Lessons Learned

Posted on April 29, 2015 by shalesecordon9

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

#BELIEVE

Posted on April 21, 2015 by shalesecordon9

Dear Family and Friends,

I am so very grateful for trails that allow us to become better. Life without the Gospel is very very possible, but that is just it this life is not it. This life was not supposed to be to just try and figure out how to have achieve some level of desired happiness through all of the mess and then die hoping that you made a big enough dent somewhere that hopefully people would remember your name.

Life was a time to develop faith in Christ, come to know what he has done, recognize the mercies of God, and to do the best you can with what you have been given. We have been commanded to be perfect, which no one can do, but that doesnt mean that we give up and dont try. The atonement is there and always will be, and “after all we can do” it will still be there to make up the difference.

I am grateful to have both sides of the story, I have lived life on my own without ever given God a look. I now get to see the light in my life, that was missing for so long, grow brighter every single day. I get to see that happen in others, I also get to see others choose not to have the light of their life grow any bigger and, like I used to be, stay wondering in darkness without ever even realizing it. God is there weather we want to believe it or not. Peoples disbelieve doesn’t remove God from there life, it only removes their life from God.

I love you all so very much you are all in my prayers.

LOVE
Elder S Cordon

PS the videos are a dust devil that we found on our lunch break. It was awesome. It traveled for about a mile. It was awesome. Pretty much a tornado.
1 of 2 Dirt Devil
2 of 2 Dirt Devil

Stepping Stones

Posted on April 6, 2015 by shalesecordon9

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

Elder Holland

Posted on March 6, 2014 by shalesecordon9

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

GET OUT OF MY STATE!! haha I say that out of love :-)

Posted on December 9, 2013 by shalesecordon9

Dear Family and Friends,

First of all I love you all, especially my family. So when I say that I was in Florida first don’t take it the wrong way. I just still can’t get over the fact that you waited to go to Disney World until after I serve my mission IN FLORIDA. It is ok though, no hard feelings… ok maybe a little 😉 Thank goodness I am not in the Orlando mission haha.

On another note. Elder Hamilton and I are a power team! We motivate each other really well and just get work done. We took a challenge from the Assistants to the Presidents to find a ridiculous 30 new investigators (the standard of excellence in the mission is 5)) this past week. We worked like crazy and met so many wonderful children of God. Many of them have great potential! Basically God granted us 25 new people to teach. It changed my perspective of what inspired goals, complete faith, massive action, and an expectation for mighty miracles can do.

We also had a Zone Meeting last week that went really well. I had to give a 20 min training which I was really nervous for because we don’t really have that much time to prepare for things like that because we have to worry about preparing lessons for investigators and doing proselyting still. The spirit really helped me out though and felt as if it took over. I could tell it had a positive impact on the Zone. God truly is good. I couldn’t handle all that is on my plate without him.

I had the blessed opportunity to baptize a wonderful brother into the fold of God. He is a humble man who is from Sudan, Africa. He was put into the military at the age of 12 there, but was able to leave to America when he was 20. My companion found him 10 weeks ago and he hasn’t missed church once. He has an incredible amount of faith, and he is really is just a wonderful brother. His name is Solomon Deng Deng. He was given the name Solomon when he was baptized into the Catholic church shortly after he moved here. I was very humbled by the fact that he asked me to baptize him, and what a blessing that was.

Another cool thing that happened this last week was when we swung by the mission office to take care of some different items of business. Right as we walked in Elder Rhoads, the vehicle coordinator (yes, I do realize the irony there), told us that we were going to help him out by driving one of the 2014 Ford Fusions to the Uhaul to get a bike rack hitch. Of course I had no objections. What a beautiful car that is. It is similar to the one we had when I first came out but that was a 2013. I was really hoping they were going to give us that car in exchange for the crappy 2011 corolla they have us in. But hey I shouldn’t be complaining it is better than biking haha.

I really love this area. I love the people we have met, and I have already learned so much. I have no doubt that God cares for each and every one of us individually. And that he really has a plan for us.

A spiritual lesson that I learned this week is that God cares more about our spiritual well-being than he does our physical. Here is what I mean by that. I have been sick for going on 4 weeks now. It stinks really bad, I just want to better. However, I find that at the end of the day, when I have given my all, I didn’t even feel sick all day until I slowed down just before bed. Basically when I lose myself in the work I forget about all my problems. God understands that we will have physical problems, that is just a part of life, but what he really cares about is that we keep the faith through it all. Every challenge is an opportunity to grow, so rather than praying for a change in circumstances we should pray for a change in character that will allow us to conquer our circumstances. That is something that my companion taught me. That is what I did, and it made all the difference in the world.

I love you all so much!

Elder Joshua Cordon