Three Baptisms, One Zone Conference, Eight Billion Emotions

Blessings

Imagine combining every rollercoaster that has ever and will ever existed into one ride. Thats effectively been this week. Then add a hurricane. The words do not exist to properly and effectively describe this week.

Warning: I just kind of word vomited this week into this email. For a detail account (so, pretty much Mom) you can read down here. But if you just want the gist of what happened. Just scroll to the bottom.

So. From the beginning. The start of this week was relatively uneventful. We helped out Lídia and Glide a bit more with cutting grape vines, rose bushes, fixing clippers and such. They are really starting to warm up to us and trust us. We fixed their window latch from outside and cut more vines and roses. They are super sweet. Also near by is this street where a whole bunch of gypsies live that we have started doing service at. They are super friendly and their yards and neighborhood is a mess! So we are starting to clean up the area and they are super grateful! We are going to try to bring them all the gospel too. Should be a party.

Well the real exciting stuff happens on Wednesday. We were finishing up our personal study when we get a call from Marlyne. I'm not even sure if I've told anything about their situation or teaching them or anything which adds to the idea of how out of the blue this was. We had marked them a while back for this weekend but because of various issues we didn't feel that they were perhaps ready. Anyways, she calls us and is like "I was talking to the Relief Society President and I just wanted to know how things are going to work for our baptism this Saturday." So, I said something like, "...uh...you kind of need to teach you a bit more stuff (all of the commandments and 5th lesson)" to which she very directly replied that when people are ready, they are ready and that they may not know everything yet but that doesn't mean they have to have all of the scriptures memorized before baptism and what not. This went on for several minutes. At the end I was like, "Yup. We can do a baptism Saturday."

We met with them later at six. I had been praying like none other from the end of that call up until we met with them. We explained to them how the baptism was going to work. We tore out a page in our agendas that has all of the baptismal interview questions and gave them that and asked them to read through and see what they didn't understand. They said they understood everything but we left them with the pamphlets for the Law of Chastity, Word of Wisdom, and Tithes and Offerings. Later that night we get a text saying, "Whats the law of tithing?" When we got it me and my comp just looked at each other in a kind of 'well now what?' So we told them. They still were determined to be baptized. YES.

Thursday. Oh yes we are only on Thursday. We had Zone Conference which was flipping awesome. We had some great practices from President, the Assistents, and the Zone Leaders. We received the announcements for the temple ground breaking on December 5! We also found out that our stake is doing some Halloween Party this next Saturday that all missionaries are supposed to come to. We live as far as possible from this activity so unfortunately it may not be very effective for us to go but it will really help out that ward in Lapa.

Friday. We did a companionship inventory that lasted perhaps two hours or so. No elephant in any room for the next mile could be hidden from us. It was super needed and will help us work more effectively together in this work. That was the day we helped the gypsy home! 

Then Saturday we had the baptismal interviews for the three. Marlyne, Marilene, and Leila! The mother's interview went for two hours. When she finally came out, Elder Bethers who did the interview happily proclaimed she was good and asked who was next. The two daughters were much quicker. When we finally left a lot of stress we had been feeling was now relieved.

Sunday came around. E. Lowry and I both spoke in Sacrament with the theme of Member Missionary Work! It was awesome. We had the baptism at the chapel in Alverca later that day combined with the Sisters' baptism. We found out however that there wasn't enough baptismal suits and all sorts of problems started popping up. Somehow, not sure how, all of them were addressed and we finally started one hour later.

Then there was the baptism in and of itself. AH. It was so great. That was definitely the highlight of the week. I was so nervous about saying her name right I forgot to close my eyes for the prayer. But hey! It all worked out!

Well, I just realized that this letter is massive and it in no way fully describes nor conveys even slightly the breadth of craziness that went on. Its been nuts. But. If you just kind of skipped through all of that to get to the end I can't blame you. For you who didn't want to read all of that. This is effectively what happened: Service, Zone Conference, Temple Construction Announcment, Companionship Inventory, Super Suprise Baptisms.

You guys are great. This letter is long. And I now I don't really know what to say. So...k thanx bai.

Love,

Elder Cordon

Insert Clever Title Alluding to Elder Cordon's Past Week Here

Dallin's Mom inserting information.  This entry is from last week.  I have been out of town so we are playing catch up...

Salutations,

I luckily thought of that one last minute ;)

SO, good to see you! Its been about, what, a week since we last talked? Things in Vila Franca de Xira are going swell. We have had some pretty neat stories this past week. First things first is the window. Our house is slightly weird so we have a glass window in our study that looks into a small apendage of our kitchen where our washer is. Its funny because there is a window in there that looks outside so in the study we can look out one window to look out the other window to look outside. Hard to explain, maybe I'll send a picture. But anyways, the window in our study. We found a dry erase marker and are now using the window as a big list of all of the people we have contacted with potential, our formal list of our investigators and their individual needs, and other relevant information such as that mentioned. Its really nice for planning because we will think "who on earth can we call or plan for?" then we just look at that window and a lot of times we find someone to call!

The other day we had Ivan up on the window (contacted him once) and we were having no success in getting in contact again so we decided that we would give him a call and if nothing came out of it we would take his name down. We called him and, to our suprise, we marked a time to meet with him! Who knew? We were both like, well, I guess he's staying up there. 

