Tag Archives: mission

Back to the Basics

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Dear Family and Friends,

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

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

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

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

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

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

I love y’all!

Elder Joshua Cordon

Shh… it’s Steven’s Birthday Saturday… send him your Love!

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Dear Family and Friends,

This week was a great week that was full of new things.

It was my first baptismal interview. That was great to be able to be a part of that families conversion to the gospel. What a way to be able to help them. Elder Ping (my new comp) also had his birthday that was awesome. We also got a training on weekly planning it now takes about 7 hours to do. My comp and I also just started a new way of tracting and finding and so far have had huge success. We are growing our teaching pool and lots of people are looking for the light and we just need to show them where to find it.

I love being on a mission and so excited for all it has to offer.

Elder Steven Cordon

P.S. (Editors Note)Saturday is Steven’s Birthday. He would love to receive notes of love and encouragement. Let’s fill his mailbox with love! Here is his address:

Elder Steven Allen Cordon
Washington Kennewick Mission
8202 W Quinault, Ste D
Kennewick, WA 99336

Mission Experiences

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Dear Family and Friends,

Week after week I am molded and shaped more into who I am meant to be.
The real essence of becoming is very apparent to me right now. When I
have had the opportunity to have a glimpse of my potential if I
continue embracing the gospel, I have wondered if many of the promised
blessings would ever come into fruition. This past week they did. I
know that doesn’t tell you much, but it was a very tender moment for
me. I pray that all of you will hold out for the priceless blessings
afforded to those who patiently press forward with a steadfastness in
Christ. The world around us is full of people who exchange those
blessings for immediate and fleeting pleasures. The gospel is the
science of increasing returns, but the lack thereof is the science if
selling yourself short.

This past week I was blessed to experience a lot of miracles. I don’t
think there was a day where anything went according to plan, yet at
the end of the day everything seemed to work out. A great example of
that was on Friday; we were looking at a night that was supposed to be
jam packed with teaching appointments, but as we called to confirm one
by one they canceled. No sooner had I desperately racked my brain for
some ideas before finally pleading “now what are we going to do?” When
we got a call. A guy we are teaching asked for help loading up a
truck. He said that his parents neighbor got sent to jail and the bank
was forcibly evicting them. There were hired guys there throwing all
of the stuff out of the house into the front yard. This was a lot of
stuff! Nice stuff too. Which didn’t help the fact that storm clouds
were rolling in. When we arrived on scene we realized that we were the
only help he had because he had no one else to call on. We were
grateful for that opportunity to serve. He actually didn’t even have
to help these people, and on top of that the lady that lived there had
been incredibly rude to his family, but he told us that he was raised
that you serve everybody, whether or not they have been nice to you. A
great example of charity.

Willie, who has become a great friend over the past several months was
baptized this past Saturday, the day after he graduated from his
wounded warriors training. We went to his graduation which was at
Maggianos, and we weren’t expecting much, but all the big wigs of the
Wounded Warriors project were there in this room of about 40 people.
It has been a great experience to get better acquainted with that
wonderful organization and the people that keep it running. The
knowledge I gained and connections I formed there were an unexpected
blessing of my mission. Willie’s wife flew in from California for his
baptism. It was great to meet her in person, she is a hoot I’ll tell
you what. The baptism was really touching and had strong spirit, but
the best part was when Willie shared his testimony with his class
mates who came to support him. The next day I confirmed him a member
of the church and gave him the gift of the Holy Ghost just to have to
follow that with a goodbye as he moved back to California that day. It
really was a miracle that he was able to find the gospel and get
baptize during his short visit here in Jacksonville. He will go on to
great things, I just wish he could stay so I could be part of all of
it. Either way we will be keeping in touch and besides it is never
goodbye, it is just see you later.

