Tag Archives: Overcoming Weaknesses

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

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