End of Act Two

 This was a great week! With three more exchanges and lots of different events we were plenty busy. The last week felt so normal that I can hardly believe that I’m close to the finish line; I’m hoping this next week will be equally busy and that our momentum will carry me to the end. My goals at this point are to leave with no regrets. We’re going to finish strong and have fun!

I had lots of experiences this week that remind me why I love being a missionary, and I realize more and more just how big a privilege it is to serve a mission. There is nothing more rewarding than feeling the Spirit work through you and being an instrument in the Lord's hands to bless His children. Whether it was during finding following a prompting I had during planning that put me and my companion in the right place at the right time to meet someone, or continuing to talk to everyone even when I was tempted to move and then finding someone who is prepared to receive the Gospel, or teaching and testifying by the Spirit using the scriptures and asking inspired questions, these are all evidences and assurances that this is the Lord's work and that he is mindful of us. 

I want to share the specifics of a few of the miracles that I want to remember:

On Tuesday I felt a prompting that we should go to a specific area for our morning street contacting, and we ended up finding two people that have started teaching! One of them was a lady who was walking to an appointment who said she couldn’t stop but she let us walk with her and we shared the basics of the Restoration and she was interested to hear more! I also had one more cool experience finding walking down a street that was completely empty when I saw a young boy taking out the trash and I felt prompted to ask him if we could talk to his parents and he said yes. About a minute or so later when we were about to move on his mom came out on the balcony and we talked to her and she was interested in learning more!

The other interested person we found is a man named Michel. He said he has a cousin in Florida who is a member of our church and that he has met with missionaries before. I went over for our return appointment on an exchange with Elder Laker who was actually reassigned to Florida during the pandemic and it turns out that he had served for six months in the same ward as Michel’s cousin and that he knew his cousin’s family! Saying that the world is a small place does do that miracle justice.

This week I also went on an exchange with the Spanish Elders and I was with Elder Cardozo again. We ended up going the opposite direction for street contacting than we had planned, but I felt good about it so we kept going and we found a park that I had never been to that was only a minute or two away from our apartment. We had some good contacts with a few people in the park and right as we were going to head back towards the direction we had planned to go I decided we should go talk to an older looking man sitting on the other side of the park reading a book. From a distance I had thought he was Quebecois, but he actually turned out to be from Peru and the book he was reading was a French dictionary since he is studying for his drivers test. His name is Diego and we had a good conversation with him (I could understand a decent amount of what was being said and participated as much as I could), and we found out that he is actually the father of an active member in the Spanish ward and that he had stopped going to church because of the pandemic but he was interested in coming back now!

Sunday night we had an amazing lesson with Claude about the end of the Plan of Salvation using the Bible and the Book of Mormon to explain the Spirit World, baptism for the dead, resurrection and judgment, and kingdoms of glory. He was thinking super deeply the whole and it was obvious that he was feeling something. At the end he committed to pray and ask if what we shared was true. He even said the closing prayer at the end of the lesson and also asked us to send him a list of all the verses we used. I have faith that he will receive an answer to his prayers, and if you could all keep him in your prayers as well that would be greatly appreciated!

The most exciting piece of news I have from this week is about our friend Stanislas. We were able to meet with him again this week to follow up on his reading in 3 Nephi 11 and to talk about the importance of baptism with him. Stanislas has amazing faith and he understands everything we teach so well. When we asked him if he had been baptized before he said no because he wanted to feel ready, and we were able to explain our purpose and how we help people to make and keep covenants and he agreed to set a baptismal date for September 3! I am so excited for him!! Please please please keep him in your prayers as well!

We had a good number of friends at church this week again, but I know we can still get more friends to church so hopefully we'll have a full house next week for my last Sunday in the field! Since this was my last fast Sunday I decided to share my testimony on how grateful I am for my mission and encourage anyone who has the desire to serve God to serve a mission as well. I’d give the same counsel and testimony with each of you reading this email as well! I promise that you will never regret it!

Love you all,

Elder Jackson