This week was super packed!! Monday we spent all day having interviews for our baptisms! On Wednesday we had interviews with Presidente as companions. We were super pumped about our work that we had done in our area and he told us to now focus more on family history!! He said it’s so important for the members to be doing their history and helping the missionary work on both sides of the veil!

Thursday I had my last Zone conference! It was super good and I learned a lot. All of the zone leaders talked and the assistants and Pres gave a capacitation. One of my favorite capacitacions was given by Elder Adams and his comp and they talked about the doctrine of Christ! How to truly have converts, we need to KNOW by heart and mind and understand the SIMPLE doctrine. They taught about Christ and how he organized his church. It was super good!

That same night we had an interview for our investigator Mercedes with Pres Li. She ended up NOT passing quite yet and we were heartbroken. She has changed her life and continues to make changes. Pres just wants her to continue on this path to help her be completely prepared to take Christ’s name upon her and be baptized. I thought that Mercedes would be devastated but she just turned to me and smiled and said that God still had to prepare her! She has a good attitude about everything!!! And she is doing everything to change, she even dumped her looser boyfriend because he didn’t help her progress. She loves the church!!! And I just love her. Its gonna be hard leaving this area just for her I think haha. But yesterday she came to church walking in the pouring rain and she just laughed when she got there! she’s the best(:

Friday we taught a Pf couple who are really progressing!!! We are going to help them get married and baptized!!! They should be good to go by April because we still gotta teach them and help them learn(:

Saturday was our baptism(: it was soooooo stressful because we organized everything and the bishop basically just  brought soda pop hahaha but in the end,  it was so pretty and we had a great turn out(: and Miluzka and Janire were super happy!!

Love you guys!

Hermana Jackson

Mom, please add my homecoming date and info to the blog.  Thank you!!

And just one more email and I will be on the plane that night for home(:

* Sister Jackson's homecoming will be in the Manila 1st Ward Chapel, 

April 9, 2017 at 11:00 a.m.  The church address is 3396 North 900 West, 

Pleasant Grove, Utah.

                                            With Hna Robinson at our last Zone Conference

                                        With all of our roomies at our last Zone Conference

                                                   Me, Hna Ruiz and Janire's Mom

                          With Miluzka and her family.  Elder Cooper from my group baptized her.

                                                Me and Hna Ruiz with Janire and her Mom

                                                   Janire and her brother who baptized her

                                               Going to teach Mercedes, our investigator.

And looking back in the other direction.  Ahhhhh, it was so crazy stepping over all the dogs.  I thought I was going to fall in and the dogs literally do not move.

                          And in the background of this picture, you can see a jehovah's witness

                               knocking on the door and shes wearing the same exact skirt that 

                                        my comp had on hahaha, we thought it was pretty funny.

The weeks are just flowing together!! So crazy to think that in a short two weeks I’ll have finished the greatest adventure in my life so far(:

This week we have been pretty focused on getting our baptisms all prepared!! We are gonna have 3 baptisms this Saturday and I’m SO DANG EXCITED FOR THEM!! They are all so ready to make this promise with the Lord. We are gonna have a baptism with our whole zone, so in total there will be 7 people who will be there getting baptized! Its gonna be pretty cool, cause we are doing a special musical number as well. 

The coolest thing that happened this week was that we spent Wednesday morning with Pres  and Hna Li. There was a lady who finished her mission in Columbia and she stopped in Iquitos on her way to Tarapoto because that’s where she is from. So we stayed with her all morning, and then after dropping her off at the airport, the Li´s invited us to dinner with them. It was me and Hna Robinson because our companions had to go and get money from the bank. The Li’s are so dang cute though, they are just like our little cute Peruvian grandparent’s haha

When we were visiting Mercedes this week,  she said she didn’t know if Joseph Smith was a prophet and that she was thinking about not continuing with listening to us because she had been praying all this time and had not received an answer. Well then she said that the other night she had prayed really hard, and that night she received an answer through a dream where a voice told her that she needed to continue on this path and be strong! Then she said she sat up and in her dream she saw ME with my proselyting bag hahahaha so then she said that she knew the church was true and that this is what God wanted for her. She’s way pumped for her baptism and we took her to another baptism that the elders had this week and she loved it. 

