Love and Laughter

¡Hola familia y amigos!

First off me and Hermana Greer get along great! We are always laughing and both have a lot of goals to get the work moving along which is awesome! Laughter is seriously the cure for anything, if you´re frustrated or down in anyway just laugh! But it has definitely made a difference and it is continually strengthening our relationship! One funny thing is the public transportation here. There is one thing called an eclovia (I have literally no idea how to spell this word) but it´s basically kind of like the trax in Utah, but 5 billion people use it. So when you want to get on you basically are crammed up against everyone else and have literally no space to even take a step in either direction and you´re all moving with the car and so people are falling on top of people and when me and Hermana Greer had to get on it, we were basically dying of laughing. It was quite the experience and I realized that in that moment I could have been annoyed about how crowed it was or found how humorous it was that we were falling on top of each other. And laughing about things are always a better option! So my advice just laugh!

One huge blessing from the Lord this week is that we were able to find and contact two families, which added 12 investigators to our teaching pool! It definitely was a huge blessing and hopefully we can do all we can through the spirit and our willingness to work hard to teach these people and help them to accept the gospel and recieve all the blessings that it has! And the fact that is families is awesome! Because families help each other to progress and families stay so much stronger in the gospel, because they have a good support system!

One big lesson I learned this week is the importance of loving everyone that you are teaching, whether it be the first lesson with this person or the tenth lesson. Because when you love them the spirit is so much stronger in the lesson and you are able to be guided more by the spirit to know what to say to help these people exactly for their specific needs! This trait is definitely a gift from God and something that doesn´t come with no effort, so I am working and focusing day to day to just love everyone I come into contact with, and basically everyone in Ecuador so that I have a desire to talk to everyone and to teach everyone.

I love you all and thank you for your prayers and your love!

Love, Hermana Cordon

First Baptism!

Well as the subject suggests, my first investigator baptism was yesterday! Him and his younger brother were both baptised, he is 11 and his brother is 8, which now makes their whole family members and their parents are recent converts so the next goal is to get them to go to the temple and make the next step. We have them starting looking to that, but we got to get the dad more active. It was such a great spirit at the baptism and it was a cool experience for me to have someone that I helped bring to the gospel be baptised. That truly is the reason why I am here and it helps fuel the desire to be on a mission when you can see your efforts paying off and helping move the Lord´s work forward.

My spanish is truly improving and the Lord is definitely blessing me with the gift of tongues and interpretation of tongues. My first week in the field it would take me about 30 minutes to get through 5 verses in the spanish scriptures trying to understand them fully. But today, I read 3 full chapters in less than 30 minutes and understood the story line and only had to look up about a dozen words rather than every other word. It truly is a blessing from the Lord and I am truly grateful for my rapid progress. But, my spanish is still far from fluent and I still get lost in casual conversation, but I am taking whatever progress I can and I know that the rest will come with time through my efforts and the Lord´s blessings. 

The lesson I learned this week is that God answers prayers in His own way and in His own timing. I definitely am grateful for this lesson and the renewed testimony of prayers, because now I can testify with more power and trust in God when talking about prayer with an investigator. I also had a very strong renewed conviction of the Book of Mormon with an investigator lesson. I had her read Moroni 10:3- 5 and when she finished I started to testify and the Spirit just filled me and I could tell the spirit was in the room and that she could feel it. And that renewed my testimony of the veracity of the Book of Mormon and the way the spirit works. Open your mouth and testify and the spirit will add power to your words.

I hope everyone had a great week. Thank you for all the love and prayers you send my way. Trust God and everything will be brighter. 

Love,

Hermana Cordon