Perú was awesome. It consisted of a lot of studying and teaching! My
Spanish is getting better day by day. Me and Hermana King can teach
our lessons in Spanish without any notes for the most part. Also, when
someone is speaking Spanish I can understand most of what they’re
saying . The hard part now is putting words together to actually
respond to them haha. Naturally I’ve kind of just been speaking half
English and half Spanish. It’s pretty cool! I’ll be saying something
in English and then I just switch over to Spanish without even
realizing it. I have faith that the language will come eventually! I’m
studying really hard every day, so I’m not too worried.
The food here is amazing as usual. We get soft serve ice cream every 3
days or so and the ice cream here is sooo good. You would think I
would get sick of chicken and rice by now but I still love it!
Sometimes the cooks here at the CCM make American meals which is nice.
On Thanksgiving they made turkey and mashed potatoes and pumpkin pie
which was so comforting. At least once a week we have hamburgers.
They’re definitely not in n out burgers but they’re close enough (:
The best thing here is the churros though. I’m not sure if I’ve talked
about the churros before, but they’re better than Disneyland churros!
If I could send some home to you all, I would!
So on Monday we had a CCM Navidad devotional. A devotional is kind of
like a giant meeting where someone important comes to speak and
they’re always super spiritual. All the missionaries at the CCM were
there along with a couple mission presidents in the area as well as
some senior couple missionaries. The choir my companion and I joined
that I talked about last week performed at the devotional! It went
really well. We sang Noche de Luz (Silent night) and it was beautiful!
The devotional itself was amazing as well. The speaker, whose name
escapes me, is the president of the area 70. He gave a very
motivational talk on missionary work and it filled me with comfort and
reassurance that I truly am here for a reason. After the speech, we
all went outside to the main courtyard and it was decorated with a ton
of Christmas lights and there was sandwiches and snacks and treats! We
mingled and took lots of pictures and had a great time. It was a fun
break from the usual schedule!
This weekend is going to be amazing because we get to go proselyting
on Saturday! Me and the rest of my district are going to go to the
main part of Lima and we get a new companion for the day. My new
companion will be a missionary who has already been out on her mission
for a while, most likely will be Latina, and we get to go teach actual
lessons and actually talk to people about the church! I’m so excited!!
I’m not sure how well I’ll be able to communicate with my little
Spanish..but luckily the people out here are so nice and are usually
patient with people like me that don’t know Spanish yet haha.
Every Wednesday morning we get to go to the temple here in Lima. For
those of you who don’t know what temples are, they are houses of the
Lord. There are about 140 temples all around the world! They are big,
beautiful buildings. If you’ve ever driven along Santa Monica Blvd,
you’ve probably seen the Los Angeles Temple! They aren’t necessarily
meeting houses, by that I mean members of the church don’t have Sunday
services here. Temples are special because they are the closest place
we have on earth to Heaven. Inside temples, we perform ordinances and
make covenants with God that are necessary to return to live with Him
again. We do this work for ourselves as well as for those who have
already passed away. We know that every soul is great in the eyes of
God, and therefore everyone will have the chance to receive the
restored gospel of Jesus Christ whether it’s in this life or the next.
Temples make this possible. Because of temples, our families can be
together forever. And for that, I am so grateful!
Well, in exactly 3 weeks I’ll be in Arequipa! I’m already half way
done here in the CCM. Days feel like weeks and weeks feel like days. I
know that phrase only makes sense if you’ve ever been a missionary
haha. I absolutely love it here and I love the other missionaries here
at the CCM and I love the people of Perú! My faith and knowledge of
the gospel is growing every single day. I love you all! Thanks for
reading!
Until next week,
Hermana Natalie Celardo
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