Also we had 6 investigators in church this week!!! Everything is progressing so much!! We just feel super blessed(:

Love you guys!!

Hermana Jackson

* I got the camera last Wednesday, THANK YOU!

So here are some pics(: I'm trying to catch up and take alot.

                   These first two by the river and me on the bridge are from the                                                              central area of Iquitos which is my area.

                                              

                 These next three are some of the typical meals we eat here in Iquitos.   

                                             Our pensionista Lucy, is really great.

                                          

                                          The little girl is Janire and her brother! 

                                     Janire will be getting baptized this saturday!!

             With the family that I love from Pucallpa who gave me the alligator head 

                             for my birthday(: This was from the last day I was there.

          And this last one with me and the parrot, we were walking down the 

                              street and he was just chillin on the sidewalk haha

Hey mom(: that’s great that you guys had such a good family home evening with the fam, that sounds really fun, can’t wait to be part of them again.

I think that’s interesting that they have meetings or firesides for the RM’s parents to prepare you for a returning missionary! haha but don’t worry I don’t plan on becoming inactive and I don’t have any friends who I would ever dim my light for or who are dumb like that, basically I don’t have many single friends anymore haha cause they are literally all getting married!!  

There wasn’t anything that interesting this week except for Domingo, which is part of a holiday in South America called Carnaval. It’s basically a huge water balloon fight, but not with water,  with all sorts of stuff like paint, mud, pee and everything disgusting,  EW  IT’S  SO GROSS!  But something interesting that they also do is put up a huge tree and hang stuff all over it like tupperware and fruit and then they cut it down around 8 p.m. and everyone tries to grab all the stuff like it was a piñata.

Best part, we have 3 baptism dates!! Janire. Miluska and Mercedes for the 11 of March!!! I’m pretty good. I’m getting more and more anxious(: at night I can’t sleep cause my brain just doesn’t stop running. Haynie is doing great keeping us focused and not too trunky.  Can't lie, it's kinda hard(: with 3 weeks to go!

Love you mom!!

Hermana Jackson

         Here’s a pic of me and Haynie that we took before leaving the house today(:

                                                   And one of me and my comp.

This week was full of a ton of miracles!!!

We had 2 investigators in church! We actually had 4 but two of them are kids under 18 and they have to have a baptism permission slip to count as attendance. BUT the two people that we had are way cool!!! One girl is Cintia Corazon. She’s a 19 year old girl that my comp contacted with her old comp like 3 months ago but they never went to see her! So we went back to visit her and she is AWESOME. She is so willing to listen and learn and she accepts everything! Her only doubt is about baptism because she was baptized in the Catholic Church, but we are helping her to understand that it needs to be done with the priesthood and that baptism is not complete without the confirming of the holy ghost. She stayed at church for the first two hours and really enjoyed it!!! We will go back to teach her tomorrow (:

The other lady is literally a miracle. So we have been invading the area of the elders hahaha literally everyone is like a single mom there so we have a lot of cool investigators there hahaha it’s really funny actually. but we were walking to visit one of these single moms, when some guy in his motokar pulls up and says that he’s a member and that he has a referal for us, so we ask him who and he points to the passenger in the back!! An older lady named Mercedes. He said that they are dating and that he wants her to know the church. So we got an appt with her and went the next day. Well when we visited her she said that years back she had been praying to know the true church and missionaries came to her house and she started attending the church with her then husband, but later her hubby decided that he was done with investigating the church and they never went back! She really is the biggest sweetheart though! She came to church even though she woke up sick with a cold, but she LOVED IT. She felt the spirit very strongly in the second hour when we watched a video about how the BOM helps us in our daily life and with our daily tests and trials!! And she asked when she could be baptized!!! Wait what?? So today we are going to visit her and get her a date for March (:

We also have been teaching Miluska and she is gonna get baptized on the 11th of March. she’s super excited(: and we are teaching the family of less actives who’s kids need to get baptized and they have a date for the 11th as well!! We have a ton of people right now with a lot of potential so I’m pretty excited for this upcoming month (:

Just really feel like the Lord puts us in the right place at the right time. He knows what is best for us and for OTHERS. Everyone in our life, whether they leave or they stay, is for a reason. And we can make an impact on others, as well as learn and become a better person for ourselves. Just appreciate the people in our lives, and try to put everything in God’s hands, because He knows the reason for every trial and He is also the only one who knows what else is waiting for us just around the corner - the warm sun always follows the gloomy rain. 

