All started with Arequipa (another large city in Peru).

Arequipa is very Western. It has malls and cinemas etc. It was nice to spend some days here, as it allowed us to indulge in some things that we missed from the UK.

From here we went to the beach. We left the mountains behind and exchanged them for sea and sand…even though the foothills of the Andes led right up to the coast line! Unfortunatly, I didn´t get to surf .

Mollendo Beach

Then, we visited Colca Canyon. On the way, we got our first experience of snow in Peru as we travelled through the mountains.

Colca Canyon itself was quite spectacular and we caught climpeses of the gliding Condors!

    

Colca Canyon

After this, we moved onto Lake Titicaca. Literally, onto it.

We got a boat to the floating Uros Islands, made entirely out of reeds from the lake, houses and all! From the Uros Islands, we travelled to Amanatani Island. Here we spent the night with a local family, and they took us out for a night of traditonal dancing, dressed in the traditional get -up.

The four of us in out traditonal gear

Lake Titicaca

An Uros Boat

Now we´re back, I feel a lot more refreshed and ready for the holiday club!

Talking of the holiday club, it´s now in it´s 2nd week!

Every day the children´s group has grown in number and the young people have started to bring their friends. God has done some amazing things and answered our prayers in incredible ways! We´re so gratefull for what´s He´s done and for the prayers said on our behalf!

Lastly, I´d like to ask you to prayer for us some more.

Recently, we´ve realised how much the devil is trying to disrupt what God is doing here, by interfering with the lives of the missionaries…inculding us.

However, we get strength from the fact that noe of God´s plans can be thwarted (Job 42:2)!

So please remember us in your prayers, thanking God for His might and asking Him to help us power through whatever satan throws at us, in His strength!

First of, there´s been Christmas and New Years.

We spent sometime, just the four of us, in the morning, opening presents and having  a fry-up (a rare treat!)! We went round our supervisors house and had Christmas lunch with his family, as well as some friends from church. We had a regular sort of Western Christmas, as most of the people we were with were from the West. Our supervisor managed to fit 30 pieces of carrot into his mouth! It was like a veggie version of ´Chuby Bunnies´! It was nice to be made to feel at home, but it would have been exciting to have experienced a truly Peruvian Christmas.

New Year´s, on the other hand, was very Peruvian. We went out to the centre of Cusco, where it all happens!!!

The Plaza was FULL, over FULL, of people, fireworks were being let off amongst the crowd, even before midnight came, people were screaming, either out of excitment or out of fear as a firework exploded at thier feet. As the clock struck 12, everyone went mad! They all hugged one another, throwing me into the person in front and start an enourmous conga line!

One New Year’s Day, someone from the church got baptised. We all stood out in the garden of the pastor’s home, whilst the strom clouds gathered and thunder roared to wittness a man proclaiming his belife in Jesus!

We’ve also been working solidly for most of January, planning a holiday club for kids and teenagers, since they’re on summer hols here! Working in an office really isn’t my sort of thing and it’s been a challenge most days to stick it out, but we’ve fianlly got it done…and as a reward, we’re going to Arequipa (another large city in Peru), for a mid-term break!

So, what’s been going on in deepest darkest Peru?

Well, we’ve been painting the church for a start. The church has recently moved into a new building, and we were charged with decorating the kids rooms. So, we doned our painting gear, grabbed a brush and some paint and got to work. It wasn’t as straight forward as you would have thought.

On our second day of painting, Jess and I hoped to get some work done whilst Liz and Amy where in Huambotio, doing an English lesson, only, Liz and Amy didn’t realise, they still had they keys to the church. So, Jess and I got all our stuff ready and were about to head round to the church, when we found that we had no way of getting in. We rang round and we though that we had located another set of keys, we went round to the house of the owner of the keys…but they weren’t home. We waited…and waited…and waited…for about 40 minutes, and still no-one should up. Eventually, the others returned from Huambotio and we were able to get into the church and paint…two hours after Jess and I origanlly set out.

But that’s not all. Later that day, when we were back at the church, painting…we got locked out of one of the rooms. Because kids where in the church at the same time, and we didn’t want them runnning into the rooms we where working in, we started closing the door behind us, if we had to leave, and one time, the door was closed, with the lock pushed in. Consequently, we were locked out. It wasn’t until three hours later, that someone was able to come out and break into the room, which also housed most of our belongings.

