New Area!!

Hey guys(:

This week has been so crazy!!!! I had cambios on lunes (Monday) !!!!

So Lunes we had a lesson with a family that we just recently found in Clavero, they don’t assist any church but they understand SUPER well about the teachings of Christ. We taught them about Jose Smith and they had a ton of great questions for us. We really think they are gonna progress. But right when we got home from the lesson I got the phone call that I was headed out of Iquitos! I´m now in Pucallpa(: in an area called Centenario. I had to leave my other suitcase in the mission office but it was all the stuff that I wasn’t using that much anyways so it’s okay. 

This area is supppper big, and I’m opening it with my new comp Hermana Mora! She was in the same zone when we were in Tarapoto, she was Snyders comp! Snyder and I have had almost all the same comps haha.  She got called to my old area Clavero with Hermana Gonzales who I just left! Kinda crazy. But anyways, opening an area means that they took out BOTH the old missionaries and put in 2 new guys. Centenario has been an area of Elders for the past 5 years!!! So you can imagine that when we got to our new house it was DESTROYED ahhhhh!! Our house is super sick actually, it’s the whole 3rd floor so its super spacious, but it took us 3 days to clean the whole thing cause the elders I think cleaned it once in those 5 years that they lived there.. (; ugh. but all our hard work of cleaning paid off because Hermana Li came to do inspections on Friday and we got to go out to dinner with her and Pres because our house was so clean (:

Pucallpa is lots different than Iquitos. There’s a lot more trees and a lot more commercial stuff here, like they have 2 huge malls. Its super weird to be back in some-what civilizacion haha but its suuuuuper dusty!!! it’s like that movie Interstellar, how the earth is dying so in every scene you see that the air is just filled with DUST.. that’s Pucallpa haha. But I’m super stoked to be here! We´ve already seen the hand of the Lord in finding people this week. We were walking to go meet one of the members when a guy said hi to us and we stopped to talk to him. On Sunday we ended up having a lesson with him and he said that he wants to teach his children the ways of the Lord so that they grow up having gospel principles. He directly asked us about the baptism and said that he wants to change his life so that his family can be more happy.... SO CRAZY how he is so prepared by God! 

There’s 32341982749273 people that we need to work with here! A ton of less actives and investigators and right now we´re feeling super stressed out cause there’s so much to do, ahhhh ! The members are cool though, all the council members are super pumped up to help us, but there is hardly anyone in church! Like 50... it’s a big difference from the ward that I just came from in Iquitos!

Also my pensionista is the best. She makes whatever we want and she also has a gym in her house... I’m so happy you have no idea (;

Mom please be sure and tell Logan happy birthday for me Thursday and that I love my big brother and am thinking about him (:

Love you guys!! Thanks for all the support!

Hermana Jackson

Hna Brotherson - Hna Gonzales (KJ's last Comp) - Hna Jackson - Hna Cantos

A place called the boulevard by the river in Iquitos

I started to send a group email but the internet crashed:( and I don’t wanna retype everything cause I don’t have the time now.... and we really didn’t do that much that was different to write about.   I’m trying to download pictures right now for you but this internet is really bad today. I hope they come through.  We do have changes today and I’ll be super surprised if I don’t get changed out of this area, I’ve been here almost 6 months! I really love my companion and will miss her if I go.  But as always we make things work and learn and grow.  Here is some interesting info for you, there are 15 missionaries leaving the mission and only 3 coming in, so they are probably going to have to close 3 areas in every stake... super crazy huh?  And they think that my release date might be February 6.  But I’m not going to plan on that yet.  Too many changes going on for that.

Well I gotta go, love you guys, I’ll talk to you next week.

Hermana Jackson

Hey! Sounds like things are pretty good at home! Here it’s starting to get suuuper hot. This whole last week has been super warm, and everyone says that we are in "full summer"!  Summer apparently lasts until September here but basically I think it’s summer all year round haha.