Love you guys!

Hermana Jackson

Finishing the Mission here in Iquitos

Hey so everything actually just stayed the same... not too upset about it, actually super stoked that I’m still with Hermana Ruiz, she’s a cutie and we get along great. (:

So Monday we were helping Hermana Dickman LEAVE. There was a ton of Hermana’s that finished their mish this last change! Now there’s only like 23 in all of the mission Peru Iquitos! And after my group leaves there will literally be only 3 gringas haha kinda crazy.

That night Hermana Robinson was without a comp so she went out to work with us in our area! We went and visited a less active family and found out that they have 3 teenagers who aren’t baptized yet.. so hey baptisms(: their dad struggles with the word of wisdom though! and he was telling us that he couldn’t come to church because he has to prepare himself and be really devoted to start to come to church which is a classic less active excuse, so we totally burned him with a couple of scriptures in Alma (with love of course) but after that he understood that the beginning to changing is with the DESIRE. so he committed to coming to church with his family BUT they didn’t show up. we will visit them tomorrow and see what’s up!

Tuesday we visited a family and the Hno is named Roger. He used to be a black and white photographer so he was telling us all about the work that he used to do before cell phones became a thing and then he didn’t have any business.. oops, sad for him though. But he gave us a couple references!!! We went and visited them and found out that they are part member families!! As a zone and as a district that’s our focus right now, finding PF´S - Inv who have family that are members! They seem pretty cool though and they came to church yesterday so that´s a good sign that they will progress! When we went to visit them they gave us meat from the mountain carne de Monte - have no idea what kind of animal I ate and neither does my Latina comp so that was interesting!

Wednesday we visited a referral from another member! Her names Martha and she’s AWESOME. She totally understands and accepts everything that we teach her and she is really excited to learn! I hope she gets baptized quick because she’s already there! The Lord is also preparing another reference that we got this week from ANOTHER member. Her names Miluska, she is 21 and has attended church 3 weeks in a row now. She accepted the baptism question, now she just needs to work on her testimony so we can put a date on it(: ahhhh all the hard work that we have put into this last change is showing its fruits now! so happy. I read this morning that sometimes we take the small and simple things for granted. We see things only in the moment and don’t look more towards how they impact our future. Elder Bednar describes it as paint strokes. He says that in his office he has a wheat field painting, and that if you stand really close to the painting it just looks like a bunch of dashes and lines of yellow and orange, but to look at it from far away the landscape truly is amazing! Sometimes we want to see an immediate change and impact with the things that we do to strengthen the home and have a better life, but really it’s all about consistency and diligence. If we keep being diligent, adding more strokes to the painting, we are going to look back in the near future and see how much we have progressed. Everything has its recompense, and after living here for 16 months I can definitely testify that this is true. (:

Also another tender mercy! We were walking to an appointment and some lady came up to us and said that she wants us to baptize her 16 year old son.. We were like wait what, this never happens. She said that her son doesn’t have a dad and that she has raised him as a single mom and she wants us to come and teach him and her about the church!!! We have a cita with them tonight! But the crazy thing is that we invited her to church and she TOTALLY CAME! Even without us teaching her. So crazy! These things dont just happèn haha

On Friday we went and did service with a lady in our ward. she’s super nice and lives with her older son but he is always working so she is always home alone. And she ALWAYS wants us to come over and visit with her haha. Every time she makes us popcorn with cheese. But the popcorn is super weird! It looks just like the hard kernels of the popcorn, but its soft and chewy like normal popcorn. They call it canchita! In the service we helped her make 3 leches because my comp made and sold that in her house!! But... she burnt it hahahaha and it came out like a big glopppy pudding. oops ((:

