Well the companionship is doing fine, I’m definitely learning patience and quite a bit more about this attribute in and of Christ. (; Our new Pres doesn’t come until the 28!! which is tomorrow.  Today for our activity we are having a FHE with all of the mission. All the zones in Iquitos will be together and then all the rest will join in over skype. it’s a surprise for Pres and Sister Gomez and the assistants put everything together and they have no idea that we are having this activity for them so it should be pretty cool.

This last lunes (Monday) we had a birthday party for our Hermana leader, Hermana Cantos. We went to a members house in another ward and she had made cake,  jello and popcorn and we watched the movie Ephraims rescue! The tradition here for bdays is to crack an egg on your head.. well the member gave my comp the egg to crack on Hermana Cantos head and while we were taking pictures, all the sudden we hear a loud CLONK hahahahaha and everyone was just so stunned because no one knew what was gonna happen. The tradition is to crack the egg on the top of your head but beforehand you have to crack the egg a little bit so it doesn’t destroy you but my comp forgot to crack the egg beforehand and the egg splattered super hard against her poor head hahahaha.  Hermana Willes said Hermana Cantos had a headache for the rest of the day.

On Tuesday we had a district meeting and one of our zone leaders who gave us the lesson told us to close our eyes and imagine that someone anonymously gave us a letter. And in this letter at the very top says DEAR ME. He said to imagine that we just received this letter that we wrote to ourselves from the pre earth life. When we were so willing and ready to follow Gods plan, we wrote ourselves what we hoped we would become and how we would be faithful in showing Christ that we would and will follow him. He told us to imagine what is written in this letter and compare it to how we are living now, if who we were before this life would be happy with who we are becoming here and what we are doing with the time that god has given us. I really loved this!

Wednesday I had 9 months in the mission!!! We had a service project with the whole zone. We helped one of the converts in our ward tear apart her house. She lives in the swamps and tore down half of her plywood house because she wants to rebuild it before the waters come again. Then we had another service project just a street away and this project was super funny. Basically we carried big clumps of muddy clay back and forth through an old guys house, because they use the clay for floors! I was carrying a huge piece of clay to one of the back rooms and was about to enter into the room when Elder Plaza told me to just through the clay over the wall into the room, well he is my zone leader so I did what he said(; BUT Elder Ridick was on the other side and the huge piece of clay landed right on top of him... hahahahaha I felt so bad!!! but it was super funny. After the service project we had lunch and Hermano Wagner made us tacos and I was so happy because I haven’t eaten tacos in 9 months haha

Yesterday we visited Milagros and she said that she can see a difference in their home. Her and her two kids are reading the bom together and saying their prayers together and she said that even her father who is catholic can see this difference in her family. I love how the gospel changes people!

Anyways love you guys!

Hermana Jackson

                                             Trying to burn a gifted dress for her 9 month mark.

                                                            Pday night on their balcony

                Making Juanes (Chicken, Rice, eggs and olives wrapped in a large leaf) to eat
         for the celebration of San Juan el Bautista or John the Baptist held on June 23 each year.

Mission Peru Iquitos Soccer outfit with rain boots :)

                                                                          9 mth mark

With companion Hna Mucha

Still In Iquitos

FIRST OF ALL. HAPPY FATHERS DAY DADDY! I hope you had a good one and I really think it's pretty unfair that we don't get to call you but just know that I was thinking about you lots and truly am grateful for your great example in my life. 

So yeah I got my camera back hahaha,  ahh what a miracle. I was super frustrated though because my comp wanted to wait until the next day to get the camera back, she wanted the little girl to bring it to the internet shop but I was pretty convinced that my camera would be sold to some Peruvian by then(; So yeah we just followed her to her house and got it back! When she first gave it to me I thought for sure that it was broken but it was just because they had put the battery in backwards!! Apparently the camera died right after she had taken it home so they weren't able to do much with it.. thank you heavenly father for not letting little Peruvian girls ruin my selfies(; haha, but Elder Marriott did call me and said that he received an email from you and that it sounded pretty sketchy to them to and so they were just making sure that nothing happened. Thanks for checking up on me Mommm even from 21542513574654 miles away haha 

The pictures from Hermana Wood are from a conference that we just recently had! It was for all of the converts that had been converted during the time that they had served here in Iquitos. It was pretty cool to see the chapel clear full of humble people who recently accepted the fullness of the gospel that their savior offers them. 

