Road Trip!

May 23, 2022

Salut! 

It’s been another good/crazy week in Longueuil, Québec! We ended up spending the first couple of days outside of Longueuil for exchanges, but it was a ton of fun to get to see more of the province and to get to build new friendships as well as see some familiar faces! I’ll probably just give a run down of what our week looked like:

We started Monday off right with a member meal with two young families and the Sisters missionaries in our ward. Immediately after the meal we packed our bags and hit the road for our first exchange of the week.

We spent all day Tuesday in the lovely town of Granby, a smaller city about an hour away from Longueuil. We went on an adventure driving to a tiny town called Ange-Gardien in search of Malagasy people since apparently the Elders have been teaching a lot of people who come from Madagascar and they all live in that same town and work at the same factory haha. Unfortunately, it was raining and not many people were outside so we didn’t have any luck, but we still had a good time visiting another small town called Farnham that was actually super pretty! (Photo of said town can be found below of course). We had a really cool experience later that day though once we were back in Granby as we visited a man named Carlos who the Elder had met the other day. Carlos actually only speaks Spanish, so I got to once again brush off my rather rusty Spanish until we got the Spanish Elders on a video call. The “Elderers” actually already knew him, and we had a great impromptu lesson about El Libro de Mormon and it was another testament that the Spirit is the same in every language and that the Gospel is for every nation, kindred, and tongue!

Wednesday we got up and set out for the city of Sherbrooke which is another hour away, and I got to spend the day with my good friend Elder Faerber! We served near each other in Quebec city, and spent a few transfers in the same district so it was great to catch up and see how much we’ve both grown over the past few months. Sherbrooke is super pretty, and we were able to meet some really awesome people. As we were out street contacting there weren’t a lot of people out and about, but we took every opportunity we could to talk to everyone and we were blessed to be in the right place at the right time to meet a really cool guy named Charles-Olivier! We got to talk about Québec, history, religion, the Restoration, and temples and he said he wants to visit our church sometime so I'd definitely call that a win!

Thursday we made the trek back home and arrived just in time for district council. We spent most of the day planning and getting our own area back in order, but we had dinner with the Groux family and got to visit some other members in the beautiful town of Boucherville. You really just can’t make up some of the names here in Quebec haha.

Friday was yet another exchange, but this time we stayed in our area and it was a pretty standard day. The highlight was definitely getting to have yet another member meal, this time with the Poirier family. They are an older couple who live right next to the temple since they work there, and their young granddaughter came over for dinner and she was honestly hilarious.

Saturday was a pretty busy day with service in the morning helping a member empty a storage unit and a couple of lessons. One of the lessons was with an Italian man who lost his wife a little over a year ago, and we have a really Spirit filled lesson about the Atonement and the plan of Salvation. It was a truly memorable and testimony strengthening experience, and even though our friend wasn’t ready to continue meeting with us he said he would read the Book of Mormon I felt at peace.

The Sabbath is always a great day, and this week was especially great! Sacrament meeting was unique since I got to bless the sacrament in French for the first time in front of a congregation, and during Elders quorum we had a really powerful discussion about the temple, covenants, worthiness, and forgiveness. The rest of the day was spent running from lesson to lesson, and we had the opportunity to teach the Restoration twice and I just have to say that I know that it is so true. God truly does love all of His children and He wants us to be happy and return with Him. He has given us the truth once again and He has shown us the path we must take to follow our Savior back into His presence, and I am so grateful that I have the privilege to share these truths every day!

Love you all,

Elder Jackson