Tag Archives: Mormon

God Answers Prayers

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Dear Family and Friends,

So, once again on preparation day we have beautiful weather. Makes it pretty clear that God is watching over us as he gives us these tender mercies. He truly does take care of us in every aspect of our lives. I have become ever more aware of his presence of my life this past week. I know that God answers my prayers!

Last night was crunch time for us. We had agreed and sustained a goal less than two weeks ago that by yesterday we would’ve found 11 new investigators. Coming down to our last available hour we still had to find 2. We were starting to get pretty downhearted when we kept running into walls at every turn. With about 17 minutes left we were faced with the decision to either see a recent convert who hadn’t come to church and to check up on him, or go see one more potential on our list. Having considered what Christ would do, and reasoning that he would be a man of his word and do everything in his power to accomplish that which he was said he would do, we decided to try the another former on the list we had been working off of. On the way there I was saying a prayer in my heart that I had not made the wrong decision, that we would be able to accomplish our goal, and that God would grant unto us a miracle in these last few minutes of the day. We arrived at the home which happened to be a duplex. There was a girl sitting outside of one of the doors, and so we asked her if this is the correct address and if the people by the names David and Christine lived there. She told us that it was her neighbors. She also informed us that she was a member of the Spanish branch after we had invited her to hear a message of Jesus Christ. Feeling a bit embarrassed that we had just invited a member of our church to learn about our church, went over and knock on the neighbor’s door. They were home, invited us right in, and had no problem with us coming back. It was strange because it was so easy and just fell in our lap. I knew that God granted unto us a small miracle, and helped us accomplish the desires of our hearts.

Another great experience was a member present lesson we had this past week. Since I have been in this area, we haven’t really been working with the bishop at all. He is a nice guy, but we were just doing our own thing. Considering the fact that the bishop holds the keys to missionary work in the ward we knew that this had to change. Finally, we resolved that the best way to do this would be to have him teach one of our investigators. We successfully had our investigators, Kevin and Laurie, taught in the bishops home with him and his wife. The lesson was the best lesson we have had with them yet, and the bishop did a terrific job of teaching to his needs with us. They became instant friends with Kevin and Laurie, and they even committed them to be baptized in April. The difference since then for our relationship with the bishop is like night and day. He’s called us several times and has already talked to Kevin four times since the lesson. They also want to have a weekly lesson in their home with Kevin and Laurie. The wide spread impact of that lesson is seen in the fact that I have not been to single ward Council or PEC meeting since I’ve been here, but this past Sunday Bishop asked if Elder Hamilton and I would come. Just from hearing him talk in that meeting I can tell that he has had a complete change of heart towards missionary work. I am excited for the wonderful things ahead for us!

I know that God is aware of us and of the desires of our hearts. I know that he answers our prayers. I have prayed diligently to find our goal of 11 new investigators, and to find a way to connect with the bishop and the Lord has provided a way for both righteous desires to be completed. I would encourage all of you this week to set worthy goals, make intelligent plans, and diligently labor to complete them. Make sure to include God in every step and trust that he will provide away. As you do so, you will become the incredible person that you want to be. I know that will happen because it’s happened for me. I say these things in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen.

Have a wonderful week!

Love ya’ll!

Elder Joshua Cordon

That’s a First!!

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Dear Family and Friends:

Well its has been a good 3 days since we last talked! My last P-Day was awesome. We got to go the Beautiful Hong Kong temple! The peace of the temple is a special thing. Even when your a full time missionary you still feel a stronger spirit there than outside of it. After wards we woke up to real life by heading to Mong Kok, to help Elder Siebach his dying suit. Suits are something that hong kong does very well.

We had a crazy few days after that cause the next day we had zone training where the zone leaders and sister training leaders (which is weird they are both in my district again like in my last area, I think president is keeping a close eye on me haha) announced a new mission goal. Since it is the 65th anniversary of Hong Kong we have a goal as a mission to have 65 baptisms in the month on july(which is the official month) This is a large number for the mission since last month we had 26 baptisms, and about a 170 last year. But President feels this is truly revelation. So we went to work making sure our area does our part. Me and Elder Falk have plans to have a few baptisms before and another in July.

On Saturday, met our investigator Gary(fan hing daih) who we proceeded to set my first baptismal date of my mission. He is first one we have for the this companionship and his date is may 11th so good birthday present for me and Elder Falk.

We have seen a lot of miracles happening here, thanks to the help of such a great ward coordinator and members. In both less active work and new investigators the lord is blessing us with opportunities that havent been around for awhile.

