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| My last P-day...... aka my funeral :) |
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| Yes, I did eat that! Raw and alive :) |
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| District Punchana! |
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| Carne de Extranjeria |
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| La Hermana Adolfina |
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| Iquitos! |
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| My convert Veronica and her twins |
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| Last Baptism! |
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| Dagnith y Elar |
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| Manuyama Family |
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| Ludwing and his Family |
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| Juleisy and Reina :) |
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| Marco and his Mission Call |
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| Mission President and his Wife :) |
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| The Mighty Amazon! |
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| Leaving Iquitos |
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| Going Home! |
Hola Familia!Well this has been a pretty normal week. Yesterday was Carnaval.... remember how last year I told you that the people decorate huge trees filled with buckets and put them up in the streets and dance around like devils? Ya that was this week. Part of this holiday is that people come out of their houses and attack people with water balloons..... Haha I have been attacked by so many water balloons this week that it is not even funny. Yesterday was the celebration and president didnt let us leave to proselyte because everyone was completely drunk outside and it was super dangerous. But it is okay, it gave me some time to pack my suitcases :) My companion has been having some knee problems and so she hasnt been able to work this week. I have been out working with members for a few days which isnt super fun but the work must go on right? Yesterday in church we had 7 Less-Active members come!! Yay! I love reactivating people :)It is so wonderful to see them accept the gospel once again in their lives. It never ceases to surprise me how merciful Heavenly Father is. His arm really is always reached out to each of us. I am so grateful that I have had this opportunity to serve as a missionary for these last 18 months. The time has gone by fast and I have learned so many things. I have seen so many lives change, including mine! The Lord is hastening his work and he needs laborers in his vineyard. Our purpose here in this earth is so much more important than we think it is sometimes. I am going to miss walking out and seeing the beautiful jungle every morning, the cold showers, boiled bananas and the beautiful accent of the people here. I dont know how it is going to be not being able to speak spanish everyday but I guess I will have to learn. I know that this Church is true, the Book of Mormon changes lives and I know that our Heavenly Father loves us. I hope that I can always be an instrument in the hands of the Lord to help many others find and accept the Gospel.Sé sin ninguna duda que esta es la iglesia de Jesucristo y estoy tan agradecida a mi Padre Celestial por haberme dado esta oportunidad de servir a sus hijos por estos 18 meses. Yo sé que si nosotros vivimos el Evangelio con exactitud, vamos a poder encontrar la felicidad en esta vida, a pesar de que siempre tendremos problemas. La expiación de Jesucristo es real y si lo aceptamos podemos acercarnos más a nuestro Padre Celestial. Amo a mi Salvador y amo este obra, ojalá que yo siempre sea una misionera, ayudando a otros a aceptar el Evangelio.¡Les quiero mucho!! Nos vemos pronto :)Con Amor,Hermana Allphin
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Hermana AllphinLove,Saturday was the wedding and baptism. Yay! We have worked so hard for this day and really, everything was perfect! We went to the chapel Saturday morning to decorate everything and get everything ready and then at 5 that afternoon the wedding started. The woman`s name is Dagnith and she is 18-years-old and 6 months pregnant. She is so sweet and has sincere desires to change her life. She looked absolutely beautiful and was so excited! Her husband is named Elar and he is actually a returned missionay. He kind of lost his way in life a little bit but is now trying to put his life back on the gospel tracks. This wedding was the first step. They were so happy and the whole ward showed up to support us. Afterward, we had the baptismal service and that was so beautiful as well. She was so happy and her husband was beaming as he watched her go under the water. The spirit that was there the whole night was amazing and we could really feel that God was happy for what was going on. This family now has the gospel in their life and will have it forever if they want it. I am so grateful that Heavenly Father gave me a chance to help this family. We really have worked so hard so that everything was perfect. I love you all so much! I hope you have a great week!Hola Familia!Wow I have so much to tell you this week I dont even know where to start. First of all, this week we had zone conference with President and it was so inspirational. It was my last zone conference and I was a little bit bummed but really, every training was so inspired and I could really feel the spirit testify that everything that I was learning was true. President talked about how the Lord puts every missionary in a specific mission for a reason. That mission will give that missionary the chance to develop certain attributes and strengths and will allow them to rise to their fullest potential as a person later on in life. That really impacted me. I dont know why the amazon jungle with the hand picked mission of the Lord for me but I do know that I have learned and changed a lot. I will never forget my time here or the things that I have learned.
