End of Act One

 Bonjour!

Transfer weeks are always crazy and this week was no exception! I was really sad to say goodbye to Elder Freestone, but I am excited to work with Elder Quinn. He is from Gilbert, Arizona and he has been out for about 14 months. Elder Quinn has a lot of enthusiasm for the work and a sincere desire to help our friends and the other missionaries in our zone feel joy and come closer to Jesus Christ, and I know that we are meant to be together for the next couple of weeks! 

My last few days with Elder Freestone were pretty surreal, but a lot of fun. We stayed busy with some really fun and spiritual lessons with our friends and members. It was crazy how normal our last day together felt, and it was a good reminder that the end of a mission, just like the end of most chapters of life, doesn’t always come with fanfare or applause. We had service in the morning at provision (the food distribution center) again since it was a Wednesday, and it was pretty memorable. We spent almost two hours sorting through and cleaning up old celery to make it more presentable and our seemingly mundane task suddenly got a whole lot more exciting when a crazy Iranian dude walked up and grabbed the knife I was using out of my hand. I guess he thought I was going too slow since he started hacking off the ends of the celery sticks at an impressive rate. He didn’t speak any French at all, only very blunt English which made things even more interesting but eventually he wandered off and we met some other people who were super nice.

The rest of the week was pretty much a blur. We made the short trip from Longueuil to Montreal on Thursday for transfers and then went back to Montreal on Friday for MLC which was another really great experience. We also got to have the Quebec City zone leaders, Elder Reid and Elder Deforge, spend the night with us on Thursday. They are both incredible missionaries, and it was fun to talk with them about the work and to see their drive and their testimonies. It was rather sobering to realize that MLC was probably the last formal missionary meeting I’ll attend since I’ll be leaving before zone conference, but it was great to see some of the friends I’ve made throughout my mission.

We had quite a bit of success finding interested people and we had a lot of people committed to come to church. As tends to happen, only a small fraction of those people actually made it to church but we still had Oliveira Pindi come as well as Jordany and his family, so I feel happy. I talked to Jordany after church to follow up about his reading in the Book of Mormon since we haven’t been able to meet with him the last couple of weeks and much to my surprise he said that he had read the entire Book! Needless to say that was a really big miracle, but he still has some questions and isn’t super interested in changing where he is at, but he is a sincere seeker of truth and I have faith that he can receive a testimony of the restored Gospel through prayer. I also really loved the missionary focused second hour discussion, and I’m happy to say that our ward did an awesome job at making our friends feel welcome at church! I'm sad that I will soon be wrapping up my time as a full-time missionary but moments like those make me excited to continue being a missionary for the rest of my life.

If you could all continue praying for Claude, Stanislas, the Pindi family, Sylvain, and Jordany and his family it would be greatly appreciated!

Without going into very many details this week I had the opportunity to help give some blessings to members and to help some missionaries work out some difficulties in their companionship, and each of these scenarios was somewhat stretching. I’ve learned that a mission and really any type of service in the kingdom of God is designed to force you out of your comfort zone. You are put into scenarios where you know that you cannot succeed on your own. You can’t rely on your own wisdom to know what to say or do, and that is a good thing. Those are the moments that teach us to rely on the Holy Ghost and help us learn how to recognize his influence. I know that the Holy Ghost is real and so is the priesthood. Their power and influence are tangible, and they are truly priceless gifts from a loving Heavenly Father to bless His children. We do not have to go through our struggles alone. We can turn to God through sincere faith and repentance and have access to His power and His spirit. That’s the quick testimony I wanted to leave you all with this week.

Love you,

Elder Jackson