Tag Archives: Miracles

Progress

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Dear Family and Friends,

Progress, I like progress; it feels nice. I’m sure y’all probably agree with me. Here are some updates on some names that you probably remember.

Trevor: Trevor is really getting back in his groove and then some. He has come to mutual three weeks in a row now and he even came to church on Sunday. His friend Wittney Garçon (He is someone we have been trying to get back into contact with) also came with him on Wednesday and Sunday. We were blessed with some kind members who helped us give them rides so we didn’t have to walk with them there; however, we were willing to do that if necessary. They had a great time and hopefully we can step up the fellowship for them. The youth program here is really small so they are pioneers in many ways.

Michelle: She came to scripture class again and even surprised us by bringing her daughter, Victoria, and her daughters boyfriend, Chandler. Victoria was super engaged and participated a lot in the discussion. We are going through the Book of Mormon chapter by chapter and we were on 1 Nephi 15. The discussion really kicked off when we began teaching the gospel of Jesus Christ. Victoria had such a good experience that she came up to us afterward and asked, “can I keep this Book of Mormon?… Here take down my number I am going to have some questions… Alright so how do I read this and where should I start?” It was pretty awesome to see her jump right on board. A couple days later we went to see Michelle at her place and she made us breakfast for dinner. Chandler was there and we got to know him some more. He is about to start school to go be a doctor. The greatest news was that we found out that Victoria wanted to go to church on Sunday. She showed up with Chandler and they had a great experience.

It is good to see some people make those steps that we need to be seeing. We have some others that we are working with but these were the ones who made the most progress this week.

An awesome little miracle happened after a great experience at the hospital on Friday. We went to the hospital to administer to three afflicted members of our congregation. When we parked we realized that we needed $2 in cash to pay the toll, but we both only had our debit cards. We figured we would just not worry about it, and that we could take care of that after the blessings. Two of them were quick in and out visits, but with one lady we stayed and talked for almost 45 minutes. Her cousin was there and it sure was a hoot talking to them. It was nice to help her take her mind off the cancer for a few minutes. She was missing her son especially because the day before she found out she had cancer he was deployed over seas. She asked me to give the blessing and it was a great opportunity for me. During the blessing a very sweet spirit entered to room. She started to cry and said that it really helped and that it made it feel like her son was there. On Sunday she was able to make it to church and thanked us both again for the blessing.

After the visit we got off the elevator on the first floor and tried to figure out where we could go go get some cash. Right then one of the employees said, “Are you lost elders?” We responded with “You must be a member. What Ward are you in?” He told us that he was in the San Jose Ward (Spanish Ward). I had actually met him before when I was serving in Hendricks Ave. He opened up his wallet and he pulled out $2 and said, “It is all I have.” He smiled and then walked away. I looked down at the cash in my hand, just amazed about God blesses us in the most personal ways. That was a really good day!

I love y’all and hope you have a wonderful week!

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

#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.

Good Start

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Dear Family and Friends, 

Well what a wonderful first full week in Macau! I really like it here the people are nice and from what we can see pretty receptive we were able to meet a lot of people and help a lot start having interest to be taught now while all may not be being taught by us they are still coming unto to Christ. But what goes around comes around because we were also able to meet a young man that the other Elders found. 

We were able to meet with our investigator A-Hou and find out why he has not come to church for two weeks also why he stopped reading and praying. Now we have re-motivated him and he has started reading again and he came to church yesterday. Sadly his fellow-shipper has not come for two weeks who is also a recent convert so that’s another thing we are going to try and fix this week. Also we met with another Investigator who is the one we still need to turn over. Brother Mak, he is the man who was going to be baptized then last second found out he couldn’t because of the Elders not realizing where he lived. But I think this is really for the best because after meeting with him there is a lot he didn’t understand, for example he thought he could just go get baptized in another church, but the best reason for waiting is now he is working to get a new job and applied to have Sundays off. So we are praying really hard that he can have that blessing and then start to be able to attend the other branch. We wanted to turn him over but he said until he figures out his job situation he doesn’t want to meet the other Elders.  

We now have some decent Less Active work. Yesterday a man walked into church with his family, he was active 10 years ago when he got baptized, after talking to him I found out that he came back because he realizes that his kids are growing up really fast and need the gospel. So after talking to the sisters we are going to work on helping him get back and active then once we get going with him then we can help the sisters to start teaching his wife. We feel like its best for us to work together on this one. We also had another LA man walk into church and he wants us to meet him so we will see what we can do. We also met with another Less Active who has a desire to come back we are just working to build his faith so he can make it happen. 

