What a Week!

 March 28, 2022

Bonjour à tous!

It’s been quite the week! Honestly, with transfers this past Thursday it has pretty much felt like two full weeks, but I’ll do my best to include all of the highlights!

Tuesday was a pretty awesome day. As we were planning I saw that there was a record for someone in our files that would be deleted in the next fews days and even though we had stopped by in the past and been told that their family were all Jehovah’s witnesses and that they weren’t very interested I felt like we should stop by one last time. So we pulled up to the apartment and much to our surprise we ran into the son of the family, Fred, who doesn’t actually live there but was super cool and instantly started talking to us about our church! Unlike the rest of his family, he is not a Jehovah’s witness and he said he would be interested in coming to our church sometime and accepted a Book of Mormon and said he would read it!  There was also a young adult activity Tuesday night playing soccer, and he was able to stop by for a bit. The soccer activity was also a ton of fun! It felt great to play soccer again after so long, and there were a bunch of members and nonmembers!

Wednesday was also a really busy/awesome day since we were to do service at the thrift store and also have a lot of lessons with members that we are working with. I’d say that it was a great way to finish off the transfer.

Thursday itself was pretty unique since I spent most of the day with some other Elders who were waiting for their new companions to arrive, but it was fun being back in the trio life for a bit and we had a good time. It was sad to say goodbye to Elder Felix, in hindsight our time together really did seem to fly by, but I have my new companion Elder Van Orman and I am really excited to work with him for this coming transfer! He is from Mapleton, Utah and his dad and my dad actually went to high school together and he knew some of my friends that were in the Arcadia mission which is all really cool. The best part of Thursday though was getting to meet with our wonderful friend from Jamaica, Orane, with two of the really amazing members in our branch, Camillia and Megane. Camillia and Megane have done and absolutely amazing job of befriending and just loving Orane, and it has made such a huge difference for him in just the past few weeks!

I’ll also throw in a little bit about our friend Gondo since we were able to have another lesson with him this week that went really well! We talked about the first half of the Restoration with him and were able to read lots of scriptures with him to answer some of his questions and show that we truly do put Christ first and why prophets matter.

Saturday was pretty eventful as well since we helped a member with a move that ended up talking about 5-6 hours. It honestly wasn’t that bad of a move, there were plenty of people and they were really organized but there was just a lot of furniture and stuff in general. It was hard but satisfying work - the best kind of service! We ended the day off right with dinner at a members home. I’m pretty sure I’ve said it before multiple times

And that brings us last of all to Sunday. Church was great as always, but the real main event was getting to have dinner with Orane, Camillia, Megane, and the Elders for the young adults! We all met Camillia and Megane’s apartment and Orane cooked us up some Jamaican food and I have to say that it was pretty dang good! Afterward, we were all able to sit down together for a lesson and it was a pretty unforgettable evening. Orane has a really strong desire to be baptized, and we were able to explain the eternal importance of baptism and how we must prepare ourselves to make this sacred promise with God. After opening up to us about his past and things going on in his life, the other Elders and I gave him a priesthood blessing and we set the goal for him to be baptized on April 16th!

This was definitely another one of those weeks where you are reminded that this is truly God’s work, and I know that my responsibility while I am out here is to truly become an instrument in His hand as I love others and invite them to come unto Christ. On another note, as part of our mission’s challenge I also finished the Book of Mormon this week! It was the fastest I’ve ever read through the whole book before and it was honestly a wonderful experience. As time went on and I had to stretch to keep up with the aggressive pace, I could really feel my desire to keep reading growing and I was once again able to find that hunger and thirst for the Book of Mormon and the unique power that it has to guide and strengthen us in our lives. I know without a shadow of a doubt that it is the word of God, and I am so grateful for all the ways that it has blessed my life and the lives of those I love!

Love you all,

Elder Jackson