Faith and Fish

 March 7, 2022

Allô!

Soyez les bienvenus de nouveau dans ma lettre hebdomadaire! As per usual, it’s been a good week!

The first thing I’ll mention was a really cool experience we had Wednesday night having dinner with the Ferland family in our branch! I mentioned President Ferland in one of my previous letters, and he and his family really are awesome! They live about 30 minutes north of us, past Chute Montmorency and the outskirts of Quebec City, and the Elders for the young adults were also invited so it was a lot of fun! The drive up was super pretty and honestly gave me flashbacks to my time serving in the mountains near Fresno - it’s crazy to think it’s almost been a year since then but it brought back a lot of great memories! President and Sister Ferland shared some really crazy/funny stories about how they met and his mission to Louisiana and they are raising three young kids right now and they also had some adorable puppies (photo included) that they are getting ready to sell so it was overall just a great time!

I’ll also mention a little bit about district council because it was once again a great experience! The theme for our discussion/training was from chapter 8 of Preach My Gospel about setting goals and making plans, and at first I wasn’t sure how to create a practice for setting goals and making plans but as I was studying chapter 8 I had an idea that ended up working out pretty well! It’s always really humbling and gratifying to have moments where you know that you received personal revelation.

I think the most meaningful thing this week for me was getting to help a member who is going through a really tough time right now. He has a lot of serious health challenges and his wife left him just a few weeks ago, but he is doing his best to stay upbeat and his faith is really just super inspiring to me. We were able to meet with him twice this week, and, since he knows a decent amount of English and wants to practice it, we watched President Nelson’s talk from last April about faith and it was really powerful. President Nelson's words are so true that no matter what our mountains or trials may be the answer is always to develop greater faith in Jesus Christ, and I love the 5 steps we can take to increase our faith in Him! Afterwards we were able to give the member a blessing. He has really appreciated us reaching out to him during this difficult time, and I have found on my mission that there is no greater joy than getting to represent Jesus Christ as you leave the “ninety and nine” to minister to the “one!”

This Saturday we also got to have exchanges with the Elders in the Quebec branch! I was with Elder McOmer for the day and we had a good time and I feel like we were really able to connect and have some meaningful conversations which is always the best part of exchanges! Although nerdy out about our shared interests was also pretty great haha

Sunday was as per usual the best day of the week - even in spite of the heavy snow that later turned into freezing rain... There really is nothing that beats getting to go to church and take the sacrament, especially on a fast and testimony meeting! There were lots of wonderful testimonies and our friend Martin was able to come to church again and we were able to have another lesson after church that once again went really well! We were able to answer some more of his questions and talk about his situation, and even though his girlfriend is still somewhat skeptical about the church he is seriously so solid! It was another one of those spiritual lessons where you know that you’re getting help from the Spirit, and that is easily one of my favorite feelings as a missionary.

Today was also a lot of fun since we got to visit the Quebec Aquarium as a district! I’ll try to through in some pictures

Love you all,

Elder Jackson