The Beginning of the End

Salut tout le monde!

As another week comes to a close, so too draws near the end of my last full transfer as a missionary. Crazy stuff! This Thursday Elder Freestone will be heading to Montreal to await his flight home, and I will be staying here in Longueuil to hold down the fort for three weeks with my new and final companion Elder Quinn before I head home just in time for school to start. 

This Tuesday I got to go on another exchange with Elder Spaulding, and it was seriously a ton of fun! It brought back some fun memories of our time as two of the four Elders covering all of New Brunswick, and it was the third exchange we’ve had together so it almost feels like we’ve been companions. We had a great day and I’ll share two highlights that I thought were pretty cool. We drove down from our area to theirs to have a lesson at a really cool park in St. Hubert called le Parc de la Cite and the park was super pretty! The remarkable thing was that we had no real way to identify or meet up with the old Quebecois guy that we were supposed to meet up with, but we just walked to the central plaza and then we found him and had a pretty good lesson! The other miracle we had to round off the night came as we were doing one last loop around our apartment and we noticed a lady doing yard work planting new bushes in her yard. We asked if we could help and she said yes! We spent about a half an hour gardening for her during which we found out that she is from Haiti and that she has friends who are members of our church! Elder Spaulding spent nine months in Florida speaking Haitian Creole so he immediately started talking to her in Creole and he asked her for advice on how to make Haitian food and she literally gave us her phone number so she can teach him haha. The cherry on top to our exchange is that I found out that Elder Spaulding is going to Montreal-Est this transfer which is literally little Haiti so I’m super excited for him!

This Wednesday was also a pretty fun/busy day since we did service in the morning for a place called Provision for the first time, basically sorting food that had been donated into shopping carts and throwing out the stuff that was spoiled. 

We also had a super funny experience doing a pass off lesson for our awesome new friend Abraham. Abraham only speaks English so we are going to pass him off to the English Elders, and I realized that one of the English Elders is actually an Elder assigned to speak Mandarin who is from Coarsegold California where I served before my mission! I literally had lessons with him and his family haha.

Our second exchange for this week was with the Mont St. Hilaire Elders, and we started it right after having our final district council of the transfer. We ended things with bang by doing a finding blitz together in Saint Hyacinthe, and while I was with Elder Tingle we had a miracle right as we were heading back to our car to wrap up the blitz. There was a guy sitting at a bench that we were walking through and we said hi and said we were missionaries and then we realized that he was crying. He was going through a really tough moment so we got to say a prayer with him and afterwards he asked for a card with our number.

He had some really awesome lessons with some of our new friends Daniel, who was a prayer referral, and Edouardo and his family who met with missionaries a year ago before some crazy health challenges made it too difficult to meet. Our most solid friends Claude, Stanislas, and the Pindi family are all doing well and Sylvain is hanging in there too so if you could pray for them that would be greatly appreciated!

We also had a really special surprise this Saturday. We went to the church for a primary activity that we had invited some of the families we are teaching to join and while unfortunately none of our friends were able to make it, we had a good time with some of the members and Elder Freestone and I got to see some of our friends from Quebec city who had just finished going to the temple which is right next to our church building! It was a super cool tender mercy for both of us since we both served there for a number of months.

As time has been accelerating recently I've been reflecting on my mission and trying to figure out what I should focus on during the home stretch. I want to focus on what matters most, what will have the greatest and longest lasting impact on my life. The obvious conclusion that I've come to is that I should focus on Jesus Christ, His Gospel, and His Atonement. I have been more aware of opportunities to testify of Him and His atoning sacrifice the last few weeks, and I can recognize the power and authority of the Spirit that come when I do so. I've also come to realize that my current purpose, to help others come unto Christ as I come unto Him myself, will still be my purpose once I go home. Once you truly “get” the Gospel of Jesus Christ, once you are truly converted, you never let go. That's the point that I want to get to. I've learned that I can be a successful missionary throughout my mission, but to truly know if my mission was a success I'll have to wait to see if I'm still active and faithful 20 years from now. I know that the only way to get there is by making the Gospel of Jesus Christ a part of who I am and by applying His Atonement in my life daily. I'm so grateful for the privilege I have to serve as a full-time missionary, and I'm excited to sprint to the finish!

Love you all,

Elder Jackson