This week for a FHE we taught some members who were going through a super rough time. We taught them about the principle of faith, and  how faith leads to action. We taught them that if we want to make our relationships in our families better, then we have to turn to the Lord and let him fix what feels broken. I read a talk the other day that said the key to making better our relationships with the family, is reading the scriptures together, praying together, having FHE each week, and attending the temple. It´s been a week since we have taught them and you can just tell the difference! The week before we taught a teary torn apart family, and this week we taught a family who has a goal to attend the temple to be sealed for the eternity in Agosto. (:  

Right now we have some pretty cool investigators. We are teaching a mom named Milagros and she has 2 kids, Juanita and Christian. Her kids are seriously so awesome and they love reading their bom! Christian is so excited to tell us in every visit that he prayed 3 TIMES haha and that it's the same feeling of tranquilidad each time. Their dad is off working in a different part of Peru though, so we can't teach the whole fam, but I'm excited to see their progress!! 

On Saturday we had 9 lessons which is a ton for one day. In the morning we decided to contact this lady who was sitting in her house all alone.. well ends up that missionaries had taught her and her husband 16 years ago and that they had assisted a ton but when those elders left nobody else came to visit them and they stopped coming to church. So today we are going to teach her with her husband, and they are both really excited to visit with us again. 

Oh I forgot to tell you that some gringo grandpa won the elections for president here hahaha they had elections on Sunday and if you remember it's against the law to hold any other kind of service because everyone has to vote, so we didn't go to church, just worked all day.  

So yeah I'm still in Iquitos... idk why I haven't been changed, but we did pass Cesar to the elders to visit so I don't have to see him.  

Me and my comp haven't had any big problems  hahahaha I have to try with all my heart to be patient because sometimes I really don't feel like I want to be.  

But I'm doing good and learning lots. Thanks for everything(: 

Love you, 

Hermana Jackson  

I'll try to download my pictures next week!!! or if I can maybe do it with my pensionista. 

So I’m doing good! This week was really crazy! On Monday we had a family home evening with one of our investigators and we taught about Nephi and the first couple chapters in the book of Mormon. We watched the little animated version of it and it was pretty fun(: but right as we got home, we received a call from president! And he told Hermana Lara that she had emergency changes to Moyobamba because of her eyes!! The sun here is really damaging and her eyes were getting worse, we kind of expected this but when he called, we couldn’t really believe it!!! So the next day she was on a plane to Moyo!

So now I have a new companion. She was just barely with Hermana Snyder!!! Her name is Hermana Mucha and she is from Lima. These first couple days I’ve just been trying to teach her the area a little bit and we were able to find some new people to teach in the process! I feel really motivated because I feel a lot more responsibility with my area since I’m directing it. But I am super worried to because this girl has had problems with every comp she has ever been with and it sounded like she is like another Hna T. When she was with her other comps they would tell president that she should go home because she is verbally abusive and all the missionaries were just telling me to prepare myself and when things are bad with her to tell myself that I’m not crazy.... ahhhhhhh. BUT !! I feel like she has changed and I really see how the power of repentance has helped her, but we haven’t really had problems except that she doesn’t like the house me and Lara were going to move into hahaha and the lady built a wall basically for us to separate us from the other people and so my comp wants to move into a different house that’s SMALLER than what we already have and ugh. But this is the only small problem we have had.

Something suuuper awkward that freaked me out happened on Friday though. Our last visit of the day was with one of our converts! Well we said the prayer and my convert was saying goodbye to Hermana Luz and I went to give the convert a handshake when he put his BOM in front of my face and there hidden between the pages was a piece of paper that he had written on in English. It said he wants to wait for me until I finish my mission because he feels like he’s in love with me and wants to know how I feel.. hahahahahahaha, YIKES!   WELL…. I was suuuuper stunned so I didn’t really say anything and then my comp just grabbed my arm and we hurried and walked out. Hahaha, well all night I couldn’t sleep cause I didn’t wanna see this guy in sacrament the next day!!! So in the morning I ended up calling president and telling him what happened and he just told me not to talk to him. So that’s what I did!!! Nothing happened but I feel like I might be having an emergency change too!! We´ll see(:

But other than that, church was cool though because we had 180 people there and we usually only have 140, And a bunch of the extra people were our investigators who came!!!

One thing that I’ve been learning more about this week, is what the atonement really is and how to apply it. We know of the cleansing power of the atonement but often we forget of its poder de Fortaleza (power and strength). There’s a scripture in 1 Nephi 7:17 I think, its a prayer that Nephi gives when his brothers bind him. And in his prayer he doesn’t ask god to release him this instant from his situation. but he asked for strength to CHANGE his situation. Christ didn’t suffer so that he could take away our problems; but that he could help carry them until those circumstances that we are in, change. I really loved looking at the Atonement from this perspective!