We also were able to meet with a few members to share the Worth of Souls project that the Sister Training leaders and the Zone leaders came up with, its mainly with visiting members and helping them understand some ways they can do missionary work and then working to get a name. It went really well this week we will be following up with the families hoping to be receiving some names. they were all very receptive and want to share the gospel it might just take a few follow ups to really see some big results. We also had a young mens biking activity which went well we had 1 Recent Convert 1 Investigator and 1 Less Active. The activity went well and the young men enjoyed themselves that helped a lot in getting our investigator to church yesterday.

We have some other things we are working on with the Branch, one is a big street display coming up in April they want the whole ward involved. It will have some games and information about what the church offers. It will have primary kids singing songs and a lot of other stuff hopefully it really goes well. I know its really getting pushed by the Branch members which is awesome because the main target is families and they can find them a lot better than we can! 

Here are some pictures.

Love you all!
​

Elder Jared 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

Elder Kopischke Comes To Town

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Dear Family and Friends,

The highlight of this week was hard to pin down so I will share a couple. The first great one was a mission conference that we had on Friday. We have had 4 in 4 months. That is surprising because I only had 2 my first year.

Anyhow Elder Kopischke was the one who visited us. He is a wonderfully-jolly german-man, and it made for a fun 6 hours that we spent with him. I think the most powerful lesson that I took away from that meeting was that the gospel is about relationship, and relationship requires investment. That is a lesson that I have been learning through-out my mission and I believe hearing it that way helped me put it all in perspective. As I reflect upon all that I have experienced so far, it is the relationships that I have developed that I consider to be my most valued treasures. He helped see missionary
work in a new light that helped us with our priorities. It was a great lesson to learn to help me capitalize on my remaining time. We only had a 20 minute break during those 6 hours, but I could have stayed for 6 hours if he would have let us. It was a very spiritual meeting and I had many questions answered.

Another amazing thing that happened this weekend was that a man named Davie that we found my first Sunday in the area came to church. We met with him twice last week and he was curious about our services. His lives in a mobile home park that a member of our bishopric owns and manages and so he had immediate fellowship. Everybody loved seeing him there and he seemed to enjoy himself. It was great that so quickly the Lord has blessed us to see the fruit of our labors. I look forward to the many other things he awaits to bless us with.

I know that Jesus Christ is our savior and redeemer and that if we come to him, miracles, purpose, and true joy will begin to flow into our lives in a very personal way. It starts by us coming unto him.

I love y’all!
Elder Joshua Cordon

The Thick of Thin Things

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Dear Family and Friends, 

This past week brought a lot of change for me. After serving a wonderful 8 months in the blessed Mandarin 2nd ward it was time for me to move on to the next step. As part of the transition I am blessed with the opportunity to train Elder Curran. He is from Clearfield, Utah and so far we have enjoyed every minute. Our personalities really mesh, so it has been easy to get unified quick and get to work. We are in a car share as well, so we have been on biking a lot. 

“White-washing” an area as they call it has been a wonderful experience so far. I got a similar opportunity when I started my mission so it has been reminiscent and very fun. We are doing our best to reach out and become familiar with the members as soon as we can. We are loving the ward so far and we can tell that a lot of good things are going to happen here. Last week alone was full of amazing miracles. Every single night after 8:00, with the exception of Friday night because we were playing basketball with some investigators, we found someone new to teach. Often missionaries will consider that a less productive time to find, but it has been an hour of miracles for us. We plan to keep that going for as long as we can. 

On Sunday after church we were having a correlation meeting with the sisters and the Ward Mission Leader and his assistant and we started talking about the different reasons that members havent been sharing the gospel. Something that was brought up involved that idea that people are simply filling there schedules with too much “stuff.” They simply are not putting into practice the age old principles taught in the object lesson of trying to fit rocks, pebbles, and sand all in a jar. I reflected on how my last ward mission leader somehow made so much time for missionary work, even though he was a full time law student, had a young child, and worked 20 hours a week.

To my surprise that same theme was reinforced this morning during my personal study when I was reading a conference talk by A. Theodore Tuttle given October of 1971. The title of the talk was The Things That Matter Most. There was this quote in it that I really enjoyed!

Some years ago, I read an editorial in the Deseret News entitled “The Mechanical Rabbit.” I quote:

