February 4, 2013

Well I will start with the most exciting news of all.... we got the transfer text last night and I am staying in Lafayette with Sister Guy!!! I am so so so happy about this. There would be moments last week after a lesson or when talking to a member when I just thought, I cannot leave this city, my work here isn't done yet! I have to stay at least a little bit longer. And luckily my prayers have been answered, and I will be staying in Lafayette, which means I will have at least 6 months in this city! I'm so excited!!!

This week has been really good! Tuesday we had a specialized training, and it was so good, but I did feel like I had a TON that I needed to start doing better at. For example President talked about how important it is to be in lessons for less than 45 minutes, when the majority of my lessons are an hour+... Its just hard to get the Hoosiers to stop talking sometimes! And I still haven't mastered the art of saying, "Thats great, but let me cut you off from what you're saying, teach you doctrine, and then get out of your house as soon as I can because it smells terribly of tabacco." Instead I just sit in the smelly houses and let them talk to me while I occasionally bring up how the Gospel of Jesus Christ can help them! Also dinner appointments are hard too, because we are only supposed to be there for an hour, but the families like to keep us later and talk with us. So I learned a lot from that training and now have a TON of goals to work on to be a more productive missionary.

Having said that, I felt that we did a pretty good job this week... regardless of the fact that no investigators came to church. :/ 

We found a young lady who said, "Well it sounds like you guys know what you're talking about, so I will let you come back next week!" It was such a funny little sentence but it brought me such joy. We had told her on her doorstep a little about the restoration and then the plan of salvation, just answering all the questions she had, and she said we could come back! I am so excited to go back to see her this week! Also our family with a date is doing well, they have cut back on the coffee a TON and are smoking less than they normally do, they said slowly but surely, and I really do see them trying, so I'm sure God will bless them with strength to live the Word of Wisdom! 

This next transfer is only 5 weeks, and then I will be done training Sister Guy... but I don't even feel like I'm training her at all. We are at such a good point in our companionship where we just really work well teaching together, and our studies are amazing, and we are having a lot of fun together! I love how much I am learning from her! I just am at a really good place right now, and the only thing I would want to change is the weather (just maybe 20 degrees warmer and I would be happy!) 

Tonight we are going to tell a retired Pastor that we have been teaching that he doesn't have the power of God that he thought he did... and that he needs to be baptized by the Priesthood that can only be found in our church... its gonna be quite the lesson!!!! I'm nervous, but I know that it is the truth, and I know that as we teach true doctrine with the spirit, then we are doing our job, whether or not they want to hear it or not! I'm really hoping he will be understanding, but its hard. It would be like me telling dad that after years of him flying, he doesn't have the correct license to fly, and that he has to do everything over on another plane to get eternal life! (Okay, not the best analogy... but I'm trying!) 

I love you all so much! Thanks everyone for the love and support and letters you send!!!

Sister Cordner

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January 28, 2013

Hola friends and family!!!

Just thought I would send you an update on how amazing things are here in the wonderful city of Lafayette Indiana! The weather has been quite the exciting little thing lately. It got SO cold this week, but I hear from some friends that Rexburg was even colder, and I even heard they closed school for a day because it was so cold. Now I'm not sure if I believe that because I specifically remember going to school in -20s, so if it did close the college than it must have been horrible there! Another reason I'm grateful to be on my mission now! haha! But it did get pretty cold here, and to top it off, a Sprint tower blew up, so we didn't have any way of using our cell phone in our apartment. So last Monday we get home and try to text that we are in, and nothing goes through, for a half hour I try to resend the message, and then for another half hour I try to call the DL, the ZLs, the other sisters... anyone really! And finally at about 10:15 the zone leaders are knocking on our door to see if we were home. I felt bad because we couldn't invite them in, it was about 8 degrees outside, and those silly elders were wearing shorts. We explained that our phone wasn't working and they said they would try to see what they could do. That night around 3 am our phone goes off like crazy and we got a bunch of messages that we hadn't received all day. One was from President asking if we were in our apartment yet! The phone still wasn't working on Tuesday so we went to a members house on our lunch break and tried to use her phone to confirm our appointments and to make more. We found out our phone worked in parts of Lafayette, so for the next couple of days we had to schedule time to park someone with reception so we could do all of our phone calls and then we would just text the DL when we were on our way into the apartment. Finally by Friday we had service again! It was kind of a nightmare to work around all week!

The highlight of the week though was my exchange with Sister Pitcher! We were so good at teaching together, and we have both grown a lot since we were in the MTC together. She is an amazing missionary and I just love her so much! She is nervous to train soon, since there are 10 new sisters coming next week, we are thinking that a lot of sisters will be training next transfer! She wanted to learn from me how to do it! hahaha, I just told her I still don't know what I'm doing! Sister Guy asks me questions that I still don't know the answer to, our poor district leader is probably excited for me to not be in his district anymore, I am constantly bugging him with questions! hahaha!!!

