Made it to Moncton!

September 27, 2021

Quoi de neuf? 

Well, after almost a year I think it's about time that I expanded my pool of French greetings - I promise that I'm working on it! 

After seven days, two flights, and a 2 ½ hour car ride, we finally made it to our official area in Moncton, New Brunswick! Just a little bit of background on New Brunswick, it is a smaller province to the east of Québec that is just north of Maine. It is the only province in Canada that is officially bilingual, with French and English both being primary languages. As of yet, my companion and I haven't had very many opportunities to speak French, but we are studying hard together and are hopeful that we will find more opportunities to use our mission language! 

The city of Moncton is the largest city in New Brunswick, which is kind of surprising since there are only about 80,000 people! It reminds me of Merced in that they have about the same population and there are multiple colleges in the city. That's about where the similarities end though because Moncton is super green and the people here are way different. First off, I have to admit that all of the jokes and stereotypes of Canadians being super nice are… true! They're totally true! I know I've only been in Canada for like two weeks now, but I already love the people here so much! Another interesting thing is that there are so many different accents out here, ranging from the stereotypical Canadian accent to more British and even French sounding ones as well. If you ever wondered whether or not Canadian really say "eh" I can promise you that they really do, and I love it haha

In the past few days, Elder Eich and I have already had some really cool experiences! On top of the usual craziness of doubling into an area, Elder Eich and I have encountered an unexpected challenge in that our area book has almost no information about the people in our records due to privacy laws. It can be difficult to see who we should prioritize visiting, but Elder Eich and I had a pretty miraculous contact when we stopped by the house of a lady named Christina. We walked up to her house and things were kind of crazy since she lives right next to a little park and there were a ton of kids running around. We knocked on her door and Christian answered and, I still don't entirely understand how, we ended up sitting in lawn chairs on her driveway talking to Christina and two other women whose kids play with Christian's kids for over an hour. It was a really awesome discussion, and their kids were super awesome as well! Christina's son Ezra let me hold his pet bunny and showed off this cool gas mask he had! We are planning on meeting with them again next Saturday and I am so excited! 

The other really cool experience I'll share was getting to meet the members of our ward at church on Sunday. Due to Covid and border restrictions and a whole bunch of other fun stuff, missionaries haven't physically been to Moncton for over eight months. Because missionaries were in lock down for a number of months even before that, the members of our ward hadn't seen missionaries in person for over a year! It was really heartwarming to see how excited everyone was to see us! After the meeting we talked with quite a few members and set up lots of appointments, but we were really surprised when a younger couple came up to us and the wife told us that they were from Chile and that they want us to help teach the husband English! Apparently a lot of families are moving here from South America for schooling, and there will be even more members from South America arriving in the winter. I once again got to use my Spanish while talking to them and even cooler still is the fact that Elder Eich also took Spanish in high school! I may not be speaking a ton of French at the moment, but it's already clear to me that Heavenly Father put me and Elder Eich here for a reason. 

I am so beyond excited for General Conference this weekend!! It's kind of hard to believe that it has already been six months, time really is flying by! As excited as I am, I know that I still have a lot to do to prepare spiritually for this wonderful opportunity to receive revelation as we listen to the word of living prophets. One of my goals is to create a small list of questions that I want to find answers to. Last conference, I did something similar, and I found the peace and reassurance that I needed. I know that the same thing will happen again if I am prepared and listen for the still, small voice, and this conference I would like to invite all of you to join me in preparing for conference by thinking of at least one question that you would like to have answered! 

I apologize for not including more photos last week, but I have to say that Nova Scotia and New Brunswick really are beautiful! It's all so green, and this week I even got to see rain for the first time in 3 or 4 months! 

Love you all,

Elder Jackson