(12/28/15 email - She stayed in Tarapoto and her new companion is Hermana Ruiz from Piura Peru. She will complete her mission next month.  Kaitlyn loves her and says that they get along really well.)

Hey mom! So I don’t really have time to write a big group email this time since I saw/talked to you guys on Christmas but man it was good to see you!! The internet connection was soooo terrible and I was just so frustrated, Hermana Snyder said she had problems with her internet as well. ugh but I’m just glad I got to see your faces, that’s really what made me tear up, I’m just really grateful for you guys. Wyat, Daxton and Zoe are so cute I just want to kiss and love on them, but I will do a lot of that in a year and a couple months.

But Christmas was a really good day! The day before we had 2 lessons and the people gave us a TON of food, because here they celebrate Christmas on Christmas eve at midnight with a huge feast but we had to be in our house by 9 p.m. so one of our investigators literally gave us a huge feast of our own, it was so cute and then on Christmas we just played a bunch of games for the zone party and the Nelsons made a big dinner for us with American pie and we watched the polar express and that was awesome! (: but yeah Ill have more time and stuff to say to you next week! This morning I had to go with a different comp to the dentist because she needs a root canal and that took like 2 and a half hours so that’s why I’m so late writing today. The dentist was actually really nice but he wasn’t using gloves....so that pretty much made me cringe, especially since I’m a dental assistant and know the importance of it, but yea, that’s a little scary, haha.
Well until next week.  Love you family!
Hermana Jackson

(Kaitlyn's camera won't charge :( so no pictures this week unless I can find and borrow some from Sister Nelson's posts or one of the other missionaries serving in her area that has a blog)

                  I found a couple new pictures from Hermana Brianne Gurney's blog

                    that I have been following. She is from New Jersey and was just

                  transferred to Tarapoto.  This is a picture of the Zone on Christmas. 

 
                            This is a beautiful view of Tarapoto.  Hermana Gurney said
                            that it looked a lot like Utah to her,  but a much poorer Utah.

Hey Momma. So I think that I´ll just be staying in this area since I’m still training but anything could really happen! I won´t know who my new comp is until tomorrow or maybe tonight if I actually leave Tarapoto.  I’m really hoping that I don’t because this area is awesome and I’m starting to feel like I actually know how to do stuff! I´ve planned everyday this week for the people that we teach all by myself and made all the goals and everything and I think that´s honestly been such a blessing for me to have to figure it out on my own.  I understand so much better how everything works. And guess what, I’ve used a map every single day here! Who knew I would ever be able to read a map!! (; And we only got lost a couple times so that’s good.

So yeah my comp left on Tuesday.  She has been gone to so many meetings for the last couple of weeks that it doesn’t seem like she has really gone home.  So yeah that morning we did a service project with Luzmila and just painted a room in her house for her! Her family is awesome. Luzmila is the sassiest person, I love her. Her husband is really cool too but he is Evangelico so we´re trying to teach him more because that´s a huge problem when only one of the parents will be a member.  Like another one of our menos activios is familia Carrasco. And the husband’s friends have pulled him away from the church and now they never come. This week on Wednesday, the kids wanted us to make them pizza, so we´re going to do that with Sister Nelson and whoever my new comp is.  oh! One of the days here it rained sooooo hard!! It was crazy! All of the streets were just gushing with water and all of the man holes were overflowing and here we were just trudging through the streets sopping wet haha but its fine cause I love the rain here. And the last house we went to, the kid opened the door and his family wasn’t home but he told us to wait for a minute and he came back with two glasses of warm water just to warm our hands up haha it was super sweet.

hmm what else can I tell you! Let’s see on Friday I made the most perfect plan ever to visit all of these people and it took me forever to make because I wanted to visit a bunch of new people so I used the ward list and found a bunch of new names that lived close to each other! But we literally visited every single one, like 12 different houses and only three of them were home. It was terrible haha But its fine I’m still just super proud of the plans I made even if all the them fell through.(;

This morning was cool though! Even though its p-day we decided to visit a family right before we came here! This family is a reference that we got from Hna Vega when she went to Iquitos and she got this families name from their son that lives in Iquitos and his mom is really sick and he wanted the elders to give her a blessing. And anyways, we taught them a lesson and me and Hermana Nelson both feel like the family is sooo ready to hear the gospel! So that’ll be cool to see how everything turns out in the next couple weeks! Stay tuned (;

Anyways that’s it for this week!

Love ,Hna Jackson

Oh also I forgot to tell you that there was an earthquake here that was pretty big two weeks ago!!! It was really cool to feel and there were aftershocks like 3 times.