Did I tell you about the family we are baptizing in March? We taught them the Word of Wisdom this week, and we were scared because they are smokers, but it went really well! We haven't been able to follow up with them since that visit, but we are seeing them tomorrow! Something crazy came up again and they couldn't make it to church. (I really do think that Satan knows that once they come to church they are going to be solid and not falter, so he is trying extra hard to keep them from coming!) They are so great, and I am really excited to keep teaching them. I probably won't be here for their baptism though, and that makes me sad to think about. 

Transfers are next week, and as much as I'd like to say I'm certain I'm staying here to finish training Sister Guy, with the new age change and so many changes happening in the mission, I wouldn't be surprised if I get moved out to open a new area or train another new sister, or something crazy! Everything is very unpredictable at this time! So hang in there, next Monday I will know whats going down! 

Also I heard from Sister Stanford this week, and that was just about the best thing ever! I was reading old journal entries from last transfer and they were all, "I love my companion" and "Sister Stanford is the greatest" and "Oh my gosh Sister Stanford is so funny!" I miss her a ton, but hearing from her made it good this week! She's just the best! 

I think I'm out of things to say. The work is basically moving forward, tons of people are still sick so we are having a hard time keeping appointments. Yesterday all of our schedule appts fell through, but then we tracted and had some really cool experiences meeting people and teaching them in their homes. Even though none of the people yesterday became new investigators and weren't really interested, I felt like our meeting them was a overall good experience. 

I love being a missionary! My new catch phrase is.... "lo mejor dia de mi vida!" It means "Greatest Day of my Life" but I say it like I would say... "BEST DAY EVER!" 

Til next week,

Sister Cordner

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January 21, 2013

Once again, another week has flown by in the life of a missionary! I don't even try to begin to comprehend time out here because it is the weirdest thing. I feel like just yesterday was last Monday! So crazy!

Well it has been a bad winter as far as sicknesses go. Everybody is sick! I'm being serious too! When we do weekly planning, we pray for each investigator (sometimes our prayer is like 20 minutes) and this week I was the one saying it, and as I was looking in the area book and turning to each teaching record, I realized that what each person needed was health. We had a lot of cancellations because of sicknesses, a lot of doors that wouldn't open because "everyone in here has the flu, come back next week" and a lot of people NOT at church. (I think that is the hardest part of the week is Sunday morning when you are all excited to see 5-6 investigators at church and no one comes! Breaks my heart a little!) But the good thing was... Char was not sick, she was as healthy as could be and was ready to go come Saturday!

We taught her two lessons this week, one on Temples and Family History work, and she was already planning which temples she was going to go to this year to do baptisms in, and which one her and Brother Carver will be sealed in next year! And then we taught about the Priesthood on Friday, which was sweet because Brother Carvers son, Char's step son, was there for that lesson and also for the baptism. And since he has been a worthy priesthood holder and a RM, the lesson was just fantastic! Sister Carver is so lucky to have so many worthy Priesthood holders in her family! (And we were so excited to know that Brother Carver, after years of being inactive, was worthy to baptize and confirm her! 

Saturday was the most perfect day! The weather was nice (in the 40s) and there wasn't a cloud in the sky. I was uber stressed all day about everything, but somehow managed to relax enough to enjoy the day. That morning we had a tour of the church with a family we have been teaching, and we committed the whole family to be baptized on March 23rd! So that was kind of an amazing way to start the day! Then we had a lesson with a new investigator... and without sharing too many details, I don't know if we will be going back... we can't tell if when he yelled at me because he didn't like me because I talk to much, if he was serious, or joking, or just drunk... lets just say my big mouth has been a little bit of a problem for me in Indiana!!! lol! After those lessons.... was the best part of the entire mission!!!

SISTER CARVER GOT BAPTIZED!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 

Oh man, the service was absoultely amazing! She and a member sang a duet for the opening song, and then she asked me to talk, so I used Elder Bednar's talk from conference about conversion and gave a short talk about how lucky I was to watch this conversion process happen in Char's life. Then a sister in our ward spoke on baptism, and then Brother and Sister Carver got in the water and it happened! She made her first covenant with God, and it was a very spiritual experience for all! Lots of missionaries came, but only a few investigators were there, but the ward was really good at showing up and supporting her. There wasn't many empty chairs there! President Collins even showed up, and he spoke to me a little after the baptism to tell me what a great job I am doing!!!!

Yesterday at church she was confirmed, and then in Relief Society the lesson was on baptism, and of course she rose her hand and had just the best comments to make. She gave me a card yesterday that touched me so much! Basically she said how much she has loved me being her missionary, and how we will always have a close relationship, and how much she loves me! Oh my gosh, it made me cry! She is the best person in the world, and I am just the most blessed person in the world to be able to have taught her my whole mission! 

