Hope you all had a super amazing Christmas! This week was a great one for me and Christmas was awesome. One of the jobs we have as sister leaders is doing divisions with the other sister missionaries that we’re assigned to. We are assigned to all the sisters in Tacna, Moquegua, and Ilo. So last Wednesday I got to go back to Ilo, to my first area! It was so fun! I realized how much I love it and miss it, it’s the cutest little beach town. It’s definitely the San Diego of Peru haha. But in all seriousness I’m so grateful for the 6 months I had there. Last week I had the chance to visit some of the people I taught and were baptized, and other members and friends that I have there! In the morning we even went on a run by the beach and it was glorious! I hope I can go back at least one more time before I finish the mission. Christmas for us was great! Christmas eve consisted of us doing our normal daily missionary duties like studying and teaching but at night we went to the house of a family who is in our ward and celebrated with them. We had a very typical Peruvian dinner, pollo a la brasa and papas fritas. It’s rotisserie chicken and french fries haha and after we had panettone and hot chocolate. Also, everyone here opens their presents at midnight on Christmas eve instead of Christmas morning. We went back to our room and the family we live with gave us more food and more panettone haha and then at midnight everyone lit up fireworks! It was so beautiful! And it last for like 30 minutes! The whole sky was just lit up with light and it was amazing! Sunday we went to church in the morning and my companion was going to give a talk. About 3 minutes before the sacrament meeting started the bishop asked me if I could speak too because the person who was going to do it ended uo being sick. I have always heard of this happening to missionaries haha but it had never happened to me until yesterday. I said a quick prayer to receive inspiration on what to talk about. I opened my scriptures up to a verse that talks about light in Doctrine and Covenants 88. So I decided to talk about light. And in this moment of nervousness and unpreparedness I received a lot of inspiration and revelation about light.

Since I’ve been little, I’ve loved looking at the stars. For me it’s always kept me grounded. When I look at the stars I realize how small we really are and how grand the universe is. It makes me stand in awe that our God could create something so complex yet so beautiful. As we look at the stars, we see the light that they shine. But these stars are actually super far away from us, even light years away from us. Being so far away from us, the light takes time to get to us here on earth. The light that they shed that we see is actually thousands of years old. The star might even be dead at the moment that we are seeing its light. Anyways, this concept is something I’ve always understood. Then I realized something in this moment I was trying to prepare my talk, light carries on after death. After a star dies, its light just carries on endlessly. Our Savior Jesus Christ died more or less 2000 years ago but his light exists today. His light exists in every one of us who live his gospel, who strive to be more like him and those who believe in his name. Don’t let this Christmas be the end of sharing his light. There are people waiting to hearing the message of the restored gospel, there are people that need his light. And the only way they’re going to get it is if we, the people who have his light, share it. It’s my testimony that Jesus Christ is our light and our everlasting hope. He is the hope of a better life. Through him and only him can we return back to the presence of our Father in Heaven.

Take care my dear friends (:

Hermana Celardo