President Cordon talks of her grandsons death in #HearHim video

Publish date: 2024-05-06

Days after Young Women General President Bonnie H. Cordon lost her grandson Derek to an unexpected death, she had an assignment at Primary Children’s Hospital in Salt Lake City. She wasn’t sure she could do it.

President Cordon’s heart was heavy after spending about three days in the intensive care unit at a children’s hospital before Derek died. Her family was on a vacation together when he suddenly stopped breathing. 

“My heart was so tender and raw, I just knew I couldn’t do it,” recalled President Cordon in a #HearHim video released Wednesday, Aug. 24. “I got on my knees, and I said, ‘Heavenly Father, I can’t. I can’t accept this assignment, it’s just too hard.’ But the nudge and the prompting said, ‘Just go, just go.’”

In the video and accompanying blog post on ChurchofJesusChrist.org, President Cordon described how fulfilling the assignment at Primary Children’s Hospital helped heal her heart. 

Trusting the prompting, President Cordon drove to Primary Children’s Hospital with tears in her eyes. As she walked in, the sights and sounds she had experienced with Derek’s death came flooding back. 

Then she met a young boy named Oliver. On the white board in his room was a scripture: “Trust in the Lord with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding” (Proverbs 3:5). 

“I don’t know how it happened, but that scripture opened my vision, healed my heart, in a way that I could never have done it,” she said in the video. 

“I was so grateful that the Lord gave me this gift. And I can’t even imagine if I hadn’t listened, but the gift and the joy that came into my heart as I realized the eternities was an immense blessing. And I was grateful that He had given me that hard thing to do.”

President Cordon wrote in her blog post: “As much as hearing Him involves acting in faith, it also involves trusting in His timing. He can comprehend things that are going to bless our lives that we had no idea about.”

She said she often receives this question from missionaries, young men and young women she meets: “How do I know if what I feel is from the Lord or if it is just from my own mind?” 

“I remember when I was a teenager,” President Cordon wrote, “people would always talk about this warm feeling they felt when the Holy Ghost was guiding and directing them. But for me, that is not how it comes; instead, ideas come to me like a thought or an impression.

“As I learned to act on impressions, I realized that they were from the Lord, and I knew when to move forward, be cautious, or be at peace. It works differently for each of us because He knows exactly how to speak to us personally in our heart, but trusting in Him is always the same. It can be the hardest thing to trust and act on a spiritual nudge or initial impression. …

“Hearing Him is one thing, but then trusting what I am hearing and acting upon it — that makes all the difference.”

Watch more #HearHim videos from Church leaders here

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