Oh man, such a good week!!! This week I am going on an exchange with my MTC companion Sister Pitcher, and I could not be more excited to see her and hear how she's been doing! And the week after that we have a training to go to which I'm so pumped for, I love trainings! And the week after that is transfers, and this is where it gets crazy because all the babies will be coming out! Oh man oh man!!! I just love being a missionary! 

Sister Cordner

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January 14, 2013

Well, as many of you have mentioned, I am not in Park City this week. Bummer. But I wouldn't want to be there this week anyway, because this week is Char's baptism!!! I have been waiting for what feels like forever! She had her interview on Friday and passed, and her husband (who has been less active for a long time) has been found worthy to baptize her and confirm her the following day! AAAHHHH!!! I just love these two people so much, and I'm so glad that I have been able to be apart of her conversion. She tells me that I did a lot, but really I just sat back and watched the Book of Mormon do all the work! I have such a stronger testimony of that book since I saw what it has done for her and her life! So amazing!!!

We have had many other miracles happen this week as well. Just last Monday night we got a text from an investigator that we tracted into a while ago and have taught about two times, and it said something along the lines of "read the book, asked the question, got a warm feeling that I have never before felt!" We told her we were so excited for her and that we couldn't wait to meet with her to talk about it. She said that she read the Restoration Pamphlet and not the Book of Mormon because that was too hard to understand, but she felt really good after reading the pamphlet. She said she has had a lot of church people talk to her, but none of them are ever as "enthusiastic" about it as we are. She said she just feels like there is something different between us and the other people she has ever talked to. We invited her to come to church and she was pretty excited about it... But then on Saturday when we texted her she said she'd been really sick and didn't know if she could make it. We offered to bring her some crackers and sprite because she had been throwing up but she said she was okay. But on Sunday we got a text from her saying she felt really bad she couldn't come, and that she could use some saltines and sprite. We checked this text right as we were leaving our missionary coordination meeting, and since it was Sunday we couldn't run to the store to get things for her. So I asked the ward missionaries and one had crackers and another had 7up, so we went to their houses, got the food, and then went to visit her. (This is the same sister that we shoveled her driveway a few weeks ago). I have always loved helping and serving people, but there is something extra special about doing it while wearing a tag that has Jesus Christ's name on it. I really hope that we can get her to come to church, but if she chooses not to, we sure have left a good impression on her about who the mormons are! We told her that we couldn't go buy her things because we keep the sabbath day holy and how members of our church were willing to help us serve her. She was impressed with that! She also has three daughters who are really cute and like to talk to me, so I spent some time talking to the oldest girl about the bible and about Jesus. It was really sweet. She recognizes us as the "church girls" and likes to talk to us about God! 

Another family we tracted into said they would get baptized!!! And that they want their children to be baptized too! But they didn't come to church because she didn't have anything other than blue jeans to wear, and didn't want to disrespect our church. But she promised that she would buy clothes next week and come. We were teaching them about the Plan of Salvation and she asked if it was the same tree in the adam and eve story as it was in chapter 8 of the Book of Mormon! We explained that the tree of life was different, and talked about that vision, and she really liked it! They are great, and we really hope that we can set a date with them next time and work towards baptism with them! 

Oh, the other investigator we had a date with is now being taught by the Spanish Elders. Some drama occurred there and now it is best for everyone if he gets taught by them... (I had NO idea how much drama would be involved in missionary work, Elder Stone (Spanish elder) and I were talking about how it is worse than anything we have ever seen in high school! hahaha) 

Now for family news... SHAUN IS ENGAGED!!! How crazy exciting is that?!?!! And I'm so excited for Ron too! What a fun time in the Cordners life!!!! And for those of you in Park City, I hope you are having a blast! It sounds like it is colder there than it is here, we had really nice weather for a day or two, like in the 50s and 60s! All the snow is gone, but then it started to sleet (which I just learned what that was) and its back to freezing weather, but not in the negatives! Thats insane!!!

Love you all, have a great week, and try not to miss me too much! haha

Sister Cordner

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January 7, 2013

Hola everyone,

Things are finally getting back to normal after the craziness of the holidays! School is back in session at Purdue (as of today) so all the members are back and people are here to let us in to their houses again! We had a cold and long week of tracting, but we do have about 4 (maybe 5) new investigators from tracting that we are hoping will go somewhere. One is this funny old lady named Jennie. She kinda loves me (not to brag or anything) but I tell her how funny I think she is and she just laughs at me because apparently I'm a funny girl. When I was telling her about the restoration, she got up after I was done, got me a water bottle and a hard candy, and asked me to rest my voice, because it apparently sounded scratchy. That was a good reminder for me to let my comp do some talking. You get me going about the Gospel and I never want to stop talking, so its nice to be reminded that I don't have to say everything! And Sister Guy has been doing a fantastic job. She is a pro at door approaches, and now we are doing a pretty equal job at sharing them. Where it used to be only me, it is now both of us, and we have been having a great (and cold) time doing it! Did I mention that its cold.... yea.... kinda killing me! lol