“Most of our readers must have smiled the other day when they read of the greyhounds in Britain who don’t know a rabbit when they see one. So long had they chased a mechanical rabbit around the racetrack, that when a real rabbit bounded across the track, the dogs didn’t give it a second look.“Stupid, eh? But sad too, this perverting of the natural instincts. …“We chase mechanical rabbits, too.“We chase paychecks, and don’t give a second look to the glint of the rising sun on a snow-topped peak.“We chase our way through the appointments of a crowded desk calendar, and fail to take time to chat with the next-door neighbor or to drop in on a sick friend.“We chase social pleasures on a glittering noisy treadmill—and ignore the privilege of a quiet hour telling bedtime stories to an innocent-eyed child.“We chase prestige and wealth, and don’t recognize the real opportunities for joy that cross our paths. …”Wordsworth said words appropriate to this condition:“The world is too much with us: late and soon, Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers.”“Race on, you poor, blind over-civilized hounds. You’ll never catch your rabbit until you learn to recognize a genuine one.“But, you’ll have company in your race; the company of unnumbered men who’ll never catch the joy they chase until they, too, learn to recognize a genuine one.”This points up our challenge: See “that the things that matter most … are not at the mercy of things that matter least.” (Ashley Montague.)Someone rephrased this thought: “Too often we are involved in the thick of thin things.”In modern revelation the Lord said:“Behold, there are many called, but few are chosen. And why are they not chosen?“Because their hearts are set so much upon the things of this world, and aspire to the honors of men. …” (D&C121:34–35.)



The moral of that story and the reason I have brought it up, is that I hope all of us will take time to prioritize our lives and if necessary stop spending time doing the things that don’t matter most if they prevent us from doing the things that do. The great blessing of coming into an area with a companion who isnt already serving there is that you get a fresh start, and an opportunity to make sure that your priorities are straight without having to do the sometimes painful process of re-prioritizing. I has been a great blessing to engage in the simple things for often that is how miracles are most often experienced. For me, learning to prioritize has been a blessing of my mission.

 Hopefully these sentiments are beneficial!

I love yall!
Elder Joshua Cordon 

Prayer of Faith!

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Dear Family and Friends,

Wow!!! Wow!!! Missions are so amazing!! There is literally not a week that goes by where something amazing doesn’t happen.

Amazing things that happened this week:

Mission Conference

The first year of my mission I had 2 mission conferences. However, we have had 1 every month for the past 4 months. Along with 1 other 2 months before that. So, it has been awesome!!

This time we were visited by Elder Zwick of the first quorum of the Seventy, who I will say is one of the manliest men I have ever had the pleasure of meeting, and Br. Hemingway who is assigned to the Missionary Department of the Church and is the Director of the proselyting division for the whole world. When I shook Br. Hemingway’s hand he said with a pleasant surprise, “Oh, I remember you. How are you doing?” I had met him a little over a year ago when he came to introduce iPads to the mission. He was the Mission President in Rochester, New York when we first moved there, and knows the Tuttle Family fairly well.

President and Sister Craig where with these fine brethren for several days in Salt Lake City at a special Mission Presidents conference that included the 28 Facebook/iPad missions. We were the first mission to receive training and instruction from what was discussed at that conference. Basically, we are entering the next major stage of testing for iPads and Facebook proselyting. The biggest changes come in the fact that we will receive brand-new iPads next week and there will be a Facebook restart that will result in us going offline of Facebook for a while. We also received training materials produced by the church that are finally standardizing the training of iPads and Facebook, something that we have been begging for for a while. On top of all of that we received powerful trainings on Personal Conversion, and Will-Power. All of it was very inspiring. But anyway, enough of that, it is probably not nearly as exciting for you as it is for me. And if it is exciting for you, then think how excited I am!

Prayers of faith=Miracles

There were several instances this past week that we incredible miracles as a result of a prayer, but there is one that I would like to highlight. On Saturday, it was beautiful weather but it was slower day for some reason. We tried everything I had ever been taught to do and nothing worked. Luckily we had a dinner appointment with two of my favorite people that I had to look forward to. One was a less active and that was the first lesson we were able to teach all day. After dinner we tried to knock some doors, hoping to get some success from those efforts, but after striking out we stopped at the nearby gas station for a bathroom break. While I was waiting for my companion, I saw these two kids at a table. After striking up conversation we were able to teach him the whole first lesson and give him a book of mormon which he agreed to read. Things started to look up.

Still we had about an hour left of the night. Elder Jorgensen suggested that we go and see a man who had not been home for our appointment earlier that day. Considering how far away he was it seemed like an illogical decision, but we both agreed that it felt right so away we went. I remember thinking about the nice peace I had felt on the way there that was a nice contrast to the frustration and anxiety I had experienced earlier. Once we got there we knocked on his doors with hearts full of faith only to find that nobody was home.

I knew at that moment that we were there for someone else. Unsure of what to do next and how to find this person that we were meant to find we knelt down in the grass in front of an apartment building. It was 8:35 roughly we knew that time was not a luxury. After Elder Jorgensen offered a mighty prayer we started knocking. Nobody answered the first two doors and as we turned to head to the stairs we saw a woman, her daughter, and their two dogs walking in the parking lot. We used the dogs as an ice breaker before bringing up the gospel. Before we could even get to it though, she asked us what we were there doing. We told her who we were and asked if we could share our message with her. At this point her little girl Aryah while tugging on her jacket said “Mommy, can we hear their message.” It wasn’t very difficult for her to say yes after that.