Last Monday we went as Hermana’s to Quistococha! The zoo place that I went to with Hermana Lara, my first change here in Iquitos. This time I didn’t play with the monkeys too much but it was cool to just walk around the beach! I think my favorite part was the bus ride there. It’s about an hour bus ride! It makes me miss going on drives with the homies, but this bus ride was a lot cooler cause it’s the Amazon Rainforest. (;

That night we taught Felix!!! He is so much better now it’s crazy!!! He came to church last week! His daughter brought him in his wheelchair because he still doesn’t have a lot of strength to walk yet, but the Lord is sure working miracles to help him get better and eventually get to the temple. That night we were able to do a family home evening with him and his grandkids and son-in-law and it went pretty good! We taught the story of Paul walking on the water to Christ!  After the family home evening with Felix we went to another members house and had another FHE! They´re the family Braga. They’re super cool cause they are super smart haha and have a ton of knowledge about the gospel! They both served missions and their kids are super funny and wayyy intelligent. Her son is like 10 years old and he says that he wants to be a professor, a doctor and then president of Peru. (; This night he made me laugh super hard cause he started singing some Spanish opera song and 5 seconds after he started singing it his mom and sister joined in. It made me think of Marebear and how her fam loves phantom of the opera and how she made me listen to that album all the way home from Idaho... ugh(;

On Wednesday we did a cool service project! We helped a family that we are teaching right now, with their carpentry! Their names are Remy and Tony. Remy is 16 and he’s a recent convert but he hasn’t been attending church for the whole time that I’ve been here because he’s been focusing on his studies because he is studying to be a doctor, but besides that excuse, he just doesn’t have much of a desire to come to church because he says his mom pressured him into getting baptized.. BUENO. And then his dad is Tony , just barely separated from Remy’s mom who he’s been living with for a million years but  he has a lot of hate for everything that happened between them! So that’s where we are with this family for the moment(; But it was super cool to help them with their business. Our whole district came and helped sand down chairs and doors for Hermano Tony.  Me and my comp got there early and we started sanding down one of the chairs and apparently we were only supposed to do a light sanding but nobody told us so we took off a lot of the paint on the chairs... and had to repaint them and resand haha, oppsy.  But now I’m a pro carpenter so yay new skill!

That night we went to visit Hermana Merci who is one of our investigators! But she said she didn’t have time because she was washing her clothes, so we asked her if we could help her! We hand washed all of her clothes.  Which took almost 2 hours haha yay service!

One thing that I liked this week was one of the lessons that we had with a random lady we contacted named Norma! We sat down in her house and out of nowhere me and my comp decided to start the lesson by singing a hymn to her and her family! We started singing Love One Another and the lady joined in with us in the chorus because she recognized it! Hymns are super cool though because they really invite the spirit!

Friday we went to an appt. with one of our converts Antony and his mom who’s not a member. Well Antony’s friend was there and it was someone who was in the seminary class in her home ward that had moved back out to Iquitos with his parents! She got to talk to her frennn but it made her pretty trunky afterwards because he told her everything about her old boyfriend stuff ahhhhhh! haha

This week I had to go to migracions to get my visa renewed because I’m coming up on a year... finally (; no just kidding it’s just so crazy!

Love you guys!

Hermana Jackson

*Here’s a picture for Dad. This is the high tech wiring they have going on here in Peru! It’s for the lights in their house.  I thought Dad would think that it was pretty interesting (:

Hey guys(:

I’m just gonna dive right in haha.. This week we taught Liselet! Victor was in a little pueblo outside of Nauta, it’s a city about 2 hours outside of Iquitos and the pueblo is hours outside of Nauta! But we taught Liselet baptism! For these past few weeks of extending a baptism invitation she’s always been super cold and said that maybe later she´ll have a desire, but after we taught her, she said she finally understood and that she wants to be baptized (: FINALLY SOMEONE IN THIS AREA WANTS TO BE BAPTIZED(; but the problem is that they are planning on moving to this little pueblo!!! we think that Victor just wants to leave to avoid getting married because it was super random that he was just like "yep we are moving".. and if they move then there’s no way that they will be able to have the blessings of the gospel in their life because there isn’t any missionaries in this little pueblo yet!!! ugh. we´re gonna try to talk to them tonight or tomorrow though about staying here!!

