baptized on the 25th of this month. It was awesome!

Another great thing about this past week began with a challenge presented by elder Kopischke called “priming the pump”. He said that we should go and ask them to pray for us that we could find a family to teach in their home. We decided to try it with the awesome Nhiev family. The very next day after we started it we met Michelle who I mentioned in one of previous letters. This past Monday she joined us at the Nhiev’s for a family home evening and everyone had a great time! Then on Friday we had a lesson with her and her husband Ray. On Saturday they came to the church and watched the afternoon session of general conference with Br and Sis Nhiev. It was awesome to see how quickly everything is coming together when we exercise some faith. God really is just so good! The challenge worked so well we are trying it again with another family. Wish us luck!

Love y’all!
Elder Joshua 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

People, Quotes, and Family

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Dear Family and Friends,

Hello Everyone! So this last week was a good one. We finally got some good lessons with a few people and it definitely was a week that allowed us to see who we really have as a solid base in our teaching pool. Lets begin with Davie. He is really coming along we saw him last week and had a good lesson that really just involved reading 3 Nephi 11 and testifying of Christ. It was a great experience because until that point he just couldn’t bring himself to read it on his own, but to be able to just sit and read a chapter with him really helped to alleviate that fear. After hearing it out he said something similar to, “you know, it sounds like true scripture.”  He is making steady progress. Hopefully we can get him to join us for the bbq and broadcast priesthood session of general conference at the church this Saturday.

Another wonderful soul that came into the picture last week was a character named Stew. We met him at a bus stop. He was sitting there with no intention of getting on the bus but just because it was something to do. We learned that he had found out that he arrived in
Jacksonville only a week prior and he had come from Oregon. He is here with the intentions to get a restart on life. Before our first conversation was over he knew that he was meant to meet us and learn what we teach. Over the subsequent days we taught him three more lessons and have made some good progress with him. We have already set
him up to start attending different classes and things are looking bright for his future.

The other awesome brother we are working with is a high school student named Trevor. The previous missionaries taught him and made some good success. When we first got here we struggled to connect with him. But during the week before last and last we were able to break down some walls and really connect with him. He committed to work towards being baptized in May and he is excited. We couldn’t find him a ride so we
made the hour/ride walk with him last week to the church so he could go to young mens. He brought his skateboard and we had our bikes so we took it easy and talked all the way there. He ended up having a great time and wants to come every week now.

So that is how the work is going. We had a couple of instances while tracting where people mocked our beliefs and told us we were teaching false doctrines. It was interesting. I got to boldly tell them what we believed and then we left. I always ponder on those experience during the following days because I feel there is much to be learned from
those encounters. As I did I realized a trend in both cases: both times the major insults came after I bore my testimony. Three quotes come to mind, I don’t know the sources for two but they are still great:

“You know you have lost an argument once you get angry.” Unknown Author

“Anger is the reaction you have when you don’t know how to react.” Unknown Author

“Anger is like grasping a hot coal with the intention of throwing it at someone, you are the one who gets burned.” Buddha

Taking all those into consideration I realized that while all three of those men acted childish by the time we walked away we were the victor in all cases because we never got angry while they did. Now I do have to admit that I was frustrated as I pondered on the fact that people would embrace and express those particular views about our church, but luckily it was not in the moment. A lesson I learned is that you can’t convince someone of spiritual truth, that is The Holy Spirit’s job. Another lesson I learned was if you simply bear your testimony of what you know to be true their reaction will quickly tell you whether or not they are ready for more. If they do not receive the truth you have shared so far then they definitely won’t receive anymore, so there is no point in sharing more.

The same is true with all cases in life. If either party in a conversation isn’t ready, then stop the conversation. Their is no point to share anymore because clearly what has been shared so far won’t work. Now, this doesn’t always mean you have to walk away –though that is a great option– you can apologize, you can change the subject, and you can even just give them a hug. Sometimes that last one isn’t a good idea depending on the tension level. Either way a person who is angry is a fool and will do foolish things. And as the Lord put it, “…fools mock, but they shall mourn…” (Ether 12:26)

I am sure none of you struggle with anger but I felt like mentioning it. I love y’all!

