Blackouts and Road Trips

Bonjour tout le monde!

Wow, where is the time going? This was another great week, although it seemed to once again disappear with how time is moving. Since arriving in Longueuil life has been a blur of street contacting, lessons with friends, meals with members, meetings, and exchanges and this week was no exception. Here’s a brief overview of some of the events that stand out.

This Tuesday we got to participate in the Stake correlation meeting, and it was once again a really great experience! It took a while to compile all of the numbers from our zone and then to enter it all into a spreadsheet, but in the end we figured it all out and as a plus I even learned a thing or two about spreadsheets. The real reason I wanted to mention the stake correlation though is because about 10 minutes into the zoom meeting with all of the stake leaders the power in the church went out due to a storm that was going on. Thankfully we were using a phone instead of the church computer for the video call, but we definitely spent the next 30 minutes or so hunched over in a pitch black room using the light from our phone to scribble out our notes haha.

We found some more pretty cool people, and one event that stands out in particular was walking around a neighborhood while it was lightly raining. There weren’t a ton of people outside, but I felt like we should turn down a road so we did, and then I noticed a guy sitting in his car and I felt like we should talk to him so we walked up to his car and he rolled down his window. We started talking to him and we were able to teach him pretty much the entire Restoration and he was interested in learning more! As a side note I also got to lead our PMG discussion during district council this week, and it brought back some fun memories from Quebec city and once again reinforced my testimony in the reality of personal revelation as I prepared for the discussion and the practice about Chapter 8 and daily planning.

The biggest event of this week was taking the same road trip we took last transfer to do exchanges in Granby and Sherbrooke. In all honesty this week was probably the most I’ve driven in my whole life, and it was a good time! I was with Elder Halladay in Granby and Elder Alzamora in Sherbrooke. Elder Halladay and I had a unique day since our SIM cards didn’t work at all due to a nationwide outage, but we had a really awesome experience teaching a man on his balcony about the Atonement for at least half an hour. Elder Alzamora and I also had some cool experiences and saw some tender mercies help us find more people to teach, and one of the funnest parts of the day was definitely running into three separate people who were from Columbia. Elder Alzamora is originally from Peru so I once again was blessed with an opportunity to hablar un poquito de espanol!

Our ability to speak the language has finally reached the point that Elder Freestone and I feel like we have started to develop a good relationship with the members in our ward, and we had multiple members ask us this week how they can help with our friends that they've seen coming to church! We have so many amazing members here in Longueuil and their faith, generosity, and kindness continue to blow me away. This week we also had a cool experience with the Pindi family meeting with them after they had had some drama with one of their neighbors, but the member that we brought knew exactly what to say and having him there made such a huge difference.

To wrap this letter up, I did my first module of “my plan” (basically a program to help returning missionaries prepare for post mission life) this Sunday and it made it feel a lot more real that my time as a missionary is running out. I'm not sure if that's a good thing or a bad thing, but I do know that I feel a renewed desire to make sure that I can leave the mission field with no regrets. At this point in my mission I have a fairly solid grasp of all of the basic skills necessary to do missionary work, but I've realized that simply having those skills doesn't bring joy or satisfaction. The only thing that can bring true joy and satisfaction is the sanctifying influence of the Holy Ghost that comes from living the Gospel of Jesus Christ and becoming truly converted, and I want that to be my focus for the next six weeks or so. Whether you are a missionary or not, your most important responsibility is to honor your covenants and while our circumstances may change our true identity stays the same. If our foundation is truly built on Christ and the covenants we have made to follow Him, we will be able to face whatever unexpected storms or changes life may throw at us.

Love you all,

Elder Jackson