We had the coolest experience yesterday! One of our citas (appointments) fell through and we were just walking along the road not really sure where we should go.. This week and last week a ton of our citas have fallen through!!! We told our DL last night about it and he told us that there are 2 reasons that citas dont work out. 1 because God needs you to visit a member  and 2 because God needs you to contact someone that he´s been preparing.

Well we decided to visit Vicki Vela who is a less active that hasn’t progressed the whole time that I’ve been in this area. We got to her house the same time she was returning home from an interview with the stake pres. We sat down and started talking about el dia de reposo (the Sabbath day), she told us how alllll of this week God had been sending her signs and people to remind her what she SHOULD be doing. What she KNOWS is right and what she needs to CHANGE. She started crying and said that now she understands, and feels so sorry for ever working on Sunday and deciding not to attend church because of what has happened between her and other members, and for not listening to those promptings sooner. She thanked us for coming at exactly the right time that she needed us. And she said that she wants to start over. As missionaries one of the coolest things that we get to do is promise people blessings! I was able to promise her that if she was to follow Christ’s example, by keeping the commandments and keeping the Sabbath day holy, then her and her family would be able to have the funds to attend the temple to be sealed for time and all eternity! Super cool(:

This week we also had interviews with pres and room checks!! My comp and I were up until like 1 in the morning cleaning our place cause its super ugly and super hard to clean hahaha but we passed with flyyyying colors, so no worries. We have also managed to keep it clean so that’s a plus... I’m excited to get home to test out how long I can keep my room clean now (;

Today we are going to that zoo with all the monkeys again so ill probably have photos of more monkeys next week (; Everything is really good here though and me and my comp are super happy haha she’s way cool and we´re a lot alike.

Love ya!

Hermana Jackson

Hey mom! This week was pretty cool! We reached almost all of our goals for the week and it´s because we are starting to plan in a different way each night for the next day!

This week we taught a guy named Juan Carlos. We were walking down the street and we saw one of the members in the street and went to talk to him! Then we asked him if he knew anyone around there that we could go and visit and he told us his friend that he was about to go and visit! So we went to his house and talked to his friend Juan and got an appt for the next day. We´ve taught him twice this week and he’s pretty cool! He says he feels really good talking about God and looks forward to our visits. Our last visit was awesome because we talked about prayer, he told us that he was a part of some other church but hasn’t attended in 9 years and he told us that it’s also been 9 years since he has said a PRAYER. So crazy! So at the end of the lesson we asked him to give the closing prayer and he prayed for the first time in 9 whole year’s ahhhh so cool. But it was super funny afterwards because my comp totally burned him... haha he forgot to say in the name of Jesus Christ amen and my comp was like,  hey for next time ya gotta do it right! And he was like, yep well I’m done tryin.. He was just joking but it was pretty funny!

On Friday we received a referral for a Columbian guy but he ended up being in another zone so we can’t visit him! But talking to him made me want to go to Columbia because their accents are so cool! Later that day in the afternoon we went and taught a convert and then we were walking around cause the rest of our plans fell through. I remembered that there had been girl that came to church the last week that lived on a street that we were close to, so we went to her house but she wasn’t home. On the way back my comp felt like we should contact a house with a lady selling a bunch of oranges.. haha well we contacted her and it turns out that her hubby is a less active!  He was baptized forever ago and hasn’t attended in a long time. We got talking with them and I asked them how they had come to trust so much in the Lord, and they both just started crying. She said that a couple months ago her 17 year old son had turned crazy, that he was a normal kid but now he has like scitzo or some sickness that makes him react violently and irregular. She said that the only thing that she has been sure of is that God listens to her prayers. We shared a scripture that’s super cool in 3 Nephi 17:7-9, it’s when cristo comes to the Americas and one of the first things he says and does is to ask these people to bring all of their afflicted and sick unto him so he can give them rest. We felt the spirit super strong during this lesson and afterwards realized that the spirit is guiding us through small and quiet impressions. The impression that I got to go down the street even though the other girl wasn’t home, and the impression my comp got to contact the lady selling oranges.. so cool!!!

