March 11, 2013

I'm gonna be a grandma!!! Sister Guy is training her own little baby! I'm gonna have a grand-daughter, I'm so excited!!! haha.... oh.... and another daughter of my own! I'm training again too. I don't know where I'm going yet, we will find that out at our transfer meeting this week, but I will be leaving Lafayette and opening a new area with a new greenie! Lets just say I am only kinda sorta freaking out!!!

This week has been an interesting one. We did two exchanges, and I left the area for both of them. Sister Guy just took over Lafayette without even a blink of the eye, and she did such a good job its insane! And I went to the 2nd ward, and then I went to Fishers. That was the first time I have ever been doing work outside of Lafayette... and oh man is it different. I talked with about 3 people in 2 hours... that was hard! Everyone in Fishers is rich and has jobs and isn't home or won't answer their door. So the exchange was a long day, and it made it that much better to get back to my area. That night in my area we tracted for about an hour and talked with so many people! I love Lafayette... I'm so sad to be leaving it and all of the people here that I love! 

We had a special sisters training this week! It was crazy because there were so many sisters there, and I know that its just going to get bigger and bigger. We had a good time talking about self esteem and how we are good missionaries even though we are too emotional and lots of other really girly stuff! It was kinda funny because the Assistants were there and I'm pretty sure they were mostly just embarrassed... Sisters are built differently than Elders... thats for sure! 

Also on my exchange I went to a youth fireside about preparing for missionary work and I was on a panel with other missionaries and we talked about how great the work is. That was really fun! I have seen what this mission age change has done to the mission but I forget that it is affecting all aspects of the church. The youth really are being asked to step up, these young men can go to the temple when they are 18, and that is just really cool and crazy! Also it is affecting how the ward council is running. We are all about using the missionaries, because there are going to be so many of us! Its exciting to see the changes!!!

Well everybody, my mission president just let us know that we can email friends and family, so if I have friends out there that want to write to me but can't afford stamps, please send me an email, and I will for sure be able to get back to you! I love you so much!!!

Sister Cordner!

March 4, 2013

I don't want to waste your time telling you about every detail of my long week of knocking on doors, so I'm going to skip all of that and get to our training last Saturday with Elder Ballard.

The entire mission was together for the first time my whole mission. I was able to see and sit by my MTC best friends, as well as other sisters that I haven't seen in a while! Turns out that both my companions are now training their own greenie, and 2 of the 3 Elders I came out with are also training! Thats almost all of us who have just been in the field for 5 months are already training! The craziest thing is Elder Martin was just barely 19 when he came out, and he is training an 18 year old right now, they are the youngest companionship out here! But that is exactly what our training was on, how all of the missionaries have to step up and start being missionaries now because a tsunami of missionaries is coming out and we have to be ready to show them what our mission is about! 

First we were all sitting in the Chapel reading scriptures and then our mission president and wife, Elder Lansing, Bishop Stephenson, and Elder Ballard all walked in. We all stood up and they walked to the front but didn't sit down. President Collins said that Elder Ballard wanted to shake all of our hands, so we all went up and shook all of their hands. I think I even mustered out enough courage to say "hi" to him! Oh man... one of the greatest moments of my life right there!!!

Elder Lansing on the 70 spoke to us first. It was super funny because our mission presidents wife insists that we call P-Day "Preparation Day" and then Elder Lansing said P-Day in his talk and she just dropped her jaw and got so mad! Haha, the whole mission was laughing and she told him right in the middle of his talk that its called "Preparation Day". Sister Collins corrected a member of the presidency of the 70, it was so hilarious! Then Bishop Stephenson (you know, the Presiding Bishop of the Church), spoke to us! He gave great instruction on how to commit people to do things and how we need to bear strong testimony. Then we had a short break where we got up and walked around and said hi to some people, but mostly everyone just wanted to be back in the meeting because they knew once the break was over then Elder Ballard would be talking to us! 