Love you all

Elder Cordon

Elder Holland

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Dear Family and Friends,

Alright an exciting week and a Half!

Well as usual Elder Holland had some amazing things to say! That was for sure an all day even cause we were coming from forever away! We road a bus and got a sweet view of all of Hong Kong. His main focus in his lesson was for the first 45 min express his love to us, then ended by really hitting on the fact that God Speaks.

He was making it clear that our investigators need to believe in revelation. If they don’t then nothing else matters. Also he made an interesting connection to 1 nephi 1 and joseph smith. Lehi and Joseph have very similar stories. It started with a desire to know then lots of pondering, prayer, vision, diving beings, a book, revelation from the book, teach from that book, then every tries to kill him. A very interesting connection.

We have really been blesses this last week and a half we have been meeting a lot of prepared people and are really building up a lot of investigators, now the tricking part getting them to accept a baptismal date. So hopefully by next time I write I can send the good news.

We had a cool little miracle this week apart from the many others this one was very clear. We were finding and had been doing pretty good but nothing special, then we only had thirty minutes left, so we stopped and said a quick prayer asking to meet a prepared person. Well right after we stood up there was a guy standing there who was smiling at us and was more than happy to see us. we sat down taught him a great lesson and will see him again on saturday.

Also here is personal idea. Read Mosiah 23-24. You can see the necessary trials and growth the lord wanted for his saints, it also gives an interesting perspective on why we might have trials and how the lord is helping.

Love you All

Elder Cordon

Plan Ahead, Enjoy The Moment, and Count Your Blessings

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Dear Family and Friends,

I am not sure if I mentioned this already, but I have come to learn a thing or two about myself on my mission. Big shock right? One thing i have learned is that i like action. If i spend three hours in a meeting and I don’t leave feeling like I have just received instructions of how to put into action and realize the very goals we have discussed, then i feel like time has been wasted. Luckily for me though, when i spent 11ish hours in meetings this past week, I do feel that much of the time was used wisely, and that is was productive.

Nevertheless, the time that wasn’t used wisely combined with several weeks and months of thought I’ve put into goal setting and planning has caused me to give a training on it this week in Zone Meeting. Time is too short and too precious to waste it with action-less-chit-chat. On the contrary to not talk through things at all could be highly detrimental for it would open the door the premature and inappropriate action. As in all things in life a balance is required. I feel like that is how we have worked here in the Hendricks area over the past few months, we have accomplished much with a proper balance of talk and action. Hopefully, my much study and pondering, coupled with inspiration from the spirit will lead me to be able to say a few wise words on the subject tomorrow, I guess we will see.

Anyhow back to reality. So one interesting thing that happened this past week was a move that we took part in. We found out about Thursday we had to help a lady in our ward move from one apartment to another. At first we thought we were just being asked to be part of moving crew they had already assembled, But then we realized that we were the moving crew. Personally, I am flattered by the fact that they thought we had the energy, stamina, and means to do the entire project ourselves. They must really think very highly of us. As tempting as that sounded, we decided to take the selfless route and share this blessed opportunity with others, and thank goodness we did, for the load ended up being a full U-Haul truck, and two truck-beds worth of furniture boxes and odds-n-ends. While i say that in partial jest much good came from including others in this service opportunity. Our fully assembled amateur moving team was a motley crew at best, it included us, the senior missionary couple (Elder and Sister Andrew), our burly elders quorum president, Solomon (our recent convert who was one of the lost boys of Sudan), and Johnny (our Cambodian brother, also a recent convert). It got done in a timely manner, we had a great time, and all reported that they appreciated the much-needed boost in spirit that comes from losing yourself in the service of others. In the end, a seemingly overwhelming task resulted in a blessing in disguise.

Another crazy thing that happened Saturday was that when we came by Solomon’s to pick him up for the service project the whole parking lot and courtyard outside his apartment were taped off with police line. Inside the line were 6 squad cars, more than a dozen officers, and several men carrying what appeared to be M-16s. Luckily Solomon was fine and he said that the police had been their since 10 o’clock the previous evening. According to him, somebody died. It is just a hunch, but I am suspecting foul play, that is just me though, so take it with a grain of salt. In most cases including the move I unwisely failed to capture the moment in a photograph. I need to be better at that.

We managed this past week after hurdling many obstacles to find me a bike to ride and a bike hitch for our car, so we were able to hit the pavement and do some good street contacting, it was definitely a major blessing for we had much success in those few hours of biking.