On a less than positive note, a dear friend of mine and my ward
mission leader in my last ward passed away last week on Labor Day. I
found out a couple of days later and it definitely was shocking to
hear. At first they declared it a suicide, but we know how wonderfully
accurate our news media is (I am so grateful we don’t have to watch
that garbage as missionaries) but it has been determined that there
was fool play. My heart ached as I thought of his beautiful wife,
children, and grandchildren that he left behind. If I ever knew a man
who didn’t deserve to die he was it, but if I ever knew man who was
ready to meet his maker he was that man too. I went to his closed
casket viewing yesterday and got to see his wife who I got to know
very well too. She had a genuine smile on her face as I gave her a
hug, which brought such relief to my heart to know that she has been
able to hold on to her knowledge of the plan of salvation to help her
through this hard time. I have also been comforted because of my
knowledge that families are forever. I know that one day they will be
reunited and they will live as a family for eternity. It is hard to
remain sad when you keep in mind. He was the biggest gator fan that I
have ever met in my life! I will always be able to remember him with
the gator head that he gave me which sits on my desk. I will be able
to remember how much he was willing to give to help others receive
this incredibly gospel. While he is no longer with us in person, his
example of discipleship will continue to encourage many people to come
unto Christ, as it has done for so many already. I love you Br.
Ortega! God be with you until we meet again!

Life is too short so please never let an opportunity to let those you
love know how much they mean to you. You may never get that chance
again in this life.

I know that Jesus Christ rose from the dead on the third day as a
resurrected being and that he lives, and because of that so will all
of us. There is life after death.

I love y’all!

Elder Joshua Cordon

This has been a GREAT year!

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Dear Family and Friends,

This coming Saturday will be one year, one year sense I knew that this gospel was the restored gospel of Jesus Christ. That Joseph Smith saw God the Father and his son, our brother, Jesus Christ in a grove of trees in Palmyra NY in 1820. It has been such a wonderful year I am so glad that I had the courage to go to the pageant.

In this last year I have let the gospel change my life. The promise that we get, that following the gospel makes us the best that we can be is VERY TRUE. It is so weird to think that it was only just a year ago that I didn’t know that this church was true and now I am on a mission and am through my first transfer.

So crazy news about this first transfer I am getting a new trainer. Elder Lafond is getting transferred and I am getting Elder Butters to finish out my next 6 weeks of training. SO… it is kinda weird to think, we just assumed that we had 3 months together and so it did come as a shock. I am excited though because God is in the details of the mission and so I know that I am supposed to learn something from this so can’t wait to see what that is. A quote from President Lorenzo Snow, who was the prophet from 1898-1901.

“There is no mortal man that is so much interested in the success of an elder when he is preaching the gospel as the Lord that sent him to preach to the people who are the Lord’s children.”

The Lord is invested in the success of our missions and He wants us to grow in the gospel and He wants us to become the best missionaries that we can be. He knows what that will take and he will give us the things and challenges that we need to mold us into the missionaries he needs us to be and the best we can be.

I am so excited about this next transfer and what it will bring. So a quote from me.

“There are many things a person CAN be, but the focus needs to be on what you SHOULD be.”

The gospel can change you to the best person that you can be so let it. Everyone can be perfected, so don’t get distracted by the things that aren’t in that direction.

Sorry this letter is so short next week will be longer 🙂

I love you all
Elder Steven Cordon
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Update on Sister Feathers (the bird we are teaching the gospel to) eggs have hatched and now we have two babies living on our porch.

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Washington Sunset

Exchange Week!