The other lesson that we had last night was awesome!! With Liselet and Victor!! We taught them the law of chastity and marriage!! Well since we don’t have any experience of this whatsoever we brought with us a super strong couple who had been married in the temple and who are both return missionaries and have their own family now and everything. They basically gave the whole lesson hahaha it was super cool though because they just bore their testimonies on how the lord blesses us and our families through marriage. They agreed to prepare to be married next month (: we gotta do a tonnnnnn of paper work though!!! but we´re super happy!!

Love you guys a ton!!

Hermana Jackson

Hey! this week was super cool.. Literally at the beginning of the week EVERY APPOINTMENT that we had planned fell through. It was super tough because we really didn’t have very many people that were progressing, so we just did a whooooole ton of walking around our area trying to FIND.

On Tuesday we had our zone conference! It was the first one that we have had with the new pres and it was super good. They talked a lot about repentance and being worthy to do the Lords work. Then they took us to lunch at some restaurant that was just around the corner! They are so loving though and I can already see the difference in the mish because of it! For example on Saturday our stake pres called a meeting for our entire zone and he just asked us what our opinion was on how he could do better and what we could do as a stake to get more people to church! They’re really starting to WORK here! And hopefully we will see the fruits of it soon!

Friday we had work visits! I was with Hna Brotherson in my area (she is from Virginia). Like I said we have just not had very many people to work with, and all of our appointments had fallen through by the afternoon. So I told Brotherson that we were gonna contact a house. Well we went up to the open window and started to contact an older lady with her niece! In the beginning they were soooo hard hearted. They live right in front of the church and we asked them if they had ever gone inside or attended before and she said that she refused to attend because one time one of the people that attends there invited her and when she told them that she was catholic she said they told her that she did not understand who God was or his purpose and she was really offended! At first she did nottt wanna talk to us at all, but as we started asking her questions about herself and began to testify a little bit about what we do as missionaries she began to soften up. Then we asked her if we could share a message with her and SHE LET US IN. We both were super stunned haha but we came in and shared a simple message of Christ. The lesson was so guided by the spirit, we weren’t using any fancy words or using any big stories but just testifying that Jesus Christ lives and loves us. By the end of the lesson they both had softened their hearts and the older lady Manuela said that we could come back to visit her and that her niece would try to be there when we came.. So amazing how the lord guides us to his children.

Hermana Emerita assisted church this Sunday!!! She is the wife of the patriarch! That’s the first time in over a year. We were super super happy and the bishop was really surprised and super happy as well. Also one of our investigatora Sulema attended but she came late after the sacrament! She is one of our progressing inv and has a desire to repent because she has done a lot of things in her past; hopefully we see more of a change in her this week!

Another experience that I had was with a cute little lady named Ruth. Ruth doesn’t have very much education and can’t read, so we teach her very simple and very small concepts. Yesterday we taught her about prayer and we were explaining how Cristo and God are two different people and that when we are praying we are talking to God but Christ is the one who is carrying our prayers to him. But she just couldn’t really understand the concept! So I ended up taking out a piece of paper and drawing stick figures of God, Jesus the Holy Ghost and us, Gods children and THEN she understood. By the end of the lesson we asked her to pray, and she said a very short very simple prayer but did it in the correct way. We told her to keep practicing and she asked me for the drawing that I made so that she could hahahaha I loved this humble experience though because now she talks to her heavenly father and I know that he has been waiting to hear from her.

I’ve had so many humbling experiences this week that I don’t have time to write them all. But I just feel grateful because I know that God is testing my diligence in this area! We hardly had any people to teach in the start of this week and by the end we had made some pretty awesome contacts with a lot of cool people. I know the Lord always provides a way (:

Love you guys!

Hermana Jackson

PS.  I FORGOT TO TELL YOU I let Hermana Brotherson cut my hair hahaha because the ends were in such bad shape and I just want it to grow already. So it seems short again to me but it’s a ton healthier. AND it was the first person to ever cut my hair besides you!!! Crazy! Also, No she’s not a professional stylist but she did a good job. hahaha

With the Hna's at Zone Conference

Cute little tree frog

With Hna Vasquez at Zone Conference.  She is from Arizona.