Elder Joshua Cordon

P.S. I have a challenge for all of you. The church on Friday released a new video to celebrate Easter. It is super good. You can find it at HeLives.Mormon.org.  So here is the thing. All the full time missionaries in the church off of Facebook for the time being, that
means the responsibility falls on the members shoulders to spread this message all over Facebook. So here is the challenge: will each of you share his video with 5 of your friends before Easter? It can be in person or in a message. I promise that as you do you will feel the true spirit of the Easter weekend enter into your heart, and your love and appreciation for the resurrection of our Savior, Jesus Christ, will burn within your soul. I know that to be true because it has worked for me. Good luck!

 

#BecauseHeLives

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Dear Family and Friends,

I just got to my new area this week. Lots of exciting things happening we are teaching a lot of people and with Easter coming up we are able to talk to so many people about the true meaning of Easter. Jesus Christ Lives, and because He lives we can to. He gave us the best gift that was ever given, the Atonement and an empty tomb.  The empty tomb is such a very important part of the process. All of the suffering in the Garden, all of the whippings, all of the hatred from the people, the betrayal, and His death would have just been another story had it not been that He was the Son Of God and was called to rise again. 

He gave us an empty tomb, so that our graves would have no hold on us. Everyone person that has every lived will rise again. The question is what are we going to do with that gift that has been given to us. Are we going to waste are time here on this earth or are we going to work towards the life that we can have. This life does end, We All Will Die, but the life hereafter does not end and that is the life that we need to be preparing for. 

General Conference is Coming. This weekend We All have the privilege of listening to the man that are called of God to lead this church, but they are not just the leaders for our church alone. They are called of God to be the Prophets for the world. They receive revelation from God for what the world needs to hear and do to prepare for the coming of Jesus Christ. So Everyone needs to watch it. Invite those that you know to join in this wonderful event. So that we can hear what God wants to tell us. 
I know that this church is true. I know that we have a prophet on the earth today and I know Jesus Christ Lives.
 
Love you all so much.
 
Elder S Cordon.

The Work Moves On

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Dear Family and Friends, 

This week was a riveting roller coaster ride of emotion. Everyday was very eventful! A couple of highlights can be really help you see where I am coming from.

On Tuesday we were biking to a few potentials and street contacting on the way when I saw a girl headed my direction. She was carrying a red gas can and was clearly headed to the gas station behind me. I approached her and asked if she needed any help, and if her car ran out of gas. She said that she would be alright and that she lived around the corner and was just getting gas for the lawn mower. I moved the conversation to the gospel. Noticing that she had her hands full, literally, I suggested that we come back another time and share our message with her. She, to our surprise, told us to go and visit her mom right then and that she would be willing to listen. 

Happily acting on that suggestion we rode right to her moms house and knocked on the door. Right when she answered she invited us right in and started to pick up a few things to make room for us on her couch. Turns out she was a Mormon when she was a young teenager but went inactive many years ago. We had an awesome conversation and she agreed to come to scripture class the next night. Along with this woman, Michelle, we found a bunch of people in the area that we talked to and got return appointment with. 

On Wednesday we had a solid day lined up with several member present lessons, service, and the scripture class. Everything cancelled except the service. So after a fun service project which included a great lunch where the main dish was crab. We spent the rest of the day knocking doors. It was a long day. We found a few solid potentials though so it definitely wasn’t all for not.

For rest of the week everything went very well! We were very busy and we found many elect souls! The Montcrief family we met while they were sitting in their garage just enjoying the good weather. We approached them with the intent of talking about families. That beautiful family of 6 then accepted a return appointment.

The other was Rusty. When we knocked on his door he came out to talk to us and about an hour latter we had taught the whole restoration lesson and he readily accepted the Book of Mormon telling us that Mormons were the only religion in America that was the “real deal.” We are excited to see where he goes in the next little while.

Finding new souls is basically been our focus over the past several weeks. Hopefully now we can change the focus to helping all these
wonderful souls along their new life-changing journeys.

I had to write quick this week because I was taking care of other things, but I hope y’all have a great week.

Love, 

Elder Joshua Cordon