Something that I learned this week was about the spirit! At the beginning of my mish I though that I needed to feel the spirit burning in my heart to know that I really was being guided by him. But I’ve learned that even if it doesn’t bring us to tears or make us feel a burning in our heart, it is still there! It’s the still small voice. And that can be a feeling of peace or calmness or love or a remembering of simple things. We´ve been promised the constant companionship of the Holy Ghost, we just gotta recognize his hand in everyday(:

Okay well I’m great. Also today was great. We left in the morning and went to the river Nanay! I held Suri. it’s a HUGE FAT WORM that they eat here. So gross!!  But I also saw the coolest thing ever. The river Nanay crosses with the Amazonas, and where they cross you can totally see the distinction!!! They don’t mix because the current of the Amazon River is a lot faster, so right where they touch, you can see the difference in the 2 rivers. Nanay is blue and pretty and the Amazon is super dirty and brown!! Hermana Haynie took some pics and I’ll send them to you.. Oh yeah Haynie is here with Robinson! They’re our new roommates.

Hope you have a great week and enjoy the huge letter that I sent this week mother(; I made up for the short ones.

Love you, 

Hermana Jackson

This is at the river !! You can see where it crosses in the background(: you can also take one of              these boats for 1.50 soles and go to a monkey island and see a bunch of shirtless natives.

                                                        I’ll save that for the return-trip(; haha

The roommates! Ruiz (My Comp) ,Robinson and Haynie (My CCM comp).

Today Starts My Last Transfer In The Mission

I didn’t bring my journal and I can hardly remember anything!!  We have been helping Hna Dickman get all of her stuff ready to go cause she completes her mish and leaves today to go home!!! 

We have still been working with Lincenia and we are STILL having trouble finding her husband, so it’s made it really hard for her to progress.  We will have to see if we are going to keep trying with her or not.  We contacted two new families this week so that’s really good and we are gonna work with them this coming week.  We were also given a couple references from some ward members so we will be trying to contact them as well.  I think there may even be a couple baptisms in these references. 

Everything is going good though. Just very busy!!   Sorry I can’t send any pictures, none of the other three sisters have a working camera either.  And you don’t need to send me another package cause I’ll be home before you know it.  Save your money and we can go do something fun when I get home.

Today we have transfers and I will most likely get a new comp and this will be my last transfer, isn’t that just so crazy!! 

Well I gotta go, Sorry it’s so short, but I will remember my journal next week(:

Love you,

Hermana Jackson

(Sister Jackson’s release date is March 21^st.   Her homecoming has been set for April 9^th since the 2^nd is General Conference weekend. Our sacrament meeting starts at 11 a.m.  I will share all the info when it gets closer to her being home)

January 30th Letter

I’m just gonna write ya a little guy this week(: We found a new family and they seem super cool. The wife’s name is Fara and the husband’s name is Alex. Three years ago the missionaries were visiting them and they were gonna be baptized but I guess their mom came to stay and she is suuuper evangelica, and then the missionaries got changed and so they just hardened their hearts. Ever since then the missionary’s haven’t been to visit! This family was actually a referral from one of the ward members from my old area Clavero(: We were walking to lunch one day and a guy and his girlfriend were on his moto stopped and started talking to us cause they recognized me! They gave us the referral and it seems like a family of GOLD. Super excited to work with them!

I’ve been seeing all sorts of people I know this week. Craziest thing, so we are just walking along the dirt path, this day we had taken a different route and were exploring our area a bit, when all the sudden someone comes up to me saying HERMANA JACKSON and immediately wraps their arms around me, I was like what the ! Who in the world just attacked me?!  IT WAS THE BISHOPS DAUGHTER FROM PUCALLPA. I love her so much and I turn around and THERES MY OLD BISHOP. We all just started laughing super hard. It felt like a dream(: but it was great to see them!! They are going to be here for 2 weeks visiting the grandparents who live in our area!! We set an appointment for Wednesday to visit them(:

Licenia is still progressing! She came to church with all of her little kids. Love her. Still working to get them a date for when they are getting married. We are trying to shoot for the end of February but I guess we´ll see because they gotta save up and everything and its super hard still to find her husband Juan. But we are going to have a FHE with them tonight so that should be good!