Love you!!

Hermana Jackson

*This is Kaitlyn’s mom - A few minutes after she had sent her last email I received this email below. 

Oh my goodness!! You are NOT going to believe what just happened!!! That little girl that took my camera just came in the same time that I was about to leave from here!!! And the clerk guy asked her if she had taken my camera and she said yes!!!! And she says that she still has the camera at her house but I don’t know if that’s really true. We are going to go with her to her house right now.  She said she hadn’t erased anything on the sd card so there’s a chance that I can get it back!!!! I’ll try to update you on what happens by calling the offices and telling them to write you, okay? but I love you lots and wish me luck!

*This was a little scary to me, I was wondering if the girl was part of a theft ring situation or something (I bet that each of you mom’s possibly Dad’s had a similar thought as you read it) and she was being lead back to a bad sketchy situation somewhere.  After almost three hours I emailed the mission offices and asked Elder Marriott (from AZ) if he could call her mission phone and just make sure everything was ok.  I shared a short version of her camera being stolen story.  About an hour later he emailed back that he had talked to her, she was ok and she had her camera!  She was charging it and would send word back with Elder Marriott if I still needed to send the replacement camera or not.  I got another email from Elder Marriott that her camera was just fine and so was ALL of her pictures and she was very happy!! 

Tender mercy’s huh?

                        Some recent pictures I found on Hna Woods Blog that had Kaitlyn in them.   

              President and  Sister Gomez took these two zones out to dinner after their last zone

                                         conference before their mission ends the end of June.  

                           Hna Wood, Hna Jackson and Hna Willes who Kaitlyn has done splits

                                                                    with in the stilt house area.

No Changes!

So surprise! I´m still here in Iquitos with Hermana Lara! We didn´t
have changes, actually hardly anyone in our zone had changes. It’s
crazy because a lot of the missionaries in this zone have been here
for 5 changes, or since December! That´s a ton of time! This next
change in July should be super interesting though because we are going
to have a new president by that time! President Gomez leaves on the 28^th of June and our new president is President Li from Lima! Also we haven’t moved
houses yet!! They changed the contract because she had to construct a
wall to close our rooms off from the others that she is going to rent
out.. so we will be moving in on the 15th!

Last Monday we didn’t do anything too special! But we did go looking
for a new skirt at one of the stores in Belen. Belen is where everyone
goes to buy cheap stuff.  Its basically the black market haha but the
lady in the store was trying soooo hard to get me to buy a skirt and
she made me try on like 3 different ones so I would just put them over the
skirt that I was already wearing and the lady just walked in my
dressing room and was like k what? that’s not how you try on clothes!
And she just started laughing like uncontrollably at me.. haha I told
her I didn’t like the skirts and left(;

That night we had another FHE in the house of Hermana Felix! We invited our investigator Shantal again and another kid from our ward that got home from his mission in Bolivia a couple months ago. We talked about faith! Then we waited all night for a call from the assistants for changes but it never came! So
another change here together in Clavero! The Lord still has something
for us to learn.

On Thursday we did splits with another companionship in our area. All
of the leaders were here in Iquitos for their monthly leadership
meeting that’s at the beginning of each month, so the two Hermana leaders
from Pucallpa came and helped us in our area that night! I was with
Hermana Soto, she is from Chile and she has a suuuper different
accent! I don’t know how Jayden understood the Chileans!!(; no, but it
was a super cool night and we contacted a lady on the street who
immediately grabbed seats for us and we shared a short lesson with
her, but she had the prettiest picture of Christ hanging on her wall!
It was of him smiling, and I absolutely love art of our savior that
shows him smiling. This lady is really really sick though and has to
go to the hospital every week to get her blood taken out and put back
in.. im not sure what sickness that is! (Kidney failure with dialysis?) But she has a lot of faith in Christ and I am excited to teach her.

Another lesson that we had this week was with one of our less actives
Nicole. She has a lot of problems with her father, to the point that
she doesn’t really consider him as her father, so this night we talked
about forgiveness and the power of repentance. Repentance and
Forgiveness go hand in hand. She asked me how she could forgive a
person who has not stopped the action for what she would be forgiving,
and what came to my mind was the Savior, when he was on the cross
ready to give his life so that we could have ours, and the wicked
people were still cursing him and persecuting him with their words,
and he looked to heaven and asked God to Forgive them for they know
not what they do. The Savior gave his example to us; we should find
the strength through him to forgive others.

Anyways things are good here. I’m really beginning to see how amazing
this work really is and how it is not at all about me, but how it is
truly the Lords. I love you guys lots!!

Hermana Jackson