Happy Birthday in the Jungle :)

Hola Familia!

Wow yesterday was such a good day! It was so interesting to have a birthday in the mission but I really enjoyed it. I woke up yesterday and opened the package that my family sent me and I was so happy to see the cards and the pictures and gifts that they had sent me. I could really feel their love. My companion and I serve in a branch with two other elders and they showed up at my house in the morning with a huge plate of homemade pancakes and frosting. I seriously was so happy! This is the first time that I have eaten pancakes in almost a year and I was so happy that they had woken up early to make them for me. We went to church and didn’t have anyone there which was kind of a bummer but it’s okay. The senior missionary couple was there to wish me happy birthday and the whole branch was congratulating me. Hermana Martha, my recent convert, came with us to teach some lessons that night and then we went back to her house to teach a lesson and at the end, she made us cheese and crackers and chocolate milk. She lives with her daughter Karen and I seriously love these two women with all of my heart. We were laughing and talking sitting in their little shed/kitchen in the back. When we came home we put twenty candles in the pancakes and lit them all. It was quite a site to see. Wow I am getting old. I wasn’t with my family yesterday but I was absolutely surrounded by people who love me and I really felt at home. It was one of the best birthdays ever! Last week we went to an old castle in the jungle and it was so fun!! We were running around taking pictures pretending to be princesses and gargoyles. The castle was beautiful and we had such a good day! Thank you for all of your birthday wishes and thoughts. I really appreciate them. I love you all!

Love,

Hermana Allphin

Happy  20th in the Jungle :)

Hermana Martha and Karen. Birthday night with them :)

birthday Pancake breakfast:) Thanks Elders!!

Rain, Rain, Go Away

Hola Familia!

Okay so I really dont have a lot of time to write today because we are going as a zone to see a castle!! I am way excited about that. This week was full of trials and blessings, so pretty much it was a normal week as a missionary. We found one of our old investigators this week. She was the lady we found with the six little kids and her husband is in jail. She was travelling but she came back and she came to church yesterday! She accepted a baptismal date for the 9^th of August. I really hope that date doesn’t fall. We had a funny experience this week. Saturday it literally rained all day. We were out working in the rain for like 9 hours and we got home covered in mud and dirt and soaking wet. We sat down to plan and I pulled out the phone and it was wet! We freaked out and took the battery out so that it could dry and when we put it back in….. it wouldn’t turn on. We took the entire phone apart and dried all of it and then put it back together and….. it still wouldn’t turn on. We were super stressed because the zone leaders aren’t going to Iquitos for another two weeks so we would be without a phone for a long time. We decided to pray. We prayed that the phone would work and then we went to sleep. The next morning we tried to turn the phone and it immediately turned on and we have not had any problems with it since J Heavenly Father loves us a lot!! Well I hope you all have an awesome week! Love you!

Love,

Hermana Allphin

Surprise!

Hola Familia!

Well I don’t have much to report this week.  We worked really hard this week, climbed a lot of mountains and found lots of people. We had interviews and room inspections this week and it was quite a funny experience. President decided to make the room inspections a surprise this time. We arrived at our district meeting Tuesday morning and everyone was talking really fast. We inquired as to what was going on and all they said was “President and Hermana Gomez and the assistants are here!” This was a big surprise because we are way out here in the jungle and president is in Iquitos and they were not supposed to arrive until Thursday for the interviews. Some of the missionaries started telling us how the assistants had showed up with president really early in the morning to do house inspections. We heard some pretty funny stories because many of the missionaries had not cleaned their houses. We were laughing at their stories with a sigh of relief that that had not happened to us. To our lovely surprise the assistant’s walked in moments later and told us that they had made some surprise visits this morning and they said, “ For the rest of you, give us the keys to your house, we will be going right now with Hermana Gomez to visit your rooms while you are in district meeting.” Oh my gosh I almost died. My house wasn’t dirty but I didn’t make the bed ( sorry mom!) and a few other things…. It was kind of a stressful experience but it is fine. Lesson learned: Clean the house better before Hermana Gomez makes a surprise visit! Our investigator didn’t accept a baptismal date this week and we were kind of sad but we are going to keep going forward and hopefully we will see some good blessings this week. I love you all so much!

Love,

Hermana Allphin

Less-Actives

Hola Familia!

Well this week i really dont have anything to exciting to report. We have been working really hard with the less actives that live in our area. Missionary work is changing a lot right now. Elder Grow of the seventy came to visit us in March and he told us that our number one priority should be our less actives and then our recent converts and then our investigators. He made us a promise that if we would focus more on the less actives, we would find more people to teach. We have been holding out on that promise. We have been blessed to find a lot of less active families that live in our área and it has been such a privilege to teach them. Many of these people have not been to church in years and it is so amazing to introduce the góspel into their lives again. Hopefully we will be able to help them become active again with their families. It hasnt been to rainy here which means that it has been blistering hot. Oh well, I guess I am used to that by now. I have the best tan lines you could ever imagine! I love you all so much. I hope you all had a wonderful 4th of July! Talk to you next week.

Love,

Hermana Allphin