Story of Elder Cordon's Week, How it Went and Such

Well don't get sick because that's lame.

This week was pretty great. Started a bit slow but picked up momentum. We had more member present lessons than ever and I think thats just going to keep increasing!! To start off the week we went with Fernando, one of the most amazing recent converts ever, on an adventure for P-Day. We went to Guincho. Some amazing coast line and traveled along it until Cabo da Roca, the most western point of all of Europe. It was crazy windy and the sea was amazing. Probably one of the best P-Days yet.

Well one of the most awesome things this week was work with members. Amadora is really picking things up and getting proactive with things. We are putting a big push into cleaning up, updating, and reactivating the members list. Its a massive project but its going really well. Having a bishop is a massive blessing.

Well there once upon a time was a young adult 20 years old or so, who contacted us, asking for help to change his life. We called him, marked with him several times, but each time didn't work. We met him finally. He has had a seriously rough past but he has real intent to change. We brought him to the chapel this week where we sang a hymn or two, toured the chapel, explained the artwork, and watched the video of the Restoration. It was super spiritual. Then, the best part was Saturday. After a day of searching for names and addresses in an area we had never been before (Moinhos de Funcheira) we went to the chapel to have a lesson with him and a ward member Antonio Damião. The importance and role of members to missionaries is ENORMOUS. We need you members. Your small testimony can make all the difference. Antonio and our friend had come from similar backgrounds. Nearly everything Antonio said had a profound effect on our friend. We talked about overcoming addictions and self control and the Atonement and baptism. At one point Antonio brought us into the bathroom to give us an example of what baptism is. He had a glass filled with random gunk. Paper, bottlecaps, leaves, string, etc. He explained that this was us. He then filled the cup with water and dumped everything out and, showing the now clean empty cup, explained how baptism cleans us of our past sins. Well, our friend is working towards baptism now. Its going to be awesome.

Well, yesterday I woke up sick. Went to church, came home super sick. Layed down, then walked up a big hill to our appointment at 16h30 with Sister Tavares to teach a reference of hers. It turned out really well. We had a great lesson with her a few days previously and this lesson Elder Leung and Smith came to play the violin and sing to her. It really brought the spirit. She has a son who served a mission and she is devoutly catholic. It turned out to be really nice. I was feeling awesome on the way home but Sister Tavares commanded me to lay down once we got back to the house. Upon doing so I realized that I was feeling awful. I then slept on and off from about six in the afternoon until seven this morning. Feeling a lot better after schnazy soup and a blessing. Sickness is super lame, trust me.

Well I love you all, some pictures are here for you!

Elder Cordon

The Work Shall Go On

Hey everyone!!

This week was fantastic. So I'll just dive right in. P-Day of last week we found a random thing called the Mina de Agua (Water Mine) in the middle of the city that is hidden in a magical little courtyard that can only be accessed by going down a hardly noticible street/alley. It looks like something from Snow White and the Seven Dwarves. 

With that extremely important news to the side, on Wednesday we had a conference from a visiting General Authority, Elder Dyches. It was fantastic. I learned so much. I took probably three or four pages of quality notes (small plates notes not large plates notes if you know what I'm sayin'). Me and my comp sat right in the front. Elder Dyches talked a lot about planning effectively, Preach My Gospel Fundamentals and pulling knives out of peoples faces in the emergency room. Oh ya. This guy is awesome. At one point he announced that he was going to look at someone's planner, looked at me and said, "Elder Cordon, let me see your planner." My heart stopped. But I handed it to him. He looked through it, congratulated me on my planning, showed it to everyone, and handed it back. Before I could let out a sigh of relief he was grabbed my comps planner and said, "Now we are going to see if Elder Cordon is a good trainer or not." Now I was sweating bullets. But he looked it over, gave his approval and some advice to both of us, and handed it back. So ya. That happened. A new goal was made at that exact instant. My planners needed to be trophy planners from here on out. He also made very clear on my planner, "Zero is not a goal." #calltorepentance

Oh my gosh. There are so many things that happened. The division with the Zone Leader, invites to baptism, some ridiculous examples of boldness. Its awesome.

One of the miracles that happened this week was this man named Jose Silvio. He is a less active we visited and have been teaching. We taught him an awesome lesson about the Plan of Salvation and gave him a really powerful invite to church but he was hesitant if he would be well enough that morning to go. Sunday morning came around and our members list, which had his number on it, was missing. We looked everywhere! We finally left to the chapel. "Dang it Elder, he won't come to church if we don't call him and give him an incentive." I said somewhat dejectedly (oh me of little faith). Well we get there and we are greeting everyone and he shows up!! In a suit! We were super excited! Our whole district brought less active members to church. The bishops councilor came up to us to tell us that there were members who came to church today that he hadn't seen in years.