He spoke to us for about an hour, on all sorts of different things! Then he opened it up for questions. My friend Elder Petersen asked him how we can continue to stay motivated in the work, and Elder Ballard told us what he does. Apparently being an Apostle isn't the easiest job, especially for someone in their 80s. But he pulled out a small picture of Jesus Christ, and told us that when he is tired, or doesn't want to work, or is having a hard time, he looks at that picture and is reminded why he is doing what he does. It was at this moment that the Spirit testified to me that Elder Ballard truly is a special witness of the Savior Jesus Christ. That being a member of the 12 is more than just being one of 12 people that live in Salt Lake and work for the church, but that he is a real prophet, seer, and revelator and he knows that Christ is our Savior. After he left we had a small amount of time for President and Sister Collins to talk with us. This might be the last time they can speak to the entire mission before they leave. Sister Collins got up and said, "Listening to him... we know that he KNOWS!" And it is true. I know that Elder Ballard is an Apostle of the Lord, and it has strengthened my testimony even more in the fact that President Monson is the Prophet on the Earth. 

Later that night we had 3 lessons and a dinner appointment. I have not had that many AMAZING appointments in a row in my entire mission. We are taught that if we do not have the Spirit, we cannot teach. I think for most of my mission I have been teaching with the Spirit, but after spending hours with an Apostle, our lessons just went fantastic, and the Spirit was SO STRONG! It was truly amazing! 

And it didn't stop there, our stake had a special Stake Conference and President Collins and Bishop Stephenson came and spoke to us on Sunday! That entire conference was on missionary work, and apparently all that Elder Ballard talked about in his training to the Bishops on Saturday was also about missionary work! Our mission is literally going to EXPLODE with missionaries. Not only are we getting about 80 more, but we are losing 2 stakes. So what used to be a mission of 8 zones and 170 missionaries is going to be a mission of 6 zones and 250 missionaries (60 of whom will be sisters!) Thats 10 sisters per stake... thats INSANE!!! 

I love being a missionary! Its basically the best thing in the world someone could be doing, and I love that I get the chance to be doing it at this fun time where the work is just exploding! Thank you all for your prayers and encouragement! Love you,

Sister Cordner

February 25, 2013

First off, my best friend Bri just got engaged this week!!! Congrats Bri! I will work on getting a cute picture of me to you so you can blow it up at your wedding! (Like make the picture a life size one of me, not actually blow my picture up, that wouldn't be nice... )

So this week was another hard one, as most mission weeks seem to be! haha, it really wasn't that bad, just kind of slow and we didn't teach nearly as much as we wanted to. Our family of 4 that had a baptismal date for next month has been SO hard to meet with, its been over 2 weeks since we last taught them. We call them and stop by but they are just becoming impossible, so we are praying that they really are just going through a busy stage and that they aren't avoiding us, and that they are still reading in the Book of Mormon!!! They still haven't come to church though, and they were going to be baptized in a few weeks... so we don't think thats going to happen until they come to church. But having said that, we did find a potential of ours at home this last Saturday and talked with her for about 20-30 minutes about prophets, and invited her to come to church, and she did!!! We got her a ride and she stayed the whole time, and she is super funny! She is young, probably around my age. She came here from Chicago (lots of people from Chicago and Gary come to Lafayette because its just a nicer place here!) searching for a better life, and she has TONS of questions about religion. She said everything we say makes sense, and we are going to see her again this week! I love finding golden people like her! (Side note, our other golden GOLDEN investigator had a death in the family, so we also haven't seen her in I think probably 3 weeks now, and I'm so bummed because I might be leaving soon and I just really really wanted to teach her!)

Sister Guy and I both got sick this week. We were feeling kinda out of it all day Wednesday, our appointments were falling through so we had a marathon day of knocking on doors, and it was cold, and just one of those days where your thoughts are consumed with "I don't want to be a missionary today" instead of "I can't wait to talk to this next person!" That night I crashed as soon as we got in, and the next morning I just felt miserable. I probably would have mustered up the energy to go out and work, but Sister Guy felt as bad as I did, just coughing and sneezing, headaches, no energy, and just an overall sick feeling. Since both of us were sick we thought that trying to push through would kill us, and we spent the day in trying to recover. And it worked, because Friday morning we both felt SO much better. Still a little sneezing but it wasn't as bad as it had been! 