We have had a little drama with our investigator we gave a baptism date to. And by drama I mean I think they might be accusing my last companion and I from stealing from them... soooooo..... we're not quite sure what to do! It hasn't been anything major or accusatory, just that I guess something went missing after our last lesson and now they don't want us ever coming to their house again. And he wasn't at church so we couldn't talk to him about it, and he never answers his phone, so we do everything through his wife. I'm thinking as soon as Satan heard that we were giving him a date he stepped up and worked extra hard on Wayne. That darn Satan sure is good at his job! DRIVES ME CRAZY!!! But yea... I'm just not really sure what to do about all of this...

But on the other side, Char gets baptized a week from Saturday, and I could not be more excited. We are teaching her and her husband about eternal marriage this week in a members home, and the members are some of my favorites too. They are just a little older than me, met at BYU-Idaho, and just graduated and moved out here to work. I feel like we would have been buds if we knew each other at school, so we are kinda buds out here in Lafayette! Its quite fun! Anyway, Char wants to get ceilied to her husband, and if they do it in a year, I will still be out here so I will be able to go to the temple with them, and the very thought of that gets me so excited its insane!!!

We had interviews this week with our mission president, and I passed!!! (haha). No, but really, interviews are the best, because he just really pumped me up spiritually and gave me all sorts of help! Kinda of scared me when they let us know of the changes that are happening. Like how we have 18 sisters right now, and 10 come out next month, and then as of now we already know of 10 coming out in March. Chances are after I'm done training Sister Guy I will be in a trio with two greenies, he kinda said he sees no other way of doing it, but that we will just see how it goes. So ya, scary but fun times lie ahead!!!

Thank you all so much for your thoughts and prayers. I can honestly feel them and they are helping a ton! Love you all,

Sister Cordner

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January 2, 2013

Happy New Years everyone! The library has been closed for the past two days because of the holiday, so sorry that I'm late emailing this week again! Hopefully everything will be back to normal next week.

This past week was kinda a rough one. It was hard to teach people, because nobody was in town. And when we did have teaching appointments it was hard to have members come with us. But we managed to have a good time nonetheless! I liked how everyones emails were pretty short this week, you are all thinking... "I just talked with you a few days ago, I have nothing to say!" haha... I'm kinda the same way, but I guess I do have some exciting news!

We set a baptism date for two of our investigators for Feb 23rd (also known as my best friend Amy's birthday!) We have been teaching this family since I got here. She is a member, and we have been teaching her husband and her daughter. But she doesn't have full custody of her daughter, so getting a baptism date was going to be hard, and she wanted her new husband to be baptized the same day as her daughter... so its taken a while, and thats why the date is still kinda far away. I was excited when we extended the date, and they both accepted it and seem excited, but we still cannot tell if he is getting baptized because he wants it, or because his wife wants it for him. Its kinda a tricky situation, because he keeps all the commitments we leave for him, and he is slowing changing, but still... he is not nearly as converted to the gospel as my last converts have been. But who are we to deny him baptism if he wants it.... so we are going to continue to teach him, and if he doesn't want it then that will come out when he gets interviewed for baptism. Our DL will really crack down on him and make sure he knows that this covenant he is about to make is kinda a HUGE deal, and theres not really going back on promises with God... so yeah.... We are excited... but apprehensive at the same time!

But what we are really really excited about is Char's baptism! Have I mentioned how much I love her! I called her yesterday and she said, "Hey Tara, how was your new years?" It is the weirdest thing being called Tara out here... but I kinda like it! haha! She is doing amazing, and her interview is next week, and her baptism the week after that! Only 17 days away!!! She has asked me to speak at her baptism, and she made a pretend program and it said, "Char's missionary, Sister Tara Cordner, will speak on__________." Oh man, I just love being her missionary! It has changed my life to see the way her life is changing! Gotta love it!!!

New Years was just another day for us. On P-Day we went bowling with all the other missionaries in the area, and then we had dinner with a family in the ward and they made us homeade cafe rio! I wish I could ask every family to make that for us! So far I have had it 3 times since I've been out! Not quite like my days in Rexburg where I was hitting up Costa Vida 3 times a week, but I'm very thankful that I've still had it!!! We got sparkling apple juice and that night around 10:15 we randomly counted down "54321!" and drank our little juice out of a mug! haha! And then we went to bed, and woke up and it was a brand new year! kinda cool right?! 

Well everyone, I love being a missionary! It is probably the hardest thing I have ever done... but yet I still find so much joy in it. Weird right?! Answer: YES! 

Love you,

Sister Cordner

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