Hey everyone!

Hey everyone! 

All sorts of fun stuff this week, first District Meeting w/ training, the worldwide missionary transmission, the search for less actives, climbing hills, forging rivers, discovering territories, conquering armies, and all those things that are included in saving the world. Its a party. 

I want to start off with the story of this family we found through the less actives list. Oh man. We were like "hey who is this family" and the member who is helping us clean out our members list (it seriously needs it, we have like 600+ members on that list) tells us that the family lives in an area thats pretty dangerous and we need to know the locals to go in there. ...Awesome. So we decided to head over there. Come to find out, we had actually crossed that area one night with this old guy who was showing us how to get to some other place. Anywho, we get there and find the mother and we set up to talk a bit more the next day (Sunday). Sunday comes and Church was awesome. We head up to their house and walk in to find a ton of people in there! We sit down to talk with everyone and at the end there was a total of maybe seventeen people all in this room listening to us. It was super cool. Many are less actives, some were little kids, some aren't members. Most are children of this widowed lady. She, and several of the others want to come back to church. Oh man. It was fantastic.

Funny story, across from the hill where this family lives is another hill where some modern art/city scaper decided to make massive letters A B C and D to put randomly on this hill sticking out like darts haphazardly thrown into a dartboard. This other lady walks past us and I stop her and ask her why the letters were on the mountain. Her response. "So that when you are talking to someone trying to explain where you are you can say, 'I'm at the place with the big A B C and D on the hill,' and they'll know exactly where you are!" Oh, of course, silly me. 

There was also a baptism this week for the daughter of a member. I don't even know what happened. A random mix of brazilians, emotion, spirit, ordinances, PSY, Minnie Mouse, and embarrassing baby stories from the pulpit. Don't forget the investigators! It was interesting :) we had a good laugh.

Well this week, I had an interesting testimony about the importance of showing patience and love with everyone. People in all times and in all places be you missionary or not, will intereact with you and many times these interactions are less than pleasant. How we handle those interactions make all the difference. I love the saying that people will hardly ever remember what you said to them but they will remember how you made them feel, and that feeling is created by the words we speak. As missionaries the when we express love and patience for those who attempt to frustrate or distract us, they can recognize our calling as representatives of Jesus Christ. That was really cool. Its hard to forget that you are a missionary but its something different for someone to tell you, you must be a true servant of God.

Jesus Christ lives. He is the Savior and Redeemer of mankind. He knows us all individually and knows how to help us. If we will turn to Him, he will lift us.

Love you all,

Elder Cordon