Baptism of Paola and Paul

Hola Familia!

Well I dont have a lot of time so this one is going to be kind of short. This week was a Little bit of long one but we survived it. Just so you all know, I did not get transferred and neither did my companion! We were super excited about that. We are still the Sister Leaders and with this responsibility, every time a sister is sick we have to accompany them to the clinic. This week we had a sister that was having a lot of health problems and so we were at the doctor with her a lot and we didnt have tons of time to work in our area but everything will be okay. We had a baptism on Saturday of a really cool family. Hermana Paola and her 12-year-old son Paul. She really has been a golden investigator and she was so excited for her baptism. The Ward has really helped us bring them in and Paul is really excited to be in the Young mens program and recieve the priesthood! She always tells us how good she feels and how she knows she has repented. They have a bright future ahead of them. We are working with the Dàvila family still so that they can get married and baptized in November. They really have desires to do it but they are still really hesitant to accpet a set date. If you wouldnt mind keeping them in your prayers that would be awesome!! I hope you all have a wonderful Halloween! I will be flying to Iquitos this week for the Leadership Conference, I am super excited to see all of my friends again that are serving in different areas of the jungle….. it is going to be awesome J I love you all, have a wonderful week. HAPPY HALLOWEEN J

Love,

Hermana Allphin

Paola and Paul Baptism!

9 Investigators!!

Hola Familia!!

Well this week was an interesting one! We have been hard at work in our area and we are seeing some really good success. We had 9 investigators come to church yesterday!! Whoo! That is a record. We were seriously soo excited. One of the families that came to church is a single mother and her son that are going to get baptized on Saturday! I am way excited for their baptism because honestly they are so prepared. The mom is Paola and her 12-year old son is named Paul. She also has a 3-year old little girl named Annabel. She is the funniest little lady and she is so head strong and even though her whole family is telling her that she should not get baptized she just brushes it off her shoulder and tells us, “Hermanas, I am so excited for my baptism!” We really love her and her son Paul is really enjoying being in the young mens. Their baptism is going to be great. The other family that came is a young couple who want to get married this month of November. They have a little baby. Last week their little boy got really sick and they couldn’t take him to the hospital because they didn’t have any money. When we walked into their little one room house, the first thing I thought was, “that baby is dying.” He was throwing up and had a really high fever. Me and my companion did not know what to do so we called the Bishop and he came and gave him a blessing and the fever instantly dropped and he is doing much better. We are really excited for them to get baptized and married this month. We also had a mother come with her two kids and we passed by to visit them in the night and her husband happened to be there. As we shared the message of the Restoration the father of this family told us that he had been looking for a way to change his life and that he would do everything possible to come to church with his family next Sunday. Score!!! We have some good things happening in our area and we can really see the hand of the Lord in all things. He is really blessing us. I really hope I don’t get transferred today!!!! I guess we will see what happens but I love being here in Ucayali! I love you all, talk to you next weekJ

Love,

Hermana Allphin

Conference:)

Hola Familia!

Well this week was pretty awesome just because of the fact that we got to watch General Conference!! Let me just say that this conference was seriously sooooo inspiring! I was uplifted by every single talk. I cannot wait to get the Liahona so that I can read them all again.  I especially loved Jeffrey R. Holland´s talk about poverty. It really touched my heart. Everything he said is so completely true. You cant understand poverty until you have lived in it. I cant say that I have ever been impoverished but I see the poverty every single day, everywhere I go. There is no escaping it, it absolutely consumes this land. It is a very sad thing to see let me tell you. People live in little river towns in little shack houses. They barely have enough money to buy their rice everyday. The families are destroyed and there are many single mothers with many small children. The children are let free to roam around the dirty streets withougt shoes or a shirt, absolutely covered in dirt. There are many families who have lost children due to disease simply because there are not resoureces here to take care of them. To be honest, I am completely used to seeing these things every day because I have been here for over a year but that talk really made me open my eyes again and see how blessed I really have been in my life. When he spoke of how much the Savior loves the poor and needy it really reiterated in my head how much I need to love them. I am serving some of the poorest of the poor and I know that Jesus would seek them out first because he really does love them. I need to remember that better. We had 6 of our investigators come to conference yesterday and we were really excited! Two of them are getting baptized on the 25th of October and we are working with the other 4 for November. We are being really blessed in our area and I know that the Lord is hastening his work. Are we hastening ourselves to keep up with it? If we are not, we need to. The Lord needs everyone he has got. Family, I challenge you to help the missionaries! We need all of the help that we can get. I love you all sooo much. I hope you have a wonderful week!

