Elder Cordon and the Ultimate Journey of Awesomeness: The Things I've Seen...

MOM wanted to see my face

Wow. This week was nuts. Filled to the brim with all sorts of craziness. So lets get right into it.

There is a guy we know named Antonio who always likes to come and talk to us in English. He speaks English, Portuguese, Latin, bits of German, and bits of Arabic and Hebrew. Oh I forgot French. However, opposition in all things. He pretty much has no job, his home has no water, power, and ya. He is also a bit unstable? Not sure the best way to describe him. Anyways, so we see him the in the square and we had felt that we needed to start focusing on him. So we did. We hadn't seen him in a while so we went up to talk to him and miraculously managed to set up a time later that day to talk to him in the chapel! Well. That meeting was something. He said that as he sat in the church he felt a peace he had never felt before. We started to give him a tour but only made it to the room we have priesthood before he took liberty with the chalk board and explained/wrote a 'map' of words and began to more or less prophecy stuff. That was interesting. Anyways. We eventually calmed down and discovered a lot of his back story. Wow. Well we invited him to baptism and he accepted and is extremely anxious to be baptised and receive the gift of the Holy Ghost. We gave him a blessing.

The next day we went to his house. We knew it was bad living conditions there and we knew that cleaning his house would be a massive step to helping him feel the spirit more in his life. Well. That was an experience. You know those pictures you see of the after effects of a hurricane where its just waste? That was the interior of the house. Now take that and add ten or so years of decay, mold, humidity, and what not. You may or may not get an idea. Well, we cleaned the front room which was probably about 250 square feet. We filled a dumpster. For the sake of him, me, and you, I won't go into detail. This we hope is the start for him. He has a goal that by Christmas his home will be a place he is proud of where the spirit can abide. Unfortunately however, he didn't come to church. We're pretty worried because since we cleaned his house we have only gotten to meet with him once.

Other things that have happened: Zone Meeting, Divisions, a suggestive text from a random number we had to decline, more cleaning with Gypsies. We met a guy who we knocked on his door, told us he didn't want anything, and then invited us in for soup. So that was nice.

Ivan is the other awesome tale for this week. Ivan is flipping awesome!

So we scheduled a time to meet with Ivan in the park. We got there and were about to go meet him when we saw he was examining the first couple pages of the Book of Mormon we had given him in Russian. We quietly backed off for a bit to let him read and think. A couple minutes later we came and simply sat with him as he looked through the book. Oh man. The spirit there was awesome. Everything was super calm. The water on the river was glass. And we just sat there helping him understand who Moroni was, who Mormon was and he was getting everything. There were times when I thought "maybe I should say this!" But every time the response was "Listen" And it was fantastic. Later we walked with him up to the chapel and watched the Restoration video.

Then on Sunday (by the way Ivan broke his left hand beginning of this week so he's just powering through with a broken hand. Ivan is awesome) he came to church and we taught him after with a member. We watched the Restoration video once more this time with a big TV and the sound up high (last time was a tiny portable DVD player with hardly any sound) and in Russian. It was super powerful for him and he said when God spoke to Joseph he got goosebumps everwhere. He wants to start talking to us more often and wants to learn little bits everyday. Ya. He is the best. He loves the videos so we are going to watch The Testaments with him.

Anyways. All sorts of crazy things happen in the mission. From people begging for five dollars so they can buy a new phone case to racing oranges down a steep hill you just happened to be traveling down.

Not much time for anything else.

Thank you for your support and prayers everyone!

Love,

Elder Cordon