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Hermana AllphinLoveHola Familia :)Bueno, I dont even know where to start with this email. Nothing super special happened this week, just the routine of missionary work. We worked really hard and found some super cool people and we are especially excited for the wedding and baptism that we have coming up this Saturday :) This area is really tough and we are facing a lot of rejection right now but the only thing that we can do is keep going and the Lord will lead us to where he needs us to go. I do have a pretty funny story to tell you this week. We were contacting at a window and this big drunk man came up behind us to go into his house but I didnt see him. I kid you not, my companion saw him and then bulldozed me out of the way to start running.....literally. Drunk men are really annoying but they cant really do anything to us because we can just run away.... like in the Book of Mormon :) Haha afterwards I was trying to thank my companion for trying to protect us and she was like.... " Protect us? I was trying to get you out of the way to escape!" hahaha my companion is pretty funny seriously. She literally lives in a little village in the middle of Bolivia. When I got to this area she just looked at me for a few minutes and then said, " Blue eyes? That cant be!" Her mom almost had a heart attack when she heard that her daughter is now serving with a "gringa" she is the funniest, wierdest person I have ever met but we get a long great :) I am so happy to be serving in this last area with her. I love you all, I would send pictures but my camera broke this week :( Be excited to hear about the wedding next week! Love you!
Hola Familia!Well it was another wonderful week filled with lots of missionary work. First off, it literally rained all week long!! Every single day we came in soaked from head to toe with our feet and ankles covered in mud…. Haha gotta love Iquitos! We had two really cool miracles this week. First of all, we have a couple that is preparing for marriage and baptism on February 7th. We have been working really hard this week to get all of their wedding papers done. We went to their house on Wednesday to pick up her birth certificate and when we got there she told us that her mom had sent her a huge file of papers but that she didn’t think that the birth certificate was in there. My heart sank because my zone leaders told me that the offices have been searching high and low for this birth certificate and that they had not been able to find it. We were banking on the hope that maybe she would receive it from her mom and when she told me it wasn’t there I started to get nervous. Finding a birth certificate in the middle of the jungle of someone who was born in a little river village…. Is literally one of the hardest things in the world to do! Anyway, we went to the government building and I was just praying the whole time. When we walked into the office the marriage lady started looking through the papers and was just like no this is not it, this is not it and then…. She found the copy of the birth certificate. Somehow it had been tucked in the some of the other papers. We had to go to another government building and update the birth certificate and then we brought it back to office and we opened the marriage folder, gave her all of the papers, printed the marriage edict, and published it in the newspaper…. And everything is now ready for their wedding on the 7th!!! Seriously, there are miracles in this world. The Lord really pulled some big strings for us there and helped us find the birth certificate. We also had a baptism this Saturday of a woman named Veronica. She recently gave birth to twin little girls and she is awesome. Her parents have wanted her to get baptized in the Baptist church since she was a little girl but she told us that it never felt right. She has been meeting with the missionaries for a couple months now and despite the fact that she was sick with her pregnancy and had to have a C-section with her twins, she still came to church and had all of her interviews. She told us that when she came to church, she felt really good and she knew she should be baptized. She will be a faithful member of the church here in Punchana and I am grateful to have met her. Her baptism was really beautiful and we could all feel the spirit. To answer your question mom, I am not in my former ward that I was in last year in Iquitos; I am in a different part of the city in a different ward and area. I love you all; I hope you have a great week!Love,Hermana Allphin
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