Love ,

Hermana Allphin

Leadership Conference--- Ariana`s Baptism

Hola Familia!

Wow this week was super crazy. First of all, my companion and I, our Zone Leaders and the Zone Leaders of the other zone all travelled from Pucallpa to Iquitos for the leadership conference. It was so fun! We flew in from Pucallpa and the other leaders flew in from Tarapoto (my last area) and also Moyobamba. It was so fun to see my friends that have been serving in other parts of the mission for a long time. It was like a big family reunion. We were in Iquitos for three days and it was so weird to be back there because I haven’t been to Iquitos for like 5 months!! It was way cool though. We had a really good conference with lots of laughs; they took us to a really cool place for lunch. It was a place with zebra couches and disco lights….. President didn’t let us turn on the lights but it was still fun J We all flew back to Pucallpa Friday morning with President and the Assistants and when we got to Pucallpa we had a meeting for all of the Hermanas in the city. Elder Peacock, one of the Assistants, asked me and my companion if we would give a training at the meeting. Me and my companion sat together on the plane bouncing off ideas for our training and we really received revelation.  We got back to our house and literally wrote our training in five minutes because the spirit told us exactly what to say. After we gave our training, President and Hermana Gomez and both of the Assistants told us how inspiring our training was and that they were very impressed. They congratulated us! I felt pretty good, all thanks to the Holy Ghost really! The next day we had a baptism and it was the craziest baptism ever. Her name is Ariana and she has wanted to get baptized for so long. She is 13-years-old and she has plans to go to the temple at the end of this month.  Her baptism was going to be at 4:00 but when we got to the chapel, the font was filled up with muddy water!! They had broken a pipe working on the road and the water was coming out dirty. We were trying to find some solutions and finally we just called the Elders in a different ward on the other side of the city and asked if we could use their font. They were so awesome and helped us out and we had to move her whole baptism to other side of the city and we ended up having her baptism and confirmation at like 8:00 that night. It was a little crazy but the important thing is that she got baptized!! The work is really progressing here in Ucayali and we hope that it will keep getting better. I will be watching conference this coming weekend due to the elections here in Peru. I am really excited. Love you all!

Love,

Hermana Allphin

Leadership Conference :)

Love this girl :)

Women`s Conference

Hey family,

Well this week was a stressful one, lots of things to do! We found some really cool people and some new families and we are really excited about them so hopefully they progress. So we had the opportunity this week to go to the Womens Conference and honestly it was so inspired. We worked really hard and we were able to have two of our recent converts and one of our investigators come. While the others were watching it in the chapel, me and my companion and another sister went to the stake presidents office so that we could watch it in English. We have been talking a lot about the importance of temples and keeping covenants with our recent converts so we were really happy that the talks were all focused on that. Also we had an investigator there that we are hoping will accept a baptismal date for the 25th of October. She was also really inspired. We went to church yesterday and not a lot of investigators came but Francis ( the man who got baptized last week) brought his nephew and his brother. After church they bothed asked us if they could get baptized!!!! We were so excited! We have never taught them before but we are hoping to help them progress. We have a baptism of 13-year-old girl named Ariana! She is so excited for her baptism and so are we. Something that President Uchtdorf said in his talk really inspired me, he said, " Do you really think that Heavenly Father cares if your make-up, hair, nails and clothes are perfect?" That really hit me because being here in the jungle, my hair, make-up, clothes and nails are sooooo far from perfect. With regard to worldly beauty I have very little but that is not what is important to God, he is just happy that we are doing his work. Well, elections are next week in Peru so we will not be able to watch conference until October 12th but I hope you all enjoy it and feel inspired by the words of the prophets..... I will be sitting here watching election campaigns! Love you!

