Lots of Weddings!

Hola Familia!

Wow this week seriously went by sooo fast. We had a really good week
but we also had a lot of problems. Interesting story number one: Our
Zone Leaders called us on Tuesday night (we serve in the same ward as
our ZLs) and they told us that the massive wedding that is free got
cancelled. The problem with that is that our zone has 5 families that
need to get married on Friday so that they can get baptized on
Saturday. We immediately started preparing papers and  other stuff so
that we could organize our own wedding for this Friday so that
everyone doesnt lose their baptismal dates. The next morning we were
coming back from the Municipalidad (wedding papers) and we had been
trying to call our Zone Leaders all morning and they hadnt answered
and so finally someone answered the phone and it was some weird guy
that said he bought this phone for 20 soles.... we were like Oh no the
zone leaders lost their phone! Sure enough they show up at our house
an hour later and tell us that they lost their phone at the airport.
Obviously they cant survive without a phone because they have a lot to
do so we had to give them our phone. It was so hard to be so
disconnected from the world for three days because we couldnt contact
anyone! But we have our phone back so everything is good :) Our
baptism on Saturday was so crazy! We show up at 7:00 and there were
tons of people in the chapel. We found out that there was a marriage
going on but the person that was coming to marry the people hadnt
shown up yet. All of our investigators were waiting in the Chapel and
we had to wait til the wedding was over to start the baptisms. So
remember Hna. Lupe? Ya she got baptized this Saturday and honestly the
moment she entered the water I felt such a huge relief! It has been a
huge struggle to get her to baptism and we had a lot of opposition but
in the end it all turned out okay. Our other baptism was Carlos
Torres. He is an old man and his wife died a long time ago. His
son-in-law baptized him and his daughter was watching and when he came
out of the water he gave his son-in-law the biggest hug and it was
soooo sweet. Alright one more funny story: After the baptism, everyone
went back in the chapel for testimonies and the closing song and
prayer. There was  enough people that we filled up the whole chapel
because everyone stayed after the wedding. I got up to lead the
closing hymn and we start going and nobody was singing.... I was
singing, my companion was singing and the two Elders were singing and
that was it. Nobody knew the song and no one had hymn books and I am
just standing there awkardly leading the song in front of like 100
people.... ya it was super awkard! I definitely have lots of
adventures every week but I love it! Transfers are today and I am
really nervous, honestly anything could happen but I am pretty sure I
will be staying in Secada for a few more months! Enjoy your
Thanksgiving holiday! Love you all!
Hermana Allphin

this is hna. Lupe and hno. Carlos at the baptism... They are awesome!

When it rains...it pours!

Hola Familia!

Wow this week went by so fast! I cant believe that it is already
Monday again. So nothing spectacular happened this week, just taught
lots of lessons and the sun is my worst enemy. We did have a really
funny experience this week with the rain. We left our house at about
10:00 in the morning and the sun was blazing. We decided to go teach
some families in a little invasion town in our area that is kind of
far away from our house. Invasion towns are little villages in the
middle of nowhere with plywood bridges and stick houses.....anyway we
were teaching our recent convert Vanessa and her family and all of the
sudden the sky got dark and we heard lots of thunder. We opened the
door and it was the craziest thing because we could literally see the
rain coming right for us in huge sheets. We saw it getting closer and
closer so we closed the door as tight as we could and waited. There
was a huge flash of lighting and then the floods came. The thunder was
so loud that it was shaking the house and we couldnt hear eachother
because the rain was so loud. Keep in mind that we are sitting in a
little shack with a piece of metal for a roof and their is lightning
everywhere. The wall to the house started falling down and the water
started coming in. I seriously thought we were gonna die but it was
kind of fun at the same time. When the lightning stopped we knew we
had to go because we had lunch with a member. As we were running out
of the down we had to be super careful walking over the bridges
because they are not sturdy at all and the river was really deep and
really fast. All of the houses were completely flooded with water.
When we got back to our house we found out that our house was
completely flooded too! Luckily the members that we live with put all
of our suitcases and stuff on top of our beds so none of our things
were wet. But there was no electricity and a lake of water in our
house and the house of the members... ugh it was awful! Our house
smelt so bad! As we were walking to our lunch appointment we had to
take the long way because the streets had literally turned into
rivers. Also my shoe got stuck in the toxic slime mud and I had to
wash my foot in the gross over flow water.... ya it was definitely an
adventure but the good news is that everyone was fine and the rain
eventually stopped. We have two baptisms this saturday that I am
really  excited for. Hna Lupe is excited for her baptism but sometimes
when we go visit her she seems like really hesitant. I am hoping we
can keep her excited until Saturday. Our other baptism is Carlos and
he is an old man whose wife died and his daughter gave us the
referral. He loves everything about the gospel and is really excited
about his baptism. Oh and Estafita! She is my favorite. She is a
single mom and we started teaching her last week. She was so receptive
to our message and she is going to get baptized on the 23rd! Her
little boy Justin is soo cute! Well that is all I have for you this
week, I hope that you all enjoy your week and I will talk to you again
next Monday! Love you!
Love, 

Hermana Allphin

Happy Halloween :)

So this week was super good but to tell you the truth I cant remember
most of what happened. The days seem to blur together. So Halloween
was this week and I was super excited for it but the sad thing is that
here, nobody celebrates Halloween :( no decorations, no costumes, no
candy....nada. That was kind of a bummer but we did have a fun
experience that night. We are teaching a family right now that I love!
They are getting married this month and they have two little kids
named Rodrigo and Carla. This family is always so fascinated whenever
I talk about my culture and the U.S. I was telling them about what we
do on Halloween and Rodrigo was dying, he was like " What! You get
candy on Halloween?" Haha my mom sent me a package for Halloween that
had like Skittles and some other candy and some fake spiders in it so
I decided to give this kid a fun Halloween. That night I put the candy
and the spiders in a bag and brought it with me to the lesson. At the
end of the lesson I was like okay Rodrigo I know you wanted to know
what Halloween is like the States so I brought you a present. I pulled
out the bag of candy and he literally couldnt contain his joy! He was
jumping around and he was like "Mom look look!" They were all so happy
and they put the fake spiders all over their house. They had no idea
what skittles were because they have never tried them but they all
loved them soooo much! It was a pretty fun experience. So one thing
that I have neglected to mention in my past emails is that we use
these things called motokars to get where we need  to go. It is a
little carriage strapped onto the back of a motorcylce and we use them
to travel long distances... super sketchy but fun :) It has been
raining a ton here in the past few weeks and the mud is crazy bad but
està bien! We have transfers in a couple week and we think we are
going to be put in a trio because we have a lot of new hermana´s that
need trainers. Right now I am the baby of the mission because I am the
youngest girl but not for very much longer. That is all I have for you
this week, I love you all! Talk to you next week!
Love,
Hermana Allphin