This week I was just thinking about how much I have learned this whole time. Every trial that I’ve had out here has truly made me become a little more like the person that the Lord really needs me to be. I’m enjoying every minute out here and feel really blessed where I’m at and who I’m with(:

Love you guys!

Hermana Jackson

So this week we worked in the area of GOLD that I told you about! We found a lady named Jessica. It started raining super hard when we were down there one night, so we went over to her house so we wouldn’t get soaked, and she let us in and gave us a bunch of weird fruits from the jungle to try! One was called pijuayo. It’s super good! But anyways after sitting with her for a while we began to teach her. We set up another visit and when we came back she started to tell us that she thought we got stuck in the rain at her house for a reason, and that God wanted her to change. She listens intently in every lesson and is praying to know if it’s true! And she came to church this week with her niece! She said she really liked it but she was a little confused why we break off into relief society.. So she wasn’t into relief society yet but she said she just has to get used it haha

We are visiting another lady who is older. she’s evangelical and so everything that we say she’s like "HALLELUJUA". (: But her beliefs are pretty similar to ours, so she understands really easily and she has a brother who is a member in Pucallpa so she’s interested! She told us a story about one of her pastors who had come from another part of the country to teach their congregation, and how he had taught them was by using a dumb blonde joke... and that he tied it in to Jesus being the buen pastor... ugh. those churches just struggle.

So on Saturday we went to a baptism that the hermanas had! This little kid was getting baptized by his grandpa. but his grandpa messed up on the words like 5 times, and then the little kid kept throwing his hands up in the air when the grandpa actually dunked him. I happened like 3 other times hahaha so the last time the grandpa actually said everything good but then the kid straightened his back cause he didnt wanna be dunked again, and so the grandpa was just super frustrated and he tried to force the kid in the water and everyone was like....... what is going on... hahahaha it was so awkward.

A cool experience this week was that we were gonna go and try to find someone to do service for on Saturday morning. But in the night after we planned and also the morning when we woke up I just had the biggest impression that we should go work. So I told my comp and we decided to go to another part of our area where we had never been before. Well we get there and the first house we knock on a lady comes out bringing a chair and says COME IN without even saying a word to her! Her name is Estela. We taught her about families and that through the gospel we can overcome whatever trial that presents itself in family relations and in life situations. At the end of the lesson we thanked her for being so willing to listen to us and she just started to tear up and cry. She said that she had been feeling so awful because she was having problems with her older children. She hadn’t been attending church for a long time and she felt distant from God, she looked up to us and said through her tears that she knew that God had sent us and in that moment I felt complete peace because I knew that we had done the Lords will and had found someone who was searching for God’s love, just as we had prayed for to find the morning before we left the house. The Lord is so ready to give us all kinds of opportunities and experiences that will help us grow and learn and become better if we can but listen to that STILL SMALL VOICE.

Well just a side note here, yesterday a cop car came zooming past us while we were stopped in our motokar, and I just gotta tell you that I’m pretty sure it was the same model crap TRUCK that Jayden had before he left on his mish hahahaha but as a cop car. oh the jungle (:

We also taught a less active who told us that she has a special gift.... people from all over Iquitos come to her telling her about their illnesses. She writes their names and info in a book and then in the night prays for them and then has DREAMS about them that tells her what kind of illness they really have and what they need to do to get better. Super crazy. She told us some pretty crazy stories about that!

This week has been super good! Thanks for all the love and support! And thank the ward lots for me because I got their Christmas package this week and it was super sweet(:

love you!