*Her camera's battery was dead so luckily I was able to take some pictures off of Sister Nelson's FB and Blog . They are at the Tarapoto airport dropping off Hna Vega. 

                       The three ladies with Hna's Jackson and Vega are their pensionista's and their
                                                    land ladie on the right with her children.

It's been a great week!

Hahaha your email is so cute I love you mom!! BUT WHAT THE CRAP, PG High!! Dumb kid really messed up, that´s so scary!! Wooooww I can’t believe that. I’m glad that everything was okay though; I’d rather have it be a false call than something that really happened!  Oh my goodness I just wanna love baby Zoe so bad you have no idea!! Please send her to me!! That’s so awesome though, (her blessing day) it’s crazy how big she already is. The time is going fast, but like not really because I feel like I’ve been here for 8 years, lol.

(In reply to info about her grandmother’s) Will you tell both grandma’s I love them so much and tell them that I say hi and merry Christmas! Also tell grandma Neanie happy birthday for me!!

Questions for the week. First, Where did you stay while Hna Vega was in Iquitos?  Did you stay with the Nelson's or did another sister come and stay with you at your house? Tell about the experience. So I stayed with the Nelson’s like you saw on Sister Nelson’s FB. This was the best week ever !! haha I felt right at home, the Nelson’s are so sweet. Their house is in Shilcayo. (An area in Tarapoto) So we just traveled at night, me and Hna Nelson, so that we could visit people in my area but other than that we were in Shilcayo.  On Tuesday we taught our investigator Aurura. She is awesome, she has a loooot of faith in God but it’s sad cause she is just not progressing because her son is a pastor for a different church and she just doesn’t understand the concept of a restored gospel so I don’t think that we can teach her much more if she’s just not gonna accept change. But this is the same lady that prays for 20 minutes every time and I swear every time she’s like 8 minutes in and some cats just start fighting. It’s nuts. But Aurura also has cancer of the blood (Leukemia?) so I fasted for her yesterday. Her husband is suuuper funny though. I should get a pic of them but he’s a really old guy and he always shakes my hand and says "grinnnnngita" and then just starts laughing his head off hahaha seriously every time. On Wednesday Elder Nelson set apart a missionary here who is going to serve in England Birmingham so that was super cool to see!! I’m running out of time and I have a bunch of more stuff to tell you! ahhhh so I’ll just shorten everything. We had pancakes with syrup which is amazing because they only have syrup in Lima! And also I had a sandwich! And it was like American! So that was awesome (; oh something super cool is that I set up my historia familiar account this week and I was filling out the people in my tree and I got to gpa Dale’s and someone had written a whoooooole bunch about him and his life!! so I just got to read about grandpa for an hour so that was way cool mom! lol something funny is that this lady who’s a member gave me a sack full of shirts for my birthday I guess, but literally all of the shirts are crop tops hahahahahaha so gotta save those for after the mish (;(; , haha gotcha Mom!

How far away is your church building from your house and is there only one branch that all of the missionary's in Tarapoto go to? Is the baptismal font there?

The church isn’t super close. It’s like 5 minutes in a motokar and 20 minutes if we walk from our house. idk really but there’s 4 churches here in Tarapoto!! Each area has their own and there’s a font in each one. And yeah they are branches but they are working to make them wards right now. 

What were you taught in Zone Conference? Did any special leaders come to it?

Sister Nelson's blog mentions preparing a group for a trip on buses to the Trujillo Temple, is this for the missionaries also?  That’s what the Nelson’s are doing is just making it so a bunch of people can go on these trips to the temple, but it’s only for the members not the missionaries.

So transfers are next week on the 14^th I believe.  So I think I’ll just be with the Nelson’s for this week and also the other missionaries in Shilcayo because my comp finishes her mish and leaves this Wednesday.  K my times almost up.

Love you all.

Love Hermana Jackson

This is Hna Walker with Hna Jackson.  She is from Lehi.

Kind of funny to go to another country to meet someone who lived down

the road from you here at home.

While Hna Jackson was with the Nelson's they went to the Reyes home. 

Elder Nelson was working on installing a shelf unit for them.  

How grateful we should be for our own homes and modern conveniences.

Thanksgiving in Tarapoto 11/30/2015

This week I  got smart and asked her some specific questions and told her to make it easy on herself and just copy and paste them in her email body and answer them that way. Worked like a charm J 

So tell some more details about mission life. Describe a typical day. 

What time do you get up?    We get up at 630 everyday! I’m pretty used to it though and every day I wake up like 10 minutes exactly before we actually have to get up its weird.

