Dear family and friends,
Good afternoon! Sorry
I missed last week. We are on high speed
to try and catch up with all members, non-members, friends we want to see and
visit with before we leave. So our diary
is filled up with appointments! We have
loved it!
We have finished up with our homeless project assignments,
and were able to say good-bye to many dear friends. This past week we met another friend, Jill
there. We had such a delightful visit
and we both felt badly that we didn’t meet each other earlier.
For Christmas, Dave and Julie and family sent us their
testimonies of the Book of Mormon and challenged us to give away copies of the
Book of Mormon with them. I want you to
know what a miraculous experience that has been. Our dear friends, the Smiths whom we love so
much, who are struggling with their faith, we felt are in such need for the
spirit in their lives. I felt really
impressed that we needed to challenge Aimee to sincerely read the Book of
Mormon again. So we stopped by. We gave her a copy of the General Conference
Issue with a specific article marked for her to read, as well as a copy of the
Book of Mormon with our testimony in it, Julie’s, testimony, and Lily’s! The Smiths have a sweet little boy, Max who
is coming up on 2 years old, and Aimee is expecting baby #2. So when we gave her the Book of Mormon with
Lily’s testimony in it, she was so excited!
I know I’m going to have a girl, she said, and we love the name Lily!!!
(She found out 2 days later that they are going to have a girl! What they are going to name her is yet to be
seen! I hope it is Lily!!!!) She was very touched by your testimonies and
promised to begin reading it again!
Then we went to visit our friend, Andy, who owns a bike shop
in Cambridge. We took him a Book of
Mormon with Dave’s testimony in it. He
was very appreciative as well. I’m
saving Bailey’s and Maddie’s testimonies to give to our neighbors next
door! Thank you for the wonderful
testimonies! We are very grateful.
We’ve had some glorious culinary experiences. Dear friends invited us to a fabulous pub in
a little village about 40 minutes from Cambridge. It was truly a Hobbit Pub, with short
ceilings, a warm fire, window seats, and walls covered with silver, copper, and
brass antiques. Brad had to duck to go
from room to room. The plastered walls
and exposed beams added to the charm.
The food was out of this world. I
had lamb kabobs and Brad had cod. Then
this week we were invited by our friends, the Cooks, to go to London to meet up
with their daughter, Melissa (who is a chef herself!) to visit Burrough
Market! This is close to Tower Bridge,
near The Shard, right next to the River Thames.
It is an open food market that sells every kind of food you can
imagine. We had to sample the pancakes,
the Scottish eggs, Ricolette, cream filled donuts. Yes, Becca, I am signing up for your exercise
package when I get home!!!
We’ve met with so many of our YSA’s, many who are struggling
and it gives us a chance to share again our testimonies and our love. We’ve started up our FHE and Institute
classes. A highlight for us was to take
Lucy Wedderburn, our new convert, to the London Temple, to do baptisms for the
dead! This was awesome. The officiators were so kind to her and made
her feel so welcome. She really has a
fear of going under the water and said she would only do 5 names. But after 3 names, she told Brad she would be
ok. She was baptized for 20. We were very proud of her. These were names a dear woman brought to the
temple that morning.
One last miracle I will share happened early Saturday
morning. We had planned to return to
visit an inactive woman in the ward. We
had tried before Christmas, but she wasn’t in and we wanted to come back after
the Christmas rush. She owns and lives
in a Restaurant/pub/hotel in a place called Horseheath. It is very beautiful. We have never met her and didn’t know how she
would respond to our visit. We went into
the pub and she was standing behind the bar.
I said as I reached out my hand, oh, you must be Tracy. Then we introduced ourselves. She was absolutely lovely. She invited us to sit down and talked with us
for about a half an hour. She was raised
in a very active LDS home. Her father
was president of just about everything in the church she told us. When she was about 18, she chose another way
and her father has been trying to get her back into the church ever since. She doesn’t appreciate his constant nagging
at her, but she loves her dad and keeps taking the Book of Mormons he keeps
giving her. She told us how she loves
the church and all the good it has done for her parents and sisters. She couldn’t say enough good about the
Church. So we asked, was she offended or
why did she leave. She said, she just
made other choices with her life. We
invited her to come back. She lives with
a partner that wouldn’t be sympathetic to the church, so she says she won’t
come back. We testified to her that
Heavenly Father loves her and know her and asked if she wanted home or visiting
teachers. She didn’t want any contact
from the church, but she wouldn’t have any trouble coming back to church, if
she felt the time was right. Our
friend, had been sending her notes every month for over a year, just to let her
know that she was cared about. We
explained that to her, but she gratefully declined any future notes. The interesting thing is that no one we
talked to in the ward, Bishop, our note writing friend, had ever met Tracy. We don’t fault anyone. There are over 400 names on the membership
list, and so many of the names don’t even exist. The miraculous part of this
experience was that Tracy made the observation that our visit that morning was
not a coincidence. Her partner was out
of town and she didn’t have any pressing issues at that time that we came. She was very appreciative of the visit. When
we asked her if we could do anything for her, she requested that we pray for
her sister who was going through a very difficult challenge. We pray that hopefully something will touch
her heart and she will come back!!!
There is so much still to do here in Cambridge! It seems that we have barely touched the
surface! This mission has changed our
lives however. We have been able to see
more than ever, the power that the gospel can have in one’s life, if we just
embrace it with our whole heart, might, mind and strength. We love our Heavenly Father and His Son! This is the Gospel of Jesus Christ! He is at the helm.
We love you all!
Happy Birthday this month to our little Jordan Jackman on January 20!
(Big 1st Birthday!) and our beautiful Amber on January 22! Also great wishes to Justin and Amber on
their wedding anniversary on Jan. 14th!
Love to you all!
Dad and Mom
Papa and Grandma
Elder and Sister Jackman
