Happy New Year!
Bonne année à tous!
I hope that you all had a wonderful New Year’s! I remember last New Year’s eve so vividly, it honestly feels like it was yesterday - but I guess it’s already been an entire year! 2021 was certainly an unforgettable year. Reflecting back on all the experiences I’ve had, all the things I’ve learned, and all the people I’ve met has been really humbling. I am so grateful for every second I’ve had to serve as a missionary so far! I honestly wouldn’t change a single thing that has happened in my mission. My New Year’s was pretty unique this year, but I’ll get to that later.
This week began with what I definitely call one of the coolest miracles I’ve seen on my mission. Elder Felix and I decided to take advantage of the car as much as possible while we had it so we visited a lot of people who had previously met with missionaries in the past at the beginning of this week. On Monday night, right as we were about to visit a family, I saw a woman on the sidewalk standing next to a suitcase looking thing with a bag so I said hi and we started talking to her. Her name is Joanne and she said she would be interested in the English class some of the other missionaries run so we gave her our phone number and then I asked if we could help with her items and she happily accepted! It turns out the suitcase thing was actually full of food and that she was walking home from the grocery store since she doesn’t have a car. It ended up being quite the adventure since the suitcase was heavy and it was a 10 minute walk to her apartment. The most exciting part was when Joanne went full Quebecois and just walked across the street with a green light haha. We dodged a bus and an oncoming car and then I paused to lift up the suitcase onto the curb and looked up to see a car staring at me! We got to her apartment and carried the groceries up the stairs. Joanne said she knew that God had sent us so we said a prayer with her before we left and she said that she would call us.
That story went from being an amazing tender mercy to a straight up miracle on Tuesday night. We had decided to stop by a few of the members who we hadn’t met yet and give them some cookies. The first member that we went to visit is a younger woman named Natasha who was baptized not too long ago but hasn’t been to church recently. We pulled up to Natasha’s address and we quickly realized that it was the same apartment building that Joanne lived in and as we walked up the stairs we realized it was the same exact apartment as the day before… We remembered that Joanne had mentioned she lives with her daughter so we suddenly put two and two together and realized that Joanne is actually Natasha’s mom! It’s so crazy to think that in a city of literally hundreds of thousands of people we not only met her mom but helped carry her groceries and she hadn’t even been that close to her apartment when we met! So we dropped off the cookies and said hi to both Joanne and Natasha and they were once again super friendly! Since there was no other man present we couldn’t come inside, but we are hopeful that the Sisters can get in touch with them and start meeting with both of them soon.
Things got even more interesting the next day when both Elder Felix and I woke up with sore throats. Even with our negative test results from Sunday we decided to call the medical coordinator and he informed us that we should isolate and get retested so we did. With Covid being as rampant as it is here in Quebec right now, getting tested was a bit of a challenge. The website to schedule an appointment was under maintenance due to all of the traffic, but yet another miracle from this week is that one of the really nice workers who helped us get tested on Christmas and friended Elder Felix on Facebook afterwards told us where we could go to get tested without an appointment. The process of getting the test itself was quite an adventure since, believe it or not, there aren’t a whole lot of people in Quebec who can really speak English. Thankfully, with enough patience and some trial and error we got everything sorted out and, after being delayed by a bug in the health system, we got our results on Friday and they came back... (drumroll please) positive. After nearly two years since it’s beginning, I can finally say that I have had Covid! At least now when I tell my kids about serving a mission during Covid I truly got the full experience haha
For those of you who have experienced the post Covid vaccine hangover, having actual Covid was pretty much just that but on steroids. From Wednesday to Friday I had a sore throat, cough, congestion, fatigue, and muscle aches, but I am happy to report that by now pretty much all of my symptoms are gone and I’m feeling good! We will still be in quarantine until the 9th, but funnily enough the province of Quebec recently put new restrictions in place that prevent in person meetings anyways so we honestly aren’t missing out on too much at the moment. We’ve made a lot more phone calls the last few days, and we have actually been seeing some really cool success so far! I can tell that there is definitely a reason why we are supposed to be in quarantine right now, and I am excited to keep learning more of the lessons that Heavenly Father wants to teach me through this “customized curriculum” as Elder Maxwell would put it.
In spite of all of the Covid craziness, Elder Felix and I still had a good New Years. We got to have another mission wide zoom call and we played some trivia and watched more of the Chosen. I’ll admit that I have been skeptical of the Chosen in the past, and while it isn’t perfect I think it's a really great show! I’m excited to hopefully binge watch the rest of it when I get home. One of the coolest things about the meeting though was that President and Sister Harkness invited us to read the entire Book of Mormon as a mission in the next 90 days while looking for examples of the two great commandments: loving God and loving our fellow man. Needless to say I’m really excited and it’s already been a great experience so far. That’s pretty much about it for me this week, but I’m sure I’ll have lots more exciting Covid miracles to share next week!
Love you all,
Elder Jackson
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