Changes - Not Changed

This week we had changes!!! I thought for sure that I would be leaving cause of my stalker dude but... I STAYED. Hermana Mucha is the one that had changes!!! And it was actually super funny how we found out. On Monday night we were in the house planning, well the hour passed 9:40 pm and I thought… well guess neither of us have changes... then we get a call at 10:15pm from Presidente Li! My comp was in the shower and I answered! He asked Hermana Mucha?! And I responded no pres I’m Jackson! And he said muy bien Hermana I’m calling to tell you that you have cambios! You’re going to be the new Hermana leader in zona Iquitos! And I asked him.. Wait me?! haha and he said YES the assistants’ will call you later and let you know all the details! Well I started freaking out a little bit because it’s a lot of responsibility to be in charge of all the Hermana;s! But then I remembered that first he had said HELLO HERMANA MUCHA hahahahaha so I started telling my comp that it was HER that had changes!! But she didnt wanna be changed so she said that it was me and I shouldn’t doubt my calling! So then we just started laughing super hard because we really had no idea who had changes haha and we debated for like 10 minutes about calling pres Li and asking him. Well long story short... my comp had changes not me (; it was super funny.

On Tuesday I dropped off Mucha in the offices and said bye to Willis and Wood because they both are going to Pucallpa! Mucha is still here in Iquitos just a different stake. My new comp got here at 3 pm and I went and picked her up with Hermana Cantos! She is super cute, her name is Hermana Gonzales. She has 7 months in the mission and she is from Lima! She has the voice of minnie mouse haha but we get along pretty well and we are actually really alike so I think this change is gonna be really cool with her.

We definitely saw some miracles this week! One night we were passing by an old man on our way to teach our inv. Liselet and Victor! And I felt like we should go back and contact him! Well this old guy turned out to be a member who hadn’t attended church in 25 YEARS, since his wife died while they were living in Trujillo. He says that he wants to come back to church and start again. We gave him a new BOM so he could start reading again, and we just passed the reference to the elders because he lives alone!

The other experience that we had was on the weekend when we were working in the morning! One of our cita’s (appointments) fell through and there was really no one else to teach around there, so I decided to call Jenny, one of our investigators but she didn’t answer, so I decided we might as well go to her house to see if she was home! Well Jenny wasn’t home but we found her friend Maria who lives with her! She has a great comprension (comprehension) of God and Christ and we feel like she is really prepared to hear the gospel!

Also on Wednesday we taught Ines another investigator! This lesson was really inspired. She has not completed any of her compromisos!! And when I asked her truly whhyyyyy she doesn’t read her BOM she told me that it’s because she doesn’t feel good enough to change. A ton of things happened between her and the father of her hijos (children) and she says that she cannot forgive him or herself and for this she has a really hard heart. We taught her that through faith in Christ and his atonement he can soften her heart and little by little change her into the person that she wants to become and leave these feelings of hatred behind. She finally said that she was going to read the BOM! 

Something that broke my heart this week was that Hno Felix my fav person is really sick.. he has been preparing to go to the temple for 3 months, saving money, having his interviews, paying his tithing, and non stop talking about how it was finally going to take his investidura (investment).. Apparently when he got to Lima, all the excitement was just too much for him and his emotions caused his mental health to spiral. I went to see him yesterday and it’s a complete change. His thoughts are all mixed so when he talks the words are all jumbled, and if you ask him a question he responds to something that’s completely different. I asked him if he was praying and he told me that he had keiko (girl that was running for pres) on his keychain. One thing that was super tender was that he said my favorite hymn is 10! And I said well Hno Felix lets sing your favorite hymn. When we were singing he just started to cry.. But I felt the spirit in those tender words of this hymn. I know God has a plan for all of us. There is a perfect reason for why Felix didn’t get to walk through those doors of the temple just yet. And I truly think it’s to humble his daughter who is not a member, and help her come unto the good shepherd.

I love this gospel and I loooove my family.

Thanks for everything!

Hermana Jackson

The spider inside Hermana Gonzales net around her bed when 

she woke up one morning.

Picture in the offices with Hna Willes before she left for her change to Pulcapa.