Hola! I hope you all had a great week! I sure did! Before I talk about my week I want to say that I´m sorry if you send me and email and I don´t respond right away. I only I have 2 hours every monday on the computer and we use this time to write our families and do other things concerning missionary work. So if I don´t respond to you right away I´m sorry! Just know I appreciate every email I recieve and I read everything and I´m super grateful to all of you who support me!

So my week.. we found out there´s this little pueblo town about 45 minutes from where we live, but its part of our area! It´s called Ite (ee-tay). So we took a bus out there to contact people. There´s also members out there who showed us around. It´s not very developed and theres a lot of farms and cows everywhere. It´s also right on the beach too.. super weird haha but I love it! We started walking along this dirt road that leads to the main part of the town and we passed by a little school. All the kids came running to the gate to say hi to us! My companion and I definitely look like we´re not from Peru so they were super curious and anxious to meet us haha we felt like celebrities! We walked by the gate of the school and gave them all high fives! It was super sweet. We ended up contacting a ton of people in Ite and we´re going back this week to follow up with them. The problem is there´s no church buildings out in this little town. So to come to church, they have to travel by bus 45 minutes to Ilo. Hopefully if we see some progress, our mission president will open up an area and send missionaries to live out there! We shall see.

I have truly been humbled by the people out here. There are so many people with so many different stories and situations that make me SO grateful to have grown up in California, or just the United States in general. Now that my Spanish has improved I can understand the people here more. It´s truly a miracle that I´ve been here for only 7 months, and with no spanish experience before, and I´m able to understand these people and able to speak to them in their own language and help them progress. I know this would not have been possible without the help of God. I know that miracles are possible in this life. God promises us miracles, but first we have to show him our faith. God cannot grant any miracle unless we show our faith first.

Well, I´m about 99% sure I will be getting a transfer this next week. It has been an amazing 6 months in Ilo! I will definitely miss being by the beach. I will let you all know what happens next week! I love you!

Espero que tengan una buena semana!

Hermana Celardo