Love,

Hermana Allphin

The Chauca Family

Hola Familia!

Well this week was another crazy week filled with lots of adventures. First of all the Chauca family got baptized this week and let me tell you, their baptism did not go down without a fight. Satan really put every obstacle in our way but in the end it all worked out. This family has had such a struggle to get baptized but they finally beat Satan and they followed the example of Jesus Christ. They are some of the most special people I have ever met and they will forever be in my heart. They really are converted and I am so happy that the Lord placed them in my life. Every day I see people fall into the many traps and temptations that the adversary has set up and it really brings such joy to my heart when I see someone who has fallen many times, rise above those temptations and follow the Savior. There are not words to describe it. I also had another really cool experience this week.  So as Sister Leaders we do work visits with the sisters to help them out. So this we did a work visit and I went to another area to work with a greenie from Utah J They have a baptismal date that we had to go teach….. the only problem was that their baptismal date is from Brazil and speaks NO Spanish! She can understand it a little bit but she only responds in Portuguese. It was me with another Gringa that is still learning Spanish. She told me, “Hermana Allphin, I can’t really understand her at all so you are going to have to help me teach this lesson.” I prayed before the lesson that the spirit would bless me with the gift of tongues. We went into the lesson and we started teaching in Spanish and we said a prayer and just went for it. We would say something in Spanish and she would respond in Portuguese and it was a little hard but, I understood everything she was saying perfectly! The spirit was so strong in the lesson because he was really there helping us teach and understand even though we were speaking two different languages. I think my next feat will be to learn Portuguese, I kind of like it a lot. The gift of tongues is real family, I testify to that. If two white girls from Utah can go and teach a lesson in Spanish and understand everything in Portuguese….then the gift of tongues is real. Don’t doubt it! I love you all, enjoy the pictures. Talk to you next week!

Love,

Hermana Allphin

The Chauca Family. I love them sooo much!

Raquel`s Baptism

Leaving Tarapoto.... Hermana Martha

stake activity..... being angels in the choir :) Yes, we are wearing baptismal clothes!

Pucallpa- Sister Leader Trainer :)

Hola Familia J

Well I dont even know where to start with this week. First of all, transfers. So I did get transferred out of Tarapoto and I was assigned to work in the city of Pucallpa! I was so excited because I have wanted to come to this city my whole mission. Pucallpa is the farthest city away from Iquitos, it is actually closer to Cusco. Tuesday I got on a plane and left Tarapoto and then I had to fly to Lima (freezing cold!) and then I got on a plane and came to Pucallpa (sooooo hot!!!) I really love this place though. Another big surprise about these transfers was that I got called to be the new Sister Leader Trainer for this zone! The church made this new calling for sister missionaries about two years ago and basically what it is that me and my companion are kind of responsible for all of the sisters here in this city (there are 10 ) with respect to their health and wellbeing. We have to do work visits, obedience checks, doctors’ visits and trainings. We work with the district and zone leaders so that we can help the Sisters in every way possible. It is a big responsibility but I am really excited to fulfill it. I am now in Zone Centenario and my ward is called Ucayali! We had a baptism on Saturday of a woman named Raquel and she is the sweetest person ever. Her baptism was so spiritual. We have another family that is getting baptized this Saturday and they are the cutest family ever. I hope that we don’t have problems this week and that their baptism will go smoothly. My new companion`s name is Hermana Kirk…… and do you know what? We are in the same group! I met her in the airport in Salt Lake City right before coming on my mission. She is from Utah and we literally are the best of friends. I am excited to be serving in this ward with this companion. Well family, that is all I have for you this week. It was a really crazy rewarding week J talk to you soon!

Love,

Hermana Allphin