Thrust in Your Weed Eater

May 24, 2021

Comment ça va?

Hello, hello, hello! I hope you all had a great week, Happy very very late Mother’s Day! I apologize for slipping lately on my letter writing, but it’s been another fun few weeks up here in the Yosemite ward so I’ll try to hit as many highlights as I can! 

Service has been pretty much as constant the last month or so, and I love it! I’ve gotten to meet a lot of really awesome people and even learned some information that I’m sure will come in handy in the future. For example: how to operate a gas weed wacker (everyone up here calls them weed eaters for some reason but they’re literally the same thing. There are few things as satisfying as finally getting a stupidly finicky weed eater going and revving it up to 60 mph as you lay into a knee high field of weeds. I know that in D&C 4 it tells you to thrust in your sickle, but, let me tell you, you’re way better off using a weed eater. As a side note, I am slowly but surely overcoming my fear of spiders one abandoned wood pile at a time. At this point, I’m not even that phased when I find a massive black widow hanging out among the logs; you just kill it and move (I will admit that wearing work gloves does help a lot).

Last week we got to have Zone Conference in person for the first time! The entire central third of our mission, every mission serving in the four Fresno stakes, got to meet up at a stake center. Since I never went to the physical MTC, that was the most missionaries I’ve ever seen in one place before. It was awesome to get to see some of the missionaries that I have served around previously and catch up with them. There really is a special love and camaraderie that comes from missionary service! During the Conference we focused a lot on the Restoration and Joseph Smith and his Brother Hyrum. It was a great experience that really strengthened my testimony that Joseph Smith truly was a prophet of God and that this church is Christ’s church restored to the earth once more! I have really been struck by the significance of Moroni’s Promise recently, and I would definitely invite all of you if you aren’t already to start reading the Book of Mormon daily and pursue Moroni Promise because that is a promise made by God, and He never breaks his promises! Anyone who asks God with a sincere heart and real intent can learn for themselves the truthfulness of this Gospel because God is not the author of confusion but of peace.

Another highlight is that Elder Bryce and I were able to drive down to Madera to get our second dose of the Covid vaccine, so we are both one step closer to reaching our original assignments! I love serving in the CFM, but I am also very excited for the day that I will finally reach Canada and be more fully immersed in my mission language. Since we’d already driven an hour to get to Madera, Elder Bryce and I actually spent the rest of the day there on exchanges, and it was definitely an exchange I’ll never forget! I was with our district leader, Elder Stock, who I actually served around while I was in Visalia, and it was a lot of fun to catch up with him! The thing that really made our exchange memorable, though, is that all of our lessons and 90% of our contacts were 100% Spanish. I was surprised how well I could still understand what everyone was saying. All of the French stuck in my head made it kind of difficult to speak much Spanish myself, but by the end of the day though things were definitely coming back to me. We had a really awesome lesson about the Restoration and Joseph Smith, and I felt the Spirit very strongly as Elder Stock recited the First Vision in Spanish. I was able to stumble my way through a testimony of the Spirit I felt and it was a powerful witness to me of the truthfulness of the Restoration and the fact that the Spirit works among every nation, kindred and tongue.

I’ve been trying to write this letter for so long that there is still a lot I have to write about to finish catching up, so I guess I’ll just have to wait until next week for the next installment, so stay tuned! 

Love you all,

Elder Jackson