However, despite the difficulties, we got the job done, and now, there is a fantastic rainbow in the sunday school room and a beautiful Noah’s Ark incthe creche room.                                                                                                                                     The Rainbow in the sunday school room.

What else has been happening?

We’ve went to Macchu Picchu!

It was really awesome to get away for a couple of days, and the scenary was incredable!

One day, we went to Huambotio and gave out hot chocolate, bread, clothes and toys (for the kids), all in the spirit of Christmas. They all seemed to really enjoy recieving these gifts, and it felt like we were genuinly blessing this community. It was also fantastic to see most of the church come out and join us in this.

First-off, we went with our new church to the Sacred Valley, one of the most beautiful places on the planet, in my opinion. It was their first weekend away as a church and each morning we woke up to lush green mountains rising up on either side of us. Our main priority was to look after the kids whilst the adults attended sessions to help them in thier relationships with Jesus. We also had some free time, most which was spent playing volleyball, and these games turned out to be a good way of practicing the Spanish I’ve been learning. It was also incredibly hot!

After Halloween, there is a thing called the Day of the Dead. This is when people believe that they can talk to their dead loved ones. So, on the second of November, graveyards around Cusco are filled to bursting with friends and relatives bring food and drink for their deceased. We went along to one graveyard, where bodies are placed in walls instead of the ground, to wittness this part of Peruvian culture.

Also, the church has finally moved into a new building, which suits it’s needs a lot better than the old one. For the past few days, we’ve been publicing the church to the local residents, making ourselves known and trying to get to know the people that live near-by. We’re hoping God will use the church to bring the communtiy together.

Lastly, we’ve come to the end of out orientation, and soon, we’ll be getting involved in leading some of the projects that we’ve, so far, only observed.

Humbotio is surrounded by beautiful mountains, but the atmosphere was quite heavy. We went to the school and Amy and I assisted a member of BMS staff who was taking an English class. At one stage, this involved us getting on our hands and knees and pretending to be animals. The age group we were teaching was 8-9 year olds. As we were leaving, I noticed a picture of Jesus on the wall, a very sterotypical picture of Jesus. The white Jesus, with a perfect centre parting and two white children on His knee, a blonde, blue eyed girl and a boy, all of them laughing together. What message does this send to the people who aren’t white, blond or blue eyed? Does it show that Jesus came for them too?
I mentioned the atmosphere in Humbotio was heavy, I think this is because there is a lot of darkness there, hidden under the surface…but God is breaking through, with the schools work and a new clinic, which is going to open there soon!

Spanish lessons! We’ve started spanish lessons this week; I took spanish at GCSE, but I’m still finding it hard. It’s been good fun though at times, and it’s been nice to do it as a team. We’re all progressing and we’ve got another two weeks of lessons, so we should be a lot more fluent by the end…I hope!

Prayer points:

- Language learning
- Liz has been feeling ill latley, so prayer for her would be appreciated

Thus far, we haven´t done much. Because we need to get used to the alttitude (3000 meters!) and get over jet lag; we´ve taken it easy, seen some of the local sights, had a tour so we know where to go for certain things and visited a llama sanctaury!

We also helped out at a local kids club where kids from all different backgrounds have a chance to be kids! This is really important as kids from as young as nine sometimes have to work on the streets and domestic violence is very high here.

But God is breaking through, we went to our first church service yesturday and the family feel was incredibly strong! God is doing things here, not massive, obvious things, but none the less, an impact is being made!

And it´s so exciting to be a part of it!!!

However, before that, I must fill you in on the last week or so of training.

So, we went back to Castle Hill Baptist church  in Warwick from Friday-Monday. It was so intense! Painting solidly from 9am-3pm then working on our plan for the church service the next day and going round people’s houses and eating their foods. So, we didn’t end up getting back to our hosts until 11pm! The next day was filled with 3 church services! Firstly, the morning services at Castle Hill, which the team and I led (it seemed to go down really well!), then more socializing with church members, followed by the evening services at Castle Hill, before getting rushed off to a youth services in near-by Leamington! Monday morning, we were at the church’s pre-school, which was a lot of fun!

So, as I was saying, training is over! officially, I’m just about to get started on one of the biggest adventures of my life to date, yet already it feels like I’ve conquered mountains. All the while we were training, going to Peru seemed like a distant dream, now it suddenly seems a lot closer. For the past four weeks, I have shared the highs and lows with 14 other people who will all be going to various countries and doing similar stuff to what I’m going to be doing in