Going Flat Out...

April 11, 2022

Salut!

This has been quite the week… honestly it feels like it could have been three separate weeks, but that’s not a bad thing! 

Monday night we had a really awesome experience getting to join the Sister missionaries in our branch for a lesson with a returning member named Nathasha and her mom Joanne so we could bless their apartament. What made it such a special experience is that a few months ago, back when Elder Felix and I first got to Quebec in December, we miraculously ran into Joanne while she was walking back from the store with her groceries and carried them for her back to her house. At the time we had no idea that her daughter was a member, let alone a less-active recent convert, and it was awesome to get to see them again and anytime we get to perform and sacred ordonnance of the priesthood like blessing a home is always really special.  

Tuesday was also eventful since we drove an hour and a half south to have exchanges with Elder Yanez and Elder Reid down in Trois Rivières. Last transfer I was with Elder Yanez so this time I went with Elder Reid, and we had a great time! We did a decent amount of street contacting and ended up meeting a really cool guy from Lebanon who was super interested in meeting again soon! He was just walking down the road with earbuds in until Elder Reid said hi and then he responded in English saying that he doesn’t speak French and we just had a great conversation getting to know why he was here in Quebec and explaining who we are and what we do. It was one of those moments where you know that you were placed in the right place at the right time. I felt like I really learned a lot during the exchange, and it made me excited to get out and open my mouth to lovingly invite others to hear our message and to keep striving to improve as a missionary and disciple of Jesus Christ. 

After driving back to Quebec Wednesday morning we had another memorable member lesson meeting with Brenda and Leon. They are both so awesome, and Brenda had the really inspired idea to do a Facebook live together on their Facebook account as a way to do missionary work. I’ve actually never done a live before so I didn’t really know what to expect but it ended up going really well! We had a great awesome discussion about General Conference and what we all learned from it, and towards the end of the livestream Brenda asked if anyone watching had any questions and one of her old friends from high school happened to watching and asked a really touching question about coming back to religion after a long time and we were able to talk about the story of the Prodigal Son and share a few verses from Luke 15. Overall, it was a really unique and rewarding experience.

As for Thursday, I’ll once again add a little note about district council because it was a really good experience! I ended up getting out a lot of the assignments for district council later than I would have liked due to the craziness of the exchange and everything else going on, but everything ended up coming together super well in the end. It just goes to show that in life all we can do is to seek God’s will and then try our best and He will take care of the rest. Sometimes we can wind up trying to do everything on our own and heap a mountain of stress on ourselves, but in the end it really comes down to trusting in the Lord and knowing that he will magnify our efforts.

Saturday was a pretty typical day, but we got to have dinner with a member of the district presidency and some of the other missionaries in the Charlesbourg and Quebec branches. It seems like all of the leadership in our area live out in the boonies, but that is fine by me since the drive ended up being super pretty! They made Cafe Rio style food, and it was honestly super good (anytime I can get good Mexican food in Canada is honestly a miracle). I also got to try ginger ale for the first time which was a pretty unique experience, I honestly kind of liked it!

And that takes us all the way to Sunday. This Sunday the member of our congregation fasted, meaning we all went without food and water for two meals so we can make donations to those in need, and each time we fast as a congregation instead of having assigned speakers the stand is left often for anyone to come up and share their thoughts and testimony of Jesus Christ and His Gospel. It’s something that I always look forward to, and this month there were some really sincere and inspiring testimonies that were exactly what I needed to hear. Things got a little bit more interesting Sunday night when we went to leave the apartment only to discover that one of our tires was suddenly flat… long story short, after getting the car jacked up we discovered that we didn’t have the “key” that we needed to take of the locking lug nut so we ended spending most of today getting everything figured out. We were about to get the car towed, but in the end we got our tire inflated enough to drive to the dealership and have them patch it up. It was quite the learning process trying to change a flat tire, and I definitely learned a lot of helpful new vocab in French haha.

Love you all,

Elder Jackson