Exchanges and a Heat Wave

May 16, 2022

Rebonjour tout le monde! 

Well, I said that last week was probably one of the busiest weeks of my mission but I think this past week was almost as busy! Elder Lund and I hosted three different exchanges this past week which means I had three different companions for half of the week and looking back everything is pretty much just a blur. With all of the exchanges and our new street contacting initiative I’d say I probably spent between 10-20 walking around trying to talk to everyone so I got a lot of sun and French practice, especially since one of the Elders I went with is from Brazil and he’s still learning English but he’s actually pretty much fluent in French! 

To add to the craziness this week was also insanely hot! Like so hot that the container of butter we have on our counter started melting - twice. For each of the exchanges the other Elders came over to our apartment and spent the night with us, and unfortunately AC isn’t super common here so our apartment doesn't have any so things were pretty toasty. One night when we got home it was 91 degrees in our apartment! It turns out I had left the oven on after baking some salmon filets haha but hey you live and you learn!

Out of the craziness of this week there is at least one really cool experience I’d like to highlight. The first came on Thursday, one of the few days I was actually with Elder Lund. It was a busy day since we had district council and we had to do all of our planning for the week as well, but we had a few minutes to do some finding before we had a dinner appointment so we drove over to the general area and then Elder Lund parked surprisingly far away. I didn't really think a whole lot about it, but I saw an older lady walking down the sidewalk pushing a cart who looked like she could use some help so we quickly prayed and I hopped out of the car and asked if I could hlp and I was kind of surprised when we she somewhat rudely rejected my offer. We kind of just laughed it off and then walked in the opposite direction of her, farther away from the dinner appointment, and as we were walking we saw a young woman sitting by a fence in between the apartment buildings to our right and Elder Lund without hesitating started walking towards her. She was listening to music and it was obvious she was deep in thought but she looked up and we started talking to her and it turned out she had lived in British Columbia for a long time so she spoke perfect English. She said that she had been thinking about life and we had a really awesome conversation with her. When we started talking about religion she told us that she had explored lots of different beliefs but that she was kind of distancing herself from God for the time being. She said that she was kind of waiting for God to reach out to her, and that’s pretty much when Elder Lund and I looked at each other and just smiled haha. She was still a little bit hesitant to dive back into religion, but she was willing to let us give her number to the Sister missionaries and it was overall just another undeniable example to me that God knows each of His children and he will use us as instruments in His hands to bless others if we will humbly pray for His Spirit and guidance! 

Afterwards we went to dinner with the N'Dioré family in our ward who recently moved to Canada from Côte D'Ivoire and it was really wonderful! They made lots of delicious food from Côte D'Ivoire and listening to their testimonies about waiting 7 years to Canada and their trust in God was super touching.

Sunday was also incredible getting to watch Elder Nelson’s worldwide devotional for young adults! I wish I had more time to say more about it, but all I can say is that I know without a shadow of a doubt that he is the Lord's senior apostle on the earth and that he truly does guide Christ's church. 

Love you all,

Elder Jackson