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Dear Family and Friends,

The highlight of this week was definitely the exchanges that we went on. We had one with one of our district leaders and the other with the Assistants. Exchanges are nice because they are good change of pace. It really helps to keep things from becoming monotonous especially when you don’t stay in your own area for it. For the exchange with Elder Jones, I stayed in the area and we had some great success! We were able to teach some good lessons, especially one to Jim who agreed to be baptized in May, and find some new investigators. He is a good elder indeed! They other with the AP Elder Huntington was pretty nice. Not to say I didn’t do anything, but it is nice to sit back and let someone else fully take the wheel for a day. We had some good success there as well! It was just nice to get to know both of the Elders a little better. Each time I like to engage in frivolous deep doctrinal discussions. We usually just end up more confused, but it is definitely a good mental exercise. They also both taught me a lesson or two on how I could become a better missionary. It is amazing how God will reveal to us one step at a time something we can work on, and if we can just muster the courage to always heed the counsel we receive than our growth accelerates! I have definitely felt that!

One thing that is interesting though that I have observed is that having a healthy amount of discontentment is essential to making progress. Somebody who is fully satisfied with their life will never have the desire great enough to evoke change. I am starting to see that in some of the people we are teaching, you can exhort with all the boldness and love you can muster to live life at higher and more joyful level, but if they have no desire to change any excuse they can think of is enough to stop them, and sadly, anyone can make an excuse to not do something. It is a tough and frustrating thing to witness in the life of someone you have grown to love so much, to know that greater joy and happiness could be theirs if they would only listen, yet they refuse to. I am sure I am just getting a sample of what God feels every single moment of every single day. However, it is days like that when you just accept that you have done all you know how to do, and if they don’t want to change than that is their choice. I am learning that it is not our job as missionaries to change anyone, nor should we try to make it our job, but rather we simply share the message and invite them to let it change their life. If they don’t want it then we must move on. Anyhow, so I hope that all makes sense! It is just what has been on my mind lately!

Have a great week!

Love Ya’ll!
Elder Joshua Cordon

Teaching English (in Florida)

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Dear Family and Friends,

So I don’t have much time today, but I do want to say another little bit about the Albanian couple I mentioned a few weeks ago. So we thought they had dropped us because they didn’t show up to that appointment two Saturday’s ago. We tried to visit them the next day, but they didn’t answer the door. I was bummed, but not worried. The next Friday I was looking at the European edition of the Restoration DVD and I noticed that it was in….. Albanian! I am sure to nobody else that means something. However to me it was another sign. So I called an audible and we drove straight there. Despite the fact that it was after 8:00 and Osmond was in his pajamas, they happily let us in. I showed them the DVD and some how set up an appointment with them for Saturday for another lesson to teach English. We meet them at their place and they followed us to the church. We started off by watching the DVD with them and then taught them the alphabet, numbers and time. It was sweet! We will have them fluent in no time!
Anyhow I love y’all!

Elder Joshua Cordon

Happy Chinese New Year

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Dear Family and Friends,

Well this was a pretty awesome week! We had the Chinese New Year which meant Deep Clean. Its the day when we all spend the entire day cleaning every crack and corner of the appartment! It looks so good now! Also to finish that day we watched the fireworks over the bay! Pretty Amazing.

Earlier in the week I also had the chance to do my first exchange but this one was the entire Zone mixing and matching. I got to have Elder McEwan who was in my MTC group. So we were both very new and also very blessed. We had to make a random trip to the airport even with all the delays we still managed to get a new investigator in my area which never happens! BABY POWER!

Also many other blessing came Elder Howells and my way this week although everyone is busy over Chinese New Year we were able to meet a few families and found a couple of guys who also live in our area. We felt prompted to go to this area we had never been and frankly we didn’t know what it was we just walked under the freeway and down this path to this beautiful bay side dog park! Way cool we ended up finding two people and teaching streets lesson, they both live in our area. So Cool!

Also today we got to go to Stanley its on the ocean side of Hong Kong Island and it had some amazing views. We decided to spend our P-Day with the ward for a great chinese BBQ!

I love you all have a great week!

Elder Cordon

New Year, New Mind -Joshua

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Dear Family and Friends,

I have this problem of not remembering anything that happened the week before when it comes to doing emailing. I guess that is why I keep a journal right? Yet somehow I still remember peoples names that I met a month ago. I think God is trying to show me where my priorities should be; not in the past, but in the present. I might share a little of the past with you though.

