It is Monday morning and Preparation Day here in Lima for us. We said goodbye to our President yesterday and last night to our mentors, friends, and neighbors, the Cordons. Their 18 months are up. I asked Steve as we walked to the temple on Friday if he thought the 18 months went by quickly. He took a minute to think about it, "At times it went slowly," he said, "but looking back on it now, it went very fast." They are, as I write this, somewhere jet lagged in Atlanta or maybe on their way to Salt Lake City and then to home and family in Boise. Several days earlier he had sent the following to his family and some friends. I asked if I could post it here. It describes his feelings, testimony, and observations, his last comments about their mission in Peru before they left.
Editor's Note: I now have the key from Steve to open the back gate to the temple grounds and that responsibility weighs heavily on me. Security has complained about the gringos who do not know how to lock the lock. Neither Steve or I have any clue what the right or wrong way is to lock the padlock, so they may go on complaining about the gringos who do not know how to lock that lock. To you both Steve and Kay, you "walked the walk" five days each week for eighteen months. We will follow in your footsteps.
"Dear Family and Friends,
As a young boy I would sit enthralled as "The Cisco Kid" and his faithful sidekick, Pancho, would week after week successfully corral and jail the bad guys. Then at the end of the show as they rode off into the sunset Pancho would yell "Hasta La Vista", Until We See You Again.
So Kay and her faithful sidekick now ride off into the sunset and we say to each of you and to Peru itself, "Hasta La Vista." It is difficult to summarize in a brief e-mail eighteen months of living, learning, serving and loving. We are not the same people who arrived May of 2009. I suppose that is the goal of all people to not be the same person today they were eighteen months earlier. If we are what then is the purpose of living. So much of what we have learned has in reality been a reaffirmation and strengthening of what we have already known.
We arrived with the excitement of serving, of becoming acquainted with a new people, country and traditions. What we have gained is all that and more. We have enjoyed our traveling, seeing the wonderous sights of Peru, meeting native people in the interior of the country in their native dress and observing them living as they have live for centuries. At the same time we have seen modern cosmopolitan cities that remind us so much of things at home and yet they are distinct and peculiar to Peru. We have met a people so different and yet so similar to those at home. They speak a different language have a different history and observe different customs. Yet they are so similar. There are both the good and the bad. The bad can be like the bad in the US and can be very bad and the good are also like those in the US and can be so very good. Almost all those we have come in contact have been the very good. People who accepted us, cared for us and loved us. We like to say we have associated with the very best Peru has to offer for they are the ones who live lives worthy to come to the temple of God to worship Him. They are those who radiate and shine with the light of Christ. They are those who are striving to become like Him in deed and action. I have written previously of some of them individually. There are those whose memory shall be burned eternally in my memory. Those I have learned to love as fellow children of our Heavenly Father.
In addition there are our fellow missionaries both those from the states and those from Peru whom we have learned to love as we joined in our efforts to serve the Peruvian people.
Most of all we have grown in our love for and our understanding of God the Father. We are told that "This is life eternal to know thee the only true god and Jesus Christ whom thou has sent".
So over the past year and a half we have grown to have a better understanding of our Eternal Heavenly Father and His Son Jesus Christ. It started a year and a half before we received our call and assignment to come to Peru.
October of 2007 we traveled to Chicago to visit children and while there at a church social we met Carlos Boman the newly called president of the Lima Peru Temple who was also visiting children who happened to live in the same ward as ours. When I found out he was to serve as a missionary I mentioned to him that Kay and I wanted to go on a mission when I retired in a year and a half. He asked me if I had ever considered a temple mission and I truthfully answered no I had not. He then asked me if I thought we might like to and I indicated we might like that. He then asked if we could stay in touch and when the time came for us to put in our papers for a calling and if it was alright if he let those in Salt Lake know that we had visited about our serving a temple mission. He emphasized that the Lord would call us where He wanted us but at least the brethren in Salt Lake would know there is interest. When we did apply to go on our mission temple service was about the fourth or fifth thing down on our list of things we would like to do. As you know we were called to the temple. I have since learned that this is where we needed to come and I have learned things here I needed to learn. One thing I learned is God knows me and my needs better that I do and if I am willing to bow my will to His He will teach me those things I need.
I have learned by observance that truly He is not a respecter of persons. He loves and blesses all those who come unto Him. We have seen Him as he has poured out his love and blessings on the rich and the poor of Peru. We have witnessed those who have plenty who are in positions of power and authority in the community come and associate with, sit next to and love those who have so very little. So little in fact that the mere fact of their paying 16 cents for bus fare to and then from the temple leaves them nothing to spend on food for the day. The Lord blesses both with His spirit and we have seen the out pouring of His love upon both and we have learned.
We have learned that he is indeed a god of miracles as we have seen countless everyday miracles in our lives and the lives of those around us. We have witnessed very personal miracles from the birth of a very special granddaughter to the spiritual rebirth of a family member.
We have learned He is a God of promises and the fulfilling of those promises. As recorded in the Book of Mormon He promised Lehi that following Jesus Christ's visit to the people of this hemisphere that his, Lehi's, posterity would become a fallen, dark and loathsome people. Then in the latter days they would become a delight-some and beautiful people as they again accepted Christ and worshiped Him as their god. We are witnesses to the literal fulfilling of this prophecy in this day and age as we see the native people of this land becoming physically very beautiful and handsome children of our Heavenly Father. And spiritually as beautiful as they are physically.
We have learned that God hears and answers prayers. We have prayed fervently the past eighteen months that those who come to the temple might feel closer to their Heavenly Father because we are present. It became evident last night that God heard and answered that prayer as when I said goodbye to one of our fellow workers he wrapped his arms around me in a big hug, pulled me close and said "Thank you Elder Cordon for helping me feel close to our Heavenly Father by your presence in the temple".
The most important thing I have learned is actually one of those reaffirmations of something I have known all my life. There have been those times that I have known without a doubt and other times when it was blurred, but never has there been a time it did not exist. That is the Lord knows who I am, I Steve Cordon, and that He loves me with a love so pure and great that I can not even fathom the extent nor intensity of it. I just know He does even without being able to comprehend it.
Yes we have grown in our knowledge of our Heavenly Father and His Son. I testify to each of you that this I know, there is indeed a God and that He lives. I know He loves me and each of us, individually and collectively, sufficiently to have sent His Only Begotten Son even Jesus Christ to be lifted up that we might return to Him to live in the eternities. I in the words of that great prophet Moroni, I say "Yea, come unto Christ, and be perfected in him".
I thank each of you for your love, prayers and support while we have been here.
Elder Steve Cordon"