We are building up the confidence this ward has for us and there desire to do missionary work. It is amazing to see the cogs start turning and things clicking into place. When members come up to you putting the pressure on you about when are we going to do a family home evening to integrate the new convert into the ward to get to know their visiting teachers they just assigned and to help her son to earn money for the temple trip coming up.

I love Amadora, I love missionary work, and I love the Restored Gospel of Jesus Christ.

This was on my planner for last transfer (btw, transfers happened, I'm staying with Elder Ramos and Elder Taylor and Simpson are also staying, new sisters in the ward though, whitewash) and I thought you guys might like it. Its actually a quote Elder Simpson shared with me:

"The virtue of all achievement is victory over oneself. Those who know this victory can never know defeat."

-A.J. Cronin

Well do what is right, let the consequence follow! Be an agent not an object!

Love you all,

Elder Cordon

Also, the package was fantastic. I got so excited to see the rice krispy treat. Also the minifigs were: broken foot guy, and animal control person. OH ya. Also I like the gloves, but the buttons already broke :/

Awesome!

Conferences, Cascais, and Theatres!

Hey guys!

This week was neat, we had zone conference and interviews and all sorts of awesomeness. To start off was zone conference. We left fairly early to get there and it was really cool. President said some great things and the zone leaders gave a great lesson on boldness. "If we don't know how to teach, we're going to lose, and we're going to lose a lot [...] our lessons are works of art." Our lessons are works of art and they need to be worthy of being signed by the spirit.  Also the boldness thing, we need to be bold in the manner of Christ. We can't be too bold, nor not bold enough but bold in the manner of Christ. If we are too bold we will be focusing on numbers and lessons and never people. If we aren't bold enough, we will be focusing on friends and comfort. If we are bold after the manner of Christ we will be focusing on teaching people with lessons and helping them as individuals to come unto Christ.

Next up on the list, we have Cascais! This Saturday we had an activity with the zone to help out the branch in Cascais. They have probably the most amazing chapel I have ever seen. It looks out from the mountain towards the sea and is pretty much a mansion. It even has a deck pool! They don't use it anymore but its there! You walk in to see this curved staircase going upstairs with the prophets lining the walls. It was amazing. That day we had an open house inviting people to tour the chapel. The hardest thing for them though is the location. The chapel is pretty much hidden so its hard to get people there so we did contacts all day inviting people to the chapel. It was way fun. Met some Jehovahs Witnesses who gave us a hard time about family history, met a guy named Oo-Oo-Oo-Ha-Ha-Ha-Ha who gave me 5 thank you's and only gave my comp 4 (he made that clear) and I placed a pass along card on a Ferrari. Oh man, tell me it wasn't awesome.

Unfortunately no one showed up for church. It was a sad but the sacrament still was wonderful as always. Then for the finale, on Sunday we were in-charge of doing the third and final hour for the relief society and the priesthood combined. We had it down in the sacrament hall. So, what did we do? We did a theatre! I was the reference, Elder Taylor was the member, and Elder Ramos and Simpson were the missionaries! We showed three situations, 1) missionaries asking for references, 2) teaching with the missionaries, and 3) welcoming investigators to church! With each of these we showed examples of what not to do and what to do that works. It was super awesome. Everyone was laughing and it also got the point across really nicely. The members were extremely involved with telling each other what they need to do to help the investigators feel welcome and what not. The ward mission leader was SO happy, as was the bishop. We now have soo many invitations to go and eat and peoples houses. We are really excited and hope this makes a big difference in our ward! We also really hope it lasts and not just something for this group of missionaries.

It was a good week, this next week is going to be crazy. We have a mission conference of sorts with Elder Dykes along with a division in another area and ward mission council! Hopefully we will be able to get some solid work in!!

Well, I love you guys! Pray for opportunities to share the gospel with those around you. Then do it!

Love,

Elder Cordon

Achievement: List Cleaner

Boa tarde a todos!

This week was... sic. Things are getting going. As the subject implies. We are really hitting this members list hard. We have a big map of our area and we spent some time marking the roads of every member on the list in our area to go and find them. We are currently on page 20 or so of 27. Its pretty crazy. We also have spent considerable amounts of time tracking down these people, talking to them, finding out they have been dead for ___ years or moved ___ years ago. And then we contact those that live there! Its turning out really well and things are going nicely.