So, everything is going great with the many families that we are teaching. Lily is still on track to be baptized by the end of the month, she also wants to go on a mission! Wahoo! She will be a great missionary. The Conseillants are great like always, and they even came to church on Sunday. We finally were able to have a lesson with Kevin and Lori in their home which is about 2 1/2 months in the making, but was totally worth it. We got Daniel (the son of Br. Fonseca who was baptized 2 years ago) to finally set a date for baptism? We had him pick the number, so April 20th it is. And then their are just so many others who are coming out of the wood work to hear this wonderful message. God has truly blessed us with a plate as full as the one I ate yesterday at dinner, and both are delicious to the taste. And the weather has been beautiful which is another big plus.

Count your many blessings this week and you will be singing as the days go by! (“Count Your Blessings,” LDS Hymn book #241)

Love Ya’ll!!

Elder Joshua Cordon

Improvement and Progression – Josh

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Dear family and friends,

So, it was the first preparation day since Christmas that there wasn’t any sunshine. It’s amazing what kind of difference weather makes on attitude. It is not that am not happy but I’m a little more relaxed when it’s dark and gloomy outside. We are going to take advantage of all the rain though and play some sports out in the mud. This should be a lot of fun!

Fun thing that happened last week was that the day of transfers I knew that my old ward mission leader and his wife would be driving the missionaries from the ward to the transfer building. So I arranged ahead of time for us to meet up and get some lunch while they’re here in town. It was great to see them again and hear about how Deepcreek is doing. It reaffirmed the fact that I really want to go back and visit that Ward shortly after my mission. I definitely have a lot of good friends there.

My mission trainee Elder Barcala got transferred here to Jacksonville, and he is serving in the area next to mine. However, it is across the river and it is not in my zone. I don’t know how often I’ll see him but I am happy that he was finally able to train, something he was really looking forward to doing.

While most of the missionaries in my zone stayed put we did however get a new district leader and new sister training leaders in the zone. In order to get the district leaders up to speed with the vision that Elder Hamilton and I have established we got lunch at chipotle with the district leaders. There’s something really nice about having a meeting outside over lunch. It just really makes things feel official, yet relaxed. I feel like there will be a lot of good things happening here in this in the next couple months.

We have been trying to get our companionship more integrated with the ward. After initiating some game plans we came up with to strengthen our relationship with the bishop and with ward members it feels like things are really starting to change. After having nobody sign up for dinner to feed us the first two months of February we filled our calendar for this week on Sunday. We also lined up several service projects throughout the week for the ward members. Some of the advice that we got from the stake presidents meeting we had on Sunday was to befriend ward members so that they could trust us with their friends.

We had already decided to initiate that idea so it was good to see that as we follow the spirit or vision was aligned with there’s just in time for us to see results the very week they suggested it. I hope that by the time I leave here missionaries will be begging to come to this area knowing the members will help them in all aspects of the work.

I guess one thing I never expected a mission would teach me is that of problem-solving and creativity skills. Truly you cannot just go through the work every day doing the same thing. You will have little success and you won’t be very happy. However, when you do your best to come up with good ideas and good ways to create change things really do improve, a lesson and A skill I hope to apply to everything I do for the rest my life. As Winston Churchill put it “to improve is to change to be perfect is to change often.”

More importantly, I have learned that true change comes from centering our lives on Jesus Christ and making an attempt to be more like Him. Not only is He the perfect example of how we should live, but He is also the way that we change. It was His atoning sacrifice that gives us that ability. What a blessing it is to be able to partake of that blessing each and every day! I Love my Savior Jesus Christ, and I know He loves every single one of us.
How can you change this week to improve your life?

Love,
Elder Joshua Cordon

Elder Holland!!! – Jared

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Dear Family and Friends,

Well this week has been pretty Great! Some of the Highlights are that Elder Holland was in Hong Kong last night and he did a fireside to all the members, sadly he is in my old chapel and I had to watch it from our stake center. But its okay I will be seeing him tomorrow. He is so powerful and he gave a wonder talk on how we are all pioneers. Also how amazing this dispensation is. Its the first time we are commanded not to run from Babylon and establish Zion or Jerusalem, But to face Babylon and conquer it with a promise that we can not fail. He also gave a good warning using Jesus’ own words. That God will come back and people will surround him saying they are his people but he will say he never knew them. God will recognize his church, but whether or not he recognizes each member is up to us. I pray he will recognize me.

Another thing that happened was this week did my first service project in awhile. At this place called crossroads its a place that takes donations and sends them to Africa! I got to work with bunch of Somalians! Very cool!