Hermana Jackson

The weeks keep going by faster and faster! Things are going pretty good. My area is really cool and REALLY BIG.  The bishop and his counselors are so awesome. We are just super focused in FINDING. Lisenia is still progressing and we visited her with a member the other day, and taught the plan of salvation. We extended a baptism date for February and she accepted! But she has to get married and her “husband” doesn’t seem as pumped about listening to us.... ugh. They were supposed to come to church Sunday, and we even called them that morning and they said they were coming but then as church was about to start they weren’t there yet so we called them again and they had turned off their phone!! We called them like 7 times and they wouldn’t pick up haha sooooo yeah we are gonna see what happened when we visit them tomorrow

The other day we were walking around and contacting in this area literally contact people all day. But since our area is HUGE, we took a couple new turns and ended up getting lost haha but the area where we ended up is pretty poor.

They are the kind of houses that are made of old wood and have bridges leading into them, so these people are a lot more humble and they just welcome us into their houses!! So we are gonna focus a ton on working in this area this week and hopefully we will find some new people that the Lord is preparing (:

I don’t have a ton of time today but thanks for all the emails!!  I’ll try to remember more stuff to write you a better email next week(:

Love you,

Hermana Jackson

So last week I ran out of timeeee but I have a ton to catch you up on!

So the day after Christmas we watched the grinch as a zone. We all thought it was great after the highlight of skyping our families on Christmas day.  I was super happy. The next day the offices called me at 7 a.m. in the morning to tell me that I had changes and needed to be at the airport by 11 a.m. So I was packing all morning!!! that was super fun!!!haha, but I got done at like 9 though and went out and said goodbye to all the people that I love in Pucallpa. It was super sad actually, they are some really good humble people whom I've really come to love and learn from.

But like I said last week  I'm now here in Iquitos again in the zone 9 de Octubre and my area is called Las Colinas. in english it means the hills... haha and its true. My area is just a bunch of hills and jungle and houses! Its super big but I like it a lot. Right now we are really just focusing on FINDING. When I got here they had like 5 registros in their binder of old contacts that they had been teaching and NOTHING ELSE!  So we were basically starting from 0 with this area. I also told you about my cute little companion from Columbia. Shes 23 and her name is Hermana Ruiz. Shes pretty cute and we get along super good. I wouldnt be too mad if she stayed and killed me for my last change(;
Living with the 2 gringas has been great. I've missed american culture and english(; but one of them is Hermana dickman who is dying this change, and Hermana Robinson from Canada who ends her mish the change after me!

We had 2 people in church this week!!! But our attendance was 193..... a whhhhole lot different from the 50 I was used to in Pucallpa haha. The lady we are teaching is named Wilma. Shes the cutest older lady ever. For año nuevo (new years) she told us that every year at 12 midnight she puts on a bright yellow wig and dresses up in all white and goes out with sunglasses and a suitcase and parades around the block... idk some kind of tradition they have here in Peru but I was laughing so hard when she showed me the wig... literally BRIGHT YELLOW long haired wig with bangs hahahaha, ah shes cute. But we are teaching her and her daughter Karina who just lost her husband a year ago to a heart attack.

Anyways things are good here and its been a good change. Also my bishop is the coolest and he goes out and works with us and has helped us find a ton of new people!

Love you guys!!
Hermana Jackson

Back in Iquitos!

So I totally got changed!!!! Aw I’m sad because I miss my daughter. But I’m back in Iquitos and I’m finishing training another Latina Hermana. Her name is Hermana Ruiz and she is from Columbia! She’s 23, super cute and little. She looks and sounds like she’s just 16 (: haha so sweet!

But it was the hardest thing just saying bye to all the people in Pucallpa and I only had like an hour to do it.... I really miss all those guys): but being here is cool too because we live with 2 other gringas!  Hna Robinson who’s from Canada and Hna Dickman who’s from the states! It’s pretty fun living with 4 hermana’s together!

 I’m in a different area, zone and everything than I was before. It’s called Las Colinas. We share the ward with the zone leaders. It’s a pretty big area!

I think I’m gonna go get my camera fixed today because the screen got worse. It takes pics and everything but the screen is like totally black. My camera is plugged in right now but the computer isn’t registering it and its really slow internet here!!!

I don’t have any time left but I’ll try and write a big email next week with pics(:  So many people are asking how soon my release date is and then they tell me that it’s no time at all, so I’m trying to stay focused and work harder(: haha Just know I love the jungle and my mission.

Love you lots mom !

Hermana Jackson