We also were walking at night and passed a couple who seemed to be having a deep conversation of sorts and as we passed I thought "maybe we should contact them" but I just kept going. Well, whatever happened we were walking back that way and he calls out to us and asks "Are you guys Jehovah's Witnesses?" And we flip around and we're all "Nope! We are missionaries for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Have you heard of us?" We left him with a Book of Mormon and are excited to see them again.

We met this week with those two old ladies, Lídia let us in and we took more bags of garden waste out to the trash, sweeped up, helped pick grapes, and took the head of a garden hoe that she was very attatched to, and, using a branch she had picked out for just this purpose, put the head on. She now uses that for her cane. She was pretty excited and praised Elder Lowry endlessly for his genius as an engineer and his capability in using a screw driver! Really fun.

All sorts of stories and miracles. We got hold of a family we have been trying to meet with for a really long time and will be teaching them tonight. YES!!

Well, love you all. You are great! Happy Flippin birthday Rachel (that kills people)!

Stay awesome!

Elder Cordon

Conference, Bulls, and such

For some reason I always want to start off with something like "Hi" or "Hey everyone" or "Hello once again" but each time I always want to say something different in fear of getting repetitive so I decided to explain this dilemma to buy me some more time until next week to figure out what my opening will be.

View from My home

ANYWAYS, things are still going! I've been awful at writing in my journal which is my usual source of inspiration for writing my weekly letters as it helps me to remember what I actually did this week. However, in recent memory is (trumpet fanfare) CONFERENCE!! Ahh. It was so awesome. On Saturday we watched the Morning Session then on Sunday we watched Priesthood Session, Saturday Afternoon Session, and Sunday Morning Session. It was funny because it all happened in that order. As we were watching Priesthood session they mentioned the three new apostles and all of us Elders were like, "wait, what?!" It was simply awesome. Also, my comp just taught me how to write in italics after I accidentally pressed it. Super neat. Off topic, my bad. The Church is true. Nothing could affirm that more to me at the moment than having seen the calling of three new apostles and hearing the words and testimonies of our leaders including our wonderful prophet. One of the topics of conference I loved was that of eternal progression. I loved the talks that spoke on getting up and pushing forward in faith. One talk said something along the lines that we should not focus on the size or speed of our steps, but rather the direction we are facing.

That really hit me personally I felt. The mission will definitely show you personal weakness and I found mine: I am not patient with myself. I found that if I do not make progress quickly and immediately I become frustrated and dismayed, mostly with myself. However, as we turn to the Lord all things can be made strong. The message that I loved was that if you struggle with anything; addiction, depression, work overload, heart break, or individual weaknesses; ANYTHING, by turning to the Lord He can and will build us stronger. The scripture Ether 12:27 comes to mind: "And if men come unto me I will show unto them their weakness. I give unto men weakness that they may be humble; and my grace is sufficient for all men that humble themselves before me; for if they humble themselves before me, and have faith in me, then will I make weak things become strong unto them."

I remember Dad once telling me of Captain Moroni (pretty sure). The Lamanites were preparing to attack. Moroni knew his weak cities and knew likewise that it was these places that the Lamanites would focus on to attack and take over. So he went about strengthening and fortifying these, the weakest cities, until they were nearly impossible to overcome. When the Lamanites came in an attempt to take Nephite land, they were suprised to find that the weakest cities had become some of the strongest. Taken back by the preparations of the city they vowed to attack the next...only to find that the next city was even greater than the last. They had truly made weak things strong and the Lamanites had no chance.

Dad compared this to our lives. We have our cities. The city of patience, of honesty, of virtue, of humility, and many others. Some are stronger than others. We all have cities that are weak. When we humble ourselves the Lord will show us our weaknesses. This way we may know where we can fortify, resupply, and defend and with the Lord these weak cities can become truly strong. I also would add that I don't think any city is ever done fortifying or becoming stronger. Even in moments of peace, Moroni continued to fortify. Even though there may have been a lack of immediate conflict he did not relax and say 'all is well in Zion'. He continued to strengthen. Hence the eternal perfection as we continue constantly to strengthen ourselves and our cities to the point where we become like Moroni, and the powers of hell are shaken forever (Alma 48:17).

In my excitement for talking about conference I think I partially wrote my own conference talk. The past two weeks or so we have only had about half an hour to write email so now that we've finally found a place I suddenly seem capable of writing a whole lot more.

Recently, President Tavarez has been focusing on power as well. Gaining power in the work. Power behind our words and actions. He talked of two missionaries who could say the exact same thing to the exact same person with the exact same tone of voice and yet that person would react differently to the invitation of the two missionaries. What was the difference between the two? That difference comes from power. Where does that power come from? Okay, obviously from the Lord but how do we obtain that power? Dignity, faith, obedience, morning studies, prayer, diligence, hope and the time of our service are some of the things he mentioned.

Well, maybe some fun stories now. Today, my comp and I went and had the chance to see the bull runs. They had maybe a dozen people on horses, six in front, six in back, and the bulls in between. They all ran down the fenced street that had been filled with sand. Then, after a bit, they assigned one bull to each fenced off section and then let them go. People would run around with umbrellas, coats, and capes trying to get the bull to charge them. It was awesome.

Well thats it for me I believe. Prayer works. Try it.

Love you all,

Elder Cordon

Elder Jones