Church was great! It was packed! I have never seen it that full. People were actually looking for a seat. Luckily our investigators were there early 🙂 The Conseillants came! It was so awesome to see them there 🙂 Gabon had that big grin strapped on his face that he is always wearing when we come over to his apartment, and Emmanuela was paying attention to everything single detail, not to prove it wrong, but because she liked it so much! She was saying afterwards that she really loved relief society, and that they were actually good singers in there haha a nice contrast to sacrament meeting. Also Bruce came to church too! He really liked it as well. He is a character though. He has come two weeks in a row and we still haven’t taught him anything, and he wants to keep coming, but he doesn’t want to schedule any lessons… Ya I don’t understand either.

Also on Sunday we were contacting a referral from the sister missionaries and as we were walking up Rodney (the referral) was outside drinking and bbq’n and his boys were playing basketball. It was a bit weird at first, but we were determined to connect with him. Elder Hamilton then asked if he could play ball with kids ( by the way… he is really good), and so he challenged them to a game two on one. As they were playing Rodney who was just loving all of this said that we should have made a bet with them as he laughs at the fact that his boys are getting beat by one person in a shirt and tie. Then I shouted that if Elder Hamilton won then they had to come to church. After the game was over Rodney was like, “we will see you Sunday.” Haha It was really funny. We also connected really well with his family because of that. His boys want to come and be on the church ball team, which is good because our ward lost last Saturday.

So anyway, this past week I decided to make sure that I was making daily improvement toward my ultimate goal of returning with our Father in Heaven, so I decided to map out daily things that I could be doing to achieve that ultimate goal. It was a really eye opening experience and it gave me a lot of areas that I can improve upon, which was great because now I feel that I have a lot more focus than I did for the rest of my mission! Wohoo! IMPROVEMENT!

Anyway,

Love ya’ll!

Elder Joshua Cordon

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

So close you could almost taste it! Release your inhibition!

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Well hello there!

Alright 2 more weeks to go then Hong Kong here I come! There have been some nice mix ups this last week to remind me the importance of the MTC and other things just make me really wanna leave!

This week Elder Cederlof and I have been able to see what it feels like to truly work through the Lord with our investigators! We have been struggling along with one. She didn’t feel our messages relation to her and she wasn’t experiencing what we were saying!

So finally we buckled down and decided we need to hit straight from the source! We prepared a lesson about the love of Christ! Although it was not exactly how we planned, she felt the love of Christ! (I want to remind everyone this is not a real investigator) but, the Spirit there was!

She has been complaining about her knee hurting and making work bad for her. So we felt prompted to show her the Bible video about Jesus healing the palsy stricken man. Then we shared testimonies about Christ healing us through blessings we have received. She started tearing up, then we were prompted to ask her if she had faith enough to be healed, she started crying again, and said whimpering yes I do. After the blessing we knew the spirit was there and God answered our prayer! We then being prompted told her about baptism and how the spirit she is feeling could be with her always! We then invited her after more testimonies, she started balling again, after a long long silence she said yes!

That lesson was amazing the spirit was so strong and I could definitely feel the spirit working through me! We now know what it feels like to have our investigator experience the discussion!

Whats been hard this week is we ended up not moving to WyView. My whole branch did but us Cantonese, we are sadly getting moved to a new branch. So after saying all these goodbyes I feel like I should be on a plane right now. sadly that is not until 2 weeks. But I did get my Chinese tags with my Chinese name in Characters! I do know how to read that one at least!

Also after long discussions with the Elders from Hong Kong I can not wait! All my experiences with the Hong Kong people have really helped me develop a love for them!

The work is Hastening and as my brother said the miracle will not only be through Missionaries but also members! Open your mouth and The Lord will fill it for you!

Everyone Take Luck

Love Elder Jared Cordon