Anyway, the reason the email is titled "So Excited" is because we are going to be hearing from Elder Ballard this weekend, and I AM SO EXCITED!!! Oh man am I excited! And then next week we have a specialized sisters training, which should be really cool! And that means I will get to see my old companions twice in the next 2 weeks, and I miss those sisters so much!!! And we got the news today that we will be doing 2 exchanges this transfer, so we have to make some arrangements, but I will be spending a day in Indy either this week or next week with a new sister, so that will be fun! And on top of that, President Collins is going to come with us to a lesson with the Preacher we are teaching! After that lesson on Priesthood Authority, we realized we needed MORE help to teach this man, so we called President last night and he said he would love to come out with us! BEST DAY EVER!!!

Good things are ahead for us here! Lots of changes are going to be happening, we will be getting our new President later this year. His name is Steve Cleavland, and I don't know anything more about him that the fact that that is his name! Also you may have heard about all the new missions being opened, and one is being opened in Ohio that will take part of our mission, so I might be switching missions to the Ohio Cincinnati Mission, which would be hard because it took me so long to learn how to spell Indianapolis, and now I would have to learn Cincinnati... but that is still months and months away, so I'm not going to worry too much about it! Also I saw that they are making an Arizona Gilbert Mission!!! Way to go G-Town... you got your own mission! I sure do love that town!!! 

Anyway... long email today! I love you all, have a great week!

Sister Cordner

February 18, 2013

Hola everyone!

This week has been..... well.... not my favorite! haha. It was supposed to be so solid, we had SO many appointments scheduled, and at the end of the week I think we totaled only having taught about 6 lessons. We had 4 lessons in 1 day fall through, and many more throughout the rest of the week. Our family with a baptism date for next month still didn't come to church and cancelled both lessons this week... we aren't so sure they are still solid about getting baptized. Our other golden investigator who we were going to give a date to this week had to cancel all of her appointments too, and then all of the amazing new people we met last week didn't meet with us. (Do you think that people don't want to be rude, so they say we can come back and set up a time for when they know that they won't be home, and then they give us a wrong phone number... cuz I'm thinking that is what is happening here!!!) 

But other than the lack of appointments and the tracting in the freezing snow... it was a good week! Valentines Day was super fun! A member took us out to Pizza Hut and we just had a load of fun getting to know her! Sister Guy got a bunch of "God Loves You" type Valentines so we handed those out to all our investigators and other people we knew that day! Most people thought we were really cute! haha! And Sister Guy gave me the valentine that you usually give the teacher, and she wrote really cute and funny things in it! She is the best! I didn't even think to get her something (I guess I'm like my dad in that way)! 

Oh Tuesday was an amazing day! Our zone conference was really fun! I met the first 19 year old sister! She is super cute and was going to BYUI, so we had a lot of fun getting to know each other! They just opened a new area that hasn't been opened in a long time, and apparently there is room in their apartment for another set of sisters, and the ward has been asking them when the other set will get there, so we are  thinking they will get more sisters in Warsaw soon, and she thinks I should be her roommate and work in the same ward as her!!! I'm thinking that I never want to leave Lafayette though. We had dinner at the Bishops house yesterday and he said that he would ask Elder Ballard when he comes in 2 weeks if Sister Guy and I can stay in his ward our whole missions. Then Elder Ballard can tell our mission president, and the two of us will just serve our entire mission here! He thought it was a pretty good idea, and I kinda agree with him!!!

Oh my gosh, the cutest thing happened this week! There is this boy in our ward (10 years old) who is the funniest kid I have ever met! A few weeks ago we had dinner at their house on a Sunday and Luke was helping us decide what we should do on our preparation day. He said we should get lazer pointers and play with them.... (random idea, but it was funny at the time!) So yesterday before church he comes up to us as we are about to sit down with our investigator and he gives us a walmart bag. He had bought two lazer pointers for us! His dad talked to us later about how he saw those at the store and said that he had to get them for the sisters, and that he used his own allowance money to buy them for us. So last night Sister Guy and I were playing with our lazer pointers, and I'm not gonna lie, it was a whole lot of fun!!! 