When you really get to the bottom of everything, happiness in missionary life is totally dependent on the work. If you are working you are happy. Perhaps you may not be totally effective, but just keep trying and work. Its the best. Pois trabalhando estou feliz! Put your shoulder too the wheel! This was a happy week I believe. We are starting to pick up some promising momentum.

Time for some stories? Last night we had about twenty minutes left to work. We said a quick prayer asking to find someone to talk to or to perhaps teach a lesson. Well we started off walking. We got to a point and looked at our watches and said something like, 'well we should get going home'. So we start heading back and as we are almost at our apartment we see someone walking down a side road towards us. So we turn up the road to talk to him and suddenly we recognize him as this kid we've talked to a couple times before in the road! Nothing heavy. He told us before how he is athiest and not interested. Well, we started talking a bit and he asked us, okay, I don't believe in any of this but tell me what the difference between you guys and Catholics are. So suddenly we have this massive Q&A that was all over the board. Well he has a Book of Mormon and committed to reading it. Pretty cool, but also really interesting. He doesn't understand to well why God doesn't like drugs and was also curious if God would disapprove of the fact that he was incredibly racist. Ya. This is going to be super awesome. 

We also found keys this week lying in the road. We marked down some information and took them to the Police Station. We talked to the officer there who turned out to know a member of the church (the member was the police captian or whatever the head man is called) and let us buy really cheap water from their vending machine. It was a blast, and the officer was really happy to see and talk to us missionaries.

This week I ate tripas! Tripe! For those of you who don't know what that is, its intestinal walls! It was a little weird if you thought about it while you ate so you just had to think of it as squishy meat. It honestly wasn't bad. In fact I would eat it again if it was offered. The worst part was just thinking about what you were eating and what comes out later if you know what I'm saying.

Another fun fact this week. We watched the video of the Restauration several times with members and investigators! The message of the Restauration is really powerful. I think we as members sometimes forget the impact of that truth. Something I learned from the video is the importance of real intent. For those who haven't seen it (its like 20 min, just go watch it) it shows the seasons pass in the video. Throughout the passing of seasons Joseph is looking for an answer. Think about that. He wasn't just like "hmm...I wonder which of these churches is true... [next day] ...hey look! James 1:5! ... [next day] I think I'm going to go pray and ask God what is the true church". He really searched. This was a search that lasted more than just a few days, more than a few weeks, this was months. Perhaps even more than a year of searching, rationalizing, and reading the scriptures. It wasn't a passing curiosity but something that ended up occupying everything that he did. It proved both his real intent and his sincere heart. It proved his faith in Jesus Christ and prepared him to receive that answer.

I learned that the Lord has eternal guidelines set in place thru which we receive revelation, success, answers, truth, confort, etc. Many times we receive a blessing or revelation according to the fullfillment of that guideline without realizing that we were fulfilling saidd guidelines. So, in the case of Joseph Smith, we know the guideline we may follow to receive revelation as to the truthfulness of something because of the Book of Mormon in Moroni 10:3-5. Joseph didn't. He had no idea. Steps of Faith, reading the scriptures, pondering, real intent, sincere heart, asking with faith to receive were unknown to him. But that was the way through which the Lord would answer his question. Joseph had no idea that he was fulfilling those principles but because he did, he received. God does not change and therefore he will not and cannot make an exception to the established patterns that are in place. 

I also learned from Elder Simpson (in our house) that effective study only will occur with a pen in your hand. If you don't write anything down, your rememberance of what you studied, also the quality of that study will be severely stunted. I have noticed I have received a whole lot more guidance and answers than before applying that. 

One last thing. An invite. Watch the video of the Restauration and while you do, ponder two questions and write the answers down. 1) How does the example of Joseph Smith help us to be dijsciples of Jesus Christ? and 2) How can we prepare ourselves to receive and interpret revelation?

You'll learn something new.

I love you guys, hope all is well. Your letters are awesome. I read them all and try to respond to all as well. If you've written me a handwritten letter. Your letter is coming. Perhaps a little slowly but it'll come!

Be wise, what more can I say?

Elder Cordon

P.S. Okay one more thing. Antonio Damião in our ward said a quote that I liked a lot. He was trying to say that the natural man is the enemy of God but slipped up and ended up saying "the natural man is the enemy of man." I found that super profound and awesome. Our natural man is the enemy of who we are, our purpose, and what we can accomplish. I thought this was super cool. Interpret it how you like.