Then what do you do before leaving home for the day... then we exercise and get ready and go to breakfast at 7:30 at Mariesol’s house and then return at 8 and have personal study. Then 9 is comp study and then it depends on what day it is for what we do at 10, but on Fridays and I think its Thursdays (days blend together) we go proselyting at 10 until 1:00 p.m. and then we have lunch and then 2 is Idioma (language) and then at 3:00 it’s 12 Semanas which is a program for the newbies and then we proselyte from 4 to 6 p.m. and then have dinner and then proselyte from 7 to 9 p.m. and then plan and after that, go to bed at 10:30 p.m . THIS IS MY LIFE CADA DIA (Every day)

What's for breakfast....do you actually eat breakfast there (she didn’t eat breakfast much at home) ? Where do you eat ? Breakfast is like my favorite meal. We have a bunch of different things but my favorite is fruit bowls. It’s just a bunch of cut up fresh fruit with this stuff called avena which is like this oatmeal stuff but idk I love it and then yogurt. Then on other days we have cereal and eggs and breakfast sandwiches and stuff but yeah we just eat right at Mariesol’s house which is like 3 minutes away.

How's your bed? Any more spiders in your bed?   Any trouble with Mosquitoes ,  are you wearing repellent every day and sleeping with the net over you?

Mmy beds fine. I dont really notice bugs anymore lol and yeah I use the net every night and wear repellent.

Do you still need lotion and lip stuff even with the humidity?   I still use lotion but I hardly ever need lip stuff.

How many sisters are in your home?  How far away do the other missionary's live from you? Our house is like a room lol, so it’s only me and my comp that live there and the other missionary’s live in different areas! It’s like I live in PG and Snyder lives in American Fork and the other sisters live in Highland and then other sisters live in Provo basically.

All we know about Sister Vega is she's Latina and from California.  Are her parent's on FB and are you close to her? Yeah Vega’s really cool! We get along super good!

Is there any word on the postal strike over there, have you received anything else yet?  Ugh noooo I’ll probably get your packages in like another year when I finish my mission(; stupid postal strikes.

How many outfits did you get to take with you?  I've only seen pictures with maybe 3 different outfits.  J I'm hoping you have more.Yeah I brought a bunch of different ones of my clothes. I have like 5 skirts and 5 dresses or something I just only take pics with those three I guess haha 

Take some pictures of things that would be normal to people there because I'm sure that they would totally be neat and interesting for us here no matter what it is. Take some of the places you go regularly, like where you email from.  Your plane rides to zone conference if you went back to Iquitos for that, just everything you can. :) And what is the weirdest/yuckiest thing you've eaten.  How's your stomach adjusting?    Zone conf was just here! We never fly to Iquitos unless you get changed there! And my stomach is totally fine now, the food is normal. But I haven’t really eaten anything gross cause Mariesol and Rosio cook good food and that’s the only place we eat at! There was this fruit that was super gross though. It’s called aguaje. idk if that’s how you spell it but its gross.

This week was good though!! But we don’t have very many people who are progressing right now which is super frustrating. So this week we want to find a bunch of new people and we do this by doing a ton a contacting, like on the street or we always talk to our mototaxi guys, and also by visiting our menos activos. (less actives)

Thanksgiving was good though! We had zone conf and Pres Gomez came and spoke to us and the whole thing was about teaching by the spirit, which sounds easy but learning how to teach completely by the spirit is actually super hard, so it was good to hear what he had to say.

On the moto ride over though, the guy driving was singinggggg his heart out. I mean like belting this christian song and I was trying so hard not to bust out laughing.

Every Sunday we have this thing where all the missionaries in Tarapoto meet together and we go and rescue menos activos with the members, its super fun. And it was me and Snyder and a member. But later that night we had a cool experience! Also every Sunday we have a consejo (counsel) and it went pretty late so we only had like an hour left to teach but our appointment scheduled wasn’t home so we were walking around trying to find someone to teach and we decided to go to this menos activos house and we knocked on her door like 5 times but she didn’t answer so we started walking away and then she finally came outside and our lesson was just how if we trust in god he can change our hearts and desires and she just started crying cause she said that she knows that she needs to change and we asked what she thought god wanted from her and she said “He wants her to start attending church again!” So that was really cool.

This week I'm freaking out a little bit cause my comp is "dying" (going home) in 2 weeks and I’m gonna be left alone!! haha but really she’s leaving for a meeting in Iquitos for 2 days this week and I’m gonna be companions with Sister Nelson!! haha so wish me luck in running my area this week(; but when she leaves for real, I won’t have a comp for a whole week because changes aren’t until the week after sooooooo I’ll have to call every day to work with members which could be horrible hahaha ,but really pray for me that we can find a different way!!!!! lol 

k love you!! bye!!!

Hermana Jackson

                                                                           

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