I love this ward, I love the people here so much! Dad you tell everyone who questions it that I LOVE INDIANA!!! I am so thankful that I was called here, and even though Lafayette is probably the worst smelling city in the world, I just love it so much!

Till next week,

Sister Cordner

February 11, 2013

Oh man, this has been such a good week! I know that numbers shouldn't mean anything, and I always remind myself that when we have a week with very low numbers. But just looking at our numbers this week reminds me of how good of a week it was! We met our goal of member present lessons with 6! Thats been our goal for a while and its always so hard to get 6 members to come with us to different lessons throughout the week, but we did it! We also had a goal of 4 other lessons (because we are usually averaging about 10 lessons a week) and this week we taught 12 other lessons!!! On top of that we taught 4 less actives, found 5 new investigators, and did service for this potential. 

Okay, I need to interrupt the email to expound more on the service we did this week. Usually on Wednesdays we do service at the YMCA doing paperwork and such. This Wednesday about an hour before we needed to go to the Y the Lafayette 1st ward elders called us and said they were moving a potential investigator from their area to ours and needed help. So we decided this would be a better service opportunity than the Y, so we called them and told them we couldn't make it, and met up with the elders to help this lady move. Okay... she was super funny and really nice, but she was a hoarder, worse than I have ever seen on any of those TV shows. We were helping her unpack stuff while the elders helped carry in heavy things, and seriously she had 2 garbage bags FULL of different purses. She tells us that she goes through trash to get free things, and its not even something she will need, but if its in good condition she will grab it because maybe someone she will know needs it! She got kicked out of her last house by the Mayor because of some problem with her helping gang members or something... and so she had to be out by a deadline and she was saying how much she appreciated that she could call the elders and a bunch of us showed up. I felt good about helping her, but it was probably the most disgusting thing I have done thus far. I felt like a shrink on Buried Alive... "Do you NEED this?" "No but I like it..." "Okay well you already have 3, will you use this?" "Well I haven't yet but maybe I will..." "Okay we are going to give this one to Goodwill then" "But..." Oh man, the job of a missionary is always exciting!!! We tried to bring up the gospel while we did it but it really just wasn't a good setting.... we are planning on stopping by in a couple weeks to see if she is interested in learning about Christ! 

Okay, back to the amazing week, we were very busy all week long, and it has gone into this next week too! We have back to back appointments all day Wednesday. We won't even have time to find new investigators! Thats my favorite thing too! I used to wish my days looked like this, but now I see back to back appts and wish that we had time to tract. I love knocking on doors! Its kinda like a super fun rush when you start talking to someone and they talk back! Oh man I love it so much!!!

Tomorrow we have Zone Conference, which I'm excited about, but it knocks out a whole day of work! I think I'd rather be finding and teaching than sitting in a conference all day listening to how we need to take better care of our cars and how to avoid bed bugs. But speaking of conferences, I am super DUPER excited about one in March, because Elder Ballard and the General Bishop are going to be in Indy talking to all of the missionaries!!! BEST DAY EVER! My first apostle to visit my mission, its gonna be so great! 

Sister Guy and I have been speculating about whats going to happen next transfer. I'm pretty sure I'm going to stay in Lafayette the rest of my mission, but she thinks I'm outa here in a month... sad day! I hate to even think about saying goodbye to everyone here, so I'm just not going to think about it, the next transfers are still 4 weeks away! In the mean time I'm just gonna teach everyone in Lafayette and its gonna be great!!!

