Tag Archives: Savior

General Conference

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What an Easter, Spirit filled.

This last week was a wonderful time to share with everyone the blessings of Easter and what it means to me. The Easter Bunny is cool and all but the best gift that was ever given to us, really the only gift that truly matters, is the reason why we truly celebrate this Holiday. It was wonderful to deeply reflect on the wonderful blessings of the Atonement in my life and to really see who I have been able to become because of the Savior Jesus Christ and the wonderful Gift that he gives us. I love Him so much.

He truly has become a friend to me, he is on my thoughts and in my heart and will always be someone that I go to for safety and council and direction. I am so grateful for him.

I have loved seeing what he does for people around me, and not just investigators of the church but members and other missionaries. Watching the gospel work in their lives is wonderful and brings such joy into my heart. Some of my favorite moments have been to watch my companions grow, to see the Atonement work in them and then to watch how in reaching out to others it changes me as well.  I truly have had a life changing mission, one that has set my path for the rest of my life I now can truly see how the Mission is the MTC for life. There are things in my Blessing that would have never been able to be fulfilled had I used my agency and not gone on a mission I am so glad that I made that choice.

These last couple of weeks while reflecting on the questions that MyPlan asks I have really been able to see how the mission is going to effect every part of my life to come. WOW so great!

This week we had Cierra and John at church. We also had two of the LA that we are working with at church as well, Ryan and Jacinda. What a great sunday for them to be there. The spirit was so strong and the all loved being there and celebrating Easter!

GENERAL CONFERENCE here we come!!
LOVE YOU
ELDER CORDON

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Happy New Year!

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I am grateful for the Christmas season, the spirit that it brings into the world is wonderful and brings smiles and feelings of love to many. It is a wonderful time for those that know what the true meaning of Christmas is full of remembering the Savior in more abundance; and for those that don’t know it still radiates to them and their lives a happiness that comes from this season.

I am certainly grateful for the testimony that I was able to share with those that we visited this week. To share with them my knowledge of the Savior.

Kristy is a new Investigator of ours that is just so prepared to receive the wonderful truths of the gospel. She is preparing to be baptized on January 9th and going strong for that date. We are having every lesson so far in members homes and she is getting into a different on every time. So many people want to help and they are surrounding her with love and friendship. It is so exciting to have so many people involved in the work, that is exactly what the Lord wants.

As we are out everyday putting forth our faith God leads people to us and leads us to people. I love being a part of this work.

I love that I have the opportunity to serve others, the people of Pasco and other missionaries. This is such a wonderful time of year. This week we welcome in the New Year! WoW were did the time go. It seems like just yesterday that I was announcing 2015 now it is 2016.

Time is truly a precious thing.
Thank you everyone for everything that you do.
Have a great New Years and set great goals to accomplish in the coming year.
Love, Elder Cordon.

Keep on Running

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Dear Family and Friends,

This past week was a wild one for sure. We had zone conferences, which considering the fact that they were 9 hour meetings it made for a long but a very fun week! The meetings we jam packed with great training’s on maintaining a balanced work, the atonement, public speaking skills, and then the training that we gave on finding people to teach. It is great to see all the missionaries that I was able to see all the missionaries that I have served around. This week we had a couple of miracles, but one in particular I would like to mention.

We were on our way to a dinner appointment and when we walked up to the apartment that the members lived in, it looked like the lights were off so, I doubted myself and thought that I must be at the wrong
building. So, we started running so we wouldn’t be late to one of the other buildings. We ran through one cluster of buildings and I still didn’t feel like that was it, so we ran over to another cluster of
buildings and as we got there we saw a dog running in the side walk, so we stopped so it wouldn’t follow us. We made some small talk with the owner until she grabbed her dog and then we were about the run off
to get to our dinner, but then I felt that I should at least see if she would be interested in hearing our message.

So I stopped and said, “We share a wonderful message about our Savior Jesus Christ that has blessed our own lives, could we share that with you?” Surprisingly she replied with, “Ya sure come on over and share
it with me.” 20 minutes later we had taught her about he Book of Mormon and learned that she is about to graduate law school, and she is engaged and plans to be married after she graduates. Even though she is active in the Methodist church she was excited to learn more and said we could come back. She is very elect.

Seeing as how we were then very late to our appointment we checked the address on the church app and realized that it was the first place we had gone to. Thank goodness we kept running though.

I love y’all!

Elder Joshua Cordon

A Message of Joy

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Dear Family and Friends,

I try to reflect on my life as much as I can. Even on a mission its hard to find time. But when I do its always a joyous experience. A principle that I have striven to get my investigators and recent converts to understand and is simply and clearly laid out in 2 Nephi 28:30–

“For behold, thus saith the Lord God: I will give unto the children of men line upon line, precept upon precept, here a little and there a little; and blessed are those who hearken unto my precepts, and lend an ear unto my counsel, for they shall learn wisdom; for unto him that receiveth I will give more; and from them that shall say, We have enough, from them shall be taken away even that which they have.”

The Lord knows when we are ready to receive new revelation. You must do all you can to seek what God has and to always do his will. I think a big part of that is receiving the revelation in the order which he desires us to receive it. We can all strive to understand the basic ordinances and principles of the gospel being first faith in our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, and second Repentance. If we all devoted our entire lives to studying these two principles then we truly would only understand a fragment of what they mean, there is so much to learn. There is a reason that truly all conference talks relate back to these two things.

On an even deeper note– How many of us truly love our Savior Jesus Christ? How many of us really love our neighbor? I dont know if I have ever heard someone express the intensity of Joy they felt as did Ammon or Alma after having given everything to the Lord and learning to love their enemies who countlessly tried to end their lives. I know that their is no greater joy in this life than that of a servant of the Lord. No matter how much money, material wealth, or excitement you can draw from a temporal nature it cannot and will not compare. If you find your life not were you desire it then I invite you to choose this day to serve the Lord and partake of incomprehensible JOY.

I love you all and appreciate all the support.

Elder Jared 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