We proceeded to teach them the whole first lesson and they loved every bit of it. She told us that they were looking for a church that would prick their heart with the spirit. She even said that because they had just moved there that they were still looking for a church. At the moment they are attending a Brazillian church and because the service is in Portuguese they have to wear headsets with the translation. She started to express concern about the idea of having a prophet today but after we showed her a video of Thomas S. Monson, she said that she knew that he was a prophet the moment she saw him. All of us departed that night feeling very grateful that the lord had caused our paths to cross that night. Jackie and Aryah probably don’t even realize how incredible the journey they just started really is.

I want to bare my solemn witness that God hears every single one of our prayers. I know that he loves us and that he will provide us with miracles as we rely with faith.

I love y’all!

Elder Joshua Cordon

Sunny Side Up

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Dear Family and Friends,

What a wonderful week. Full of growth and development, and also backed full of miracles!! I Am grateful for the atonement and its ability to make us better then we were yesterday. To have the strength and power of Christ to work in our lives with common problems to make them better and to come out the way they need to for our betterment. He is the one that knows what we need to grow into who we need to be, so trust in him.

I also learned a very important lesson that if your own house is not in order you are not able to help anyone else.

I am so blessed that I get to see literal miracles happen all the time. This week we got started teaching the son of Katie and he is excited to learn why Brian (his stepdad) and Katie have made so many changes. He is excited to learn more about his Heavenly Father and the plan that he has for him. Its is always a testimony to me of this truth, that even little children understand it and can feel of its truth. We can all have the faith of a little child, we just need to remove all the disbelieving.

We also met a new man this week Corbin and we felt VERY prompted to keep talking to him, and then VERY prompted to invite him to be baptized. He said yes and also to a date of March 21 so we are going to do everything that we can to get him ready for that date.

God is out ahead of us missionaries preparing people for His truth. Are Spirits will recognize the truth if we give it time to listen. We have been taught it all before so it will have a familiar ring to it.

I am so very grateful for all of your support and love.

You are in my prayers.

LOVE
Elder S Cordon

IMG_6846Beautiful View that I enjoy

Happy Chinese New Years!

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Dear Family and Friends,

It was another great week in the Life of a missionary. It was a week of all finding because for the last couple of weeks we have not been able to meet with people that we normally would meet, although they all still keep coming to church. I am very grateful that they will at least do that. The Kwok Family has now come twice in a row and they plan on coming still next week and then to Elder Ballard so they are moving great we just need to teach them.

We have continued the consecrated finds and again this last week I can say that something of a little miracle came out of each one. I have realize also that I have been noticing these blessings mainly because I have been looking for them. As I have started applying that mindset to the other times It seems that all of the times we find diligently something cool will happen.

This last week while finding we tried doing some finding in the less traveled places and thought of places, it takes more creativity and effort when praying and picking where we will go, but its so worth it. We have found a few places which have turned out to be very prosperous. I have been here for almost 2 transfers and its amazing that I have never thought of going to these places.

Elder Wong and I have been getting better at our unity and just trying to make finding an enjoyable process, because a happy missionary is a successful missionary.

I have been pretty consistent about my prayer journal every night which is what I said I would do to show my love towards Christ and its cool because it has got me pondering even beyond the day to my whole life and I have been able to recognize how the lord has answered many many prayers.

Here is an experience I would like to share with you. When I was at my first semester of BYU very grateful to have been accepted and very confused about what I wanted to study. I started the pondering process as I tried different things. After the first semester having tried a variety of classes I realized that maybe business was not what I wanted to do with my life and neither was anything with science and math. So I thought I would try ROTC and fulfill my childhood dreams of the Air Force. Well I no sooner found out that they wanted me to pick my major for me to be able to progress. So the pressure was on and I was clueless but the help in the process they gave me a list of degrees that the Air Force limits to their officers. Well basically none of them caught my interest but languages for some reason did. I reflected how during high school I spent 3 years struggling through spanish but, still it felt right. After more research I found myself contemplating learning chinese, and the more I thought about ti the better it felt. Still very uncertain I thought I need to take this to the lord. So I remember on a friday just before noon (likely the same time that my mission was being assigned by an Apostle of the Lord) I knelt by my bed in prayer. I am not sure why but the words that came out of my mouth were “If Chinese is what I am supposed to do with my life send me to Hong Kong on my mission”. Almost immediately I was overcome with a very warm and very certain feeling that I was going to be serving in the China Hong Kong mission. So I immediately set off on the computer researching all about my mission and ever purchased a learn Mandarin CD(I have never heard of cantonese before). Not to long after that experience was I opening my call to serve here in this amazing mission. I know the Lord answers our prayers and I also learned a lot about preparing our minds and our hearts for those prayers which will bring very specific answers.

This week should be a great week like all the others.

Elder Jared Cordon

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