Last thing, we had one of my best lessons my whole mission on Friday night. We started by following up on her Book of Mormon reading, and she starts to tell us how much she loves this book. How it goes hand in hand with the bible (she has been using the footnotes) and how it has brought so much clarity to questions she has always had and never knew where to look for the answers. This was her 2nd lesson!!!!!! I have never seen someone grab hold of the Book of Mormon as fast as she has! She just loves it and loves how much she is learning from it. When we taught her the Plan of Salvation she would ask amazing questions that we had answers for! And she just knew that everything we said made sense and that it was true! We are going to invite her to be baptized next! OH MAN OH MAN!!! Missionary work is so great its insane! I always knew I wanted to serve, and its lessons like that and weeks like this that really remind me why I had this desire to come out here! I love it so so so so so so so much!!!!

BEST WEEK EVER!!!

Sister Cordner

February 11, 2013

First off, my best friend Bri just got engaged this week!!! Congrats Bri! I will work on getting a cute picture of me to you so you can blow it up at your wedding! (Like make the picture a life size one of me, not actually blow my picture up, that wouldn't be nice... )

So this week was another hard one, as most mission weeks seem to be! haha, it really wasn't that bad, just kind of slow and we didn't teach nearly as much as we wanted to. Our family of 4 that had a baptismal date for next month has been SO hard to meet with, its been over 2 weeks since we last taught them. We call them and stop by but they are just becoming impossible, so we are praying that they really are just going through a busy stage and that they aren't avoiding us, and that they are still reading in the Book of Mormon!!! They still haven't come to church though, and they were going to be baptized in a few weeks... so we don't think thats going to happen until they come to church. But having said that, we did find a potential of ours at home this last Saturday and talked with her for about 20-30 minutes about prophets, and invited her to come to church, and she did!!! We got her a ride and she stayed the whole time, and she is super funny! She is young, probably around my age. She came here from Chicago (lots of people from Chicago and Gary come to Lafayette because its just a nicer place here!) searching for a better life, and she has TONS of questions about religion. She said everything we say makes sense, and we are going to see her again this week! I love finding golden people like her! (Side note, our other golden GOLDEN investigator had a death in the family, so we also haven't seen her in I think probably 3 weeks now, and I'm so bummed because I might be leaving soon and I just really really wanted to teach her!)

Sister Guy and I both got sick this week. We were feeling kinda out of it all day Wednesday, our appointments were falling through so we had a marathon day of knocking on doors, and it was cold, and just one of those days where your thoughts are consumed with "I don't want to be a missionary today" instead of "I can't wait to talk to this next person!" That night I crashed as soon as we got in, and the next morning I just felt miserable. I probably would have mustered up the energy to go out and work, but Sister Guy felt as bad as I did, just coughing and sneezing, headaches, no energy, and just an overall sick feeling. Since both of us were sick we thought that trying to push through would kill us, and we spent the day in trying to recover. And it worked, because Friday morning we both felt SO much better. Still a little sneezing but it wasn't as bad as it had been! 

Anyway, the reason the email is titled "So Excited" is because we are going to be hearing from Elder Ballard this weekend, and I AM SO EXCITED!!! Oh man am I excited! And then next week we have a specialized sisters training, which should be really cool! And that means I will get to see my old companions twice in the next 2 weeks, and I miss those sisters so much!!! And we got the news today that we will be doing 2 exchanges this transfer, so we have to make some arrangements, but I will be spending a day in Indy either this week or next week with a new sister, so that will be fun! And on top of that, President Collins is going to come with us to a lesson with the Preacher we are teaching! After that lesson on Priesthood Authority, we realized we needed MORE help to teach this man, so we called President last night and he said he would love to come out with us! BEST DAY EVER!!!

Good things are ahead for us here! Lots of changes are going to be happening, we will be getting our new President later this year. His name is Steve Cleavland, and I don't know anything more about him that the fact that that is his name! Also you may have heard about all the new missions being opened, and one is being opened in Ohio that will take part of our mission, so I might be switching missions to the Ohio Cincinnati Mission, which would be hard because it took me so long to learn how to spell Indianapolis, and now I would have to learn Cincinnati... but that is still months and months away, so I'm not going to worry too much about it! Also I saw that they are making an Arizona Gilbert Mission!!! Way to go G-Town... you got your own mission! I sure do love that town!!! 

Anyway... long email today! I love you all, have a great week!

Sister Cordner