We had a district find and before they had this stage set up in the town center, this one kid was doing all these tricks with a Chinese yo yo. Well later in the day we saw him again! He preformed for us and he has a whole bunch a sick magic tricks, He also has really bad turrets so its awesome to see him develop talents that don’t conflict. Best part is got his number and plan on meeting with him again. I can see it now I’m a Magician, I have turrets, I’m A Mormon.

One of our investigators is in a wheel chair due to an injury, yesterday he told us how, let me share. He said he was seeing a doctor for some depression but he gave him bad drugs that messed with him and pushed him to suicide. He ended up jumping off of 19 story building, the next thing he knows he is hanging across the power cables for a light rail train, so he pushes himself off and falls and hits his head on the rail. So he has this huge bump on his head, and is stuck in the wheel chair, but somehow this man is alive and only ended up damaging his back breaking his leg and he didn’t get brain damage. A pretty crazy miracle , that was in 1997.

Well I got Elder Holland tomorrow that I will tell you about the middle of next week. I got temple coming up.

Love you all
Elder Cordon

Here is a picture from our apartment window, And me with Elder Chan rocking the little and big ties!

Elder Cordon & Elder Chen rocking the ties

Elder Cordon & Elder Chen rocking the ties

View from our apartment window!

View from our apartment window!

Woo Deep Ward- Jared

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Woo Deep!!

Well off to the New Territories. This is not by any surprise actually its what I was hoping to get. I got an amazing start in the Wanchai and now I got the Hong Kong shock out of my system and am really looking to step up my efforts every day. This New area is in Tuen Mun and I am in the Butterfly Ward or in Chinese Woo Deep! I have an awesome new companion Elder Falk and he is from East Salt Lake. Actually He is the first 18 year old in Hong Kong. My apartment is awesome I have Elder Siebach, Elder Chan, and Elder Falk. We also all have May birthdays. Its exciting work here in the Tuen Mun area. There is 700,000 people living here. Its also been over 2 1/2 years since the Woo Deep ward has seen a baptism. So we are eager to change things and after the first couple of days under wraps that is looking more and more possible everyday. Elder Falk has been doing some awesome work before I got here and we are not looking to slow down so I will keep you posted. Also I will send a picture of the awesome view from Chelsea Heights, our awesome apartment. In the boonies of Hong Kong we still live on the 31st floor.

Love you all

Elder Cordon
Elder Cordon and his new companion

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

Daily Miracles :)

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Dear family and friends,

This past week was a good week.

Seems like every day we felt like we had experienced a miracle. That is always a great feeling! Some of the highlights where some lessons that we had with the conseillant family. They are an awesome family from Haiti, we have been working with them for about a month and a half now. Their names are Gabin and Emmanuella, they have three beautiful children, Alayna, Nala, and Gianni. They are like our best friends. I will definitely be keeping touch with them for the rest of my life. They would be wonderful members of the Church. Gabin is Apostle material. A huge step was made with them when we were talking about the disciples in 3 Nephi 19 in the Book of Mormon. Emmanuella was confused about something and we were struggling to help her understand it. That is when Gabin turned to her and in a perfect way explained it to her in a way we never could. It was a huge step because he has never tried to help explain some of our doctrine like that before. They give us marriage advice all the time, mostly for Elder Hamilton because we are predicting that he will be married by the end of the year haha. It is some really good stuff! They really know what they’re talking about.

I am loving every minute of my mission so far! I feel as if my morning studies have improved and I’m really loving the opportunity to tear apart the book of Mormon and just find so many nuggets of wisdom and truth. I have truly grown to love that book as I focus my studies around it. I really don’t care to read anywhere else right now. The Spirit it brings into my mornings alone is worth it. I feel as if anybody who doesn’t take time to study the book of Mormon every single day is missing out on a wonderful opportunity.

A fun thing that happened this week was a friendly competition that we had. On Saturday the assistance called us and asked if we could have lunch so we could talk about a few things. On our way to the restaurant Elder Hamilton and I were trying to guess what they were going to rebuke us for. Unable to think of anything that would give them ammunition we were curious as to what they wanted to talk about. About halfway through lunch and folded the plan before us. They told us that Sunday night from 5 to 9 we were going to compete to see who couldn’t score the most points. You could score points by knocking on doors, contacting people, getting new investigators, and setting baptismal dates. The prize was a golden eagle trophy they had found in the mission office. The Lord bless us with great success and they are going to give us the trophy sometime today. 🙂

I know that God is aware of our lives, and that he really does care about each and every single one of us. His hand is always extended, and we just have to reach out. We will find success and happiness in life as we turn everything over to him. It isn’t easy, but it’s not that hard either, and it is most definitely worth it! Have a great week!

I love ya’ll!

Elder Joshua Cordon