Groundhog Week

October 25, 2021

Salut!

This week kind of felt like groundhog day. Which isn’t necessarily a bad thing! Quarantine really hasn’t been all that bad, but things have definitely started blending together haha. This is probably going to be a pretty short email, but I want to say that we have had some awesome experiences this week! In spite of, and probably because of, the unique circumstances we have seen some really amazing miracles! The longer I am out on my mission, the more I realize that this is His work, and my contribution is infinitely dwarfed by His infinite knowledge, power, and, most importantly, love. Heavenly Father truly does know each of His children individually, and I love getting to be an instrument in His hands for what is ultimately a small part of the lives of those I meet. 

We met two really amazing people this week, and I am super excited to keep meeting with them in the future! For the sake of time, I’ll share part of some journal entries about them.

“We got to meet Eric Karenzi in person at Centennial Park and it was awesome! He is from Rwanda, and he is so cool! He says he always felt drawn to the US/Canada, and I think I know why! He's been going "beast mode" to save up money for his siblings to come here, but it's gotten to the point where he is going a little too "Mr. Krabs" so he really wants to get back into spiritual things.” So basically Eric is an immigrant from Rwanda who met the missionaries a few years ago, and was really impressed with the Gospel and the church but fell out of touch because of Covid and some other stuff going on in his life. We stopped by his address a few weeks ago only to find out that he no longer lived there. We still had his phone number though so we called and he was excited to meet with us! Real tender mercy there. He is super hard working and has a ton of faith, and I can’t wait to keep meeting with him!

“Harold Ferris came to church! The Sisters have been in touch with him and we dropped off a copy of the Book of Mormon to his mailbox about a week ago, but he hasn't been interested in meeting with us. Or at least that was until today when he suddenly showed up to church! We invited him to sit with us and he told us about his experience reading the Book of Mormon, he read the whole thing in 4 days! He said he would wake up at 4 or 5 am and just keep reading all day. He said it was like the Spirit was waking him up. I am super excited to start meeting with him!” Yeah, that was straight up a miracle. He told us a little bit about the challenges that he’s faced recently, and he himself said it was pretty miraculous that one of the Sisters in Halifax reached out to him. He clearly recognized the power of the Book of Mormon, and the Spirit it has brought into his life!  

The Covid numbers still aren’t where the government would like them to be so they decided to extend the circuit breaker for another week which, while not ideal, isn’t the end of the world. The unexpected good news, though, is that even with our mission tour meeting in Halifax last week, we will once again be making the trek there next week for a zone conference! I love the camaraderie and the Spirit that are present at these meetings. It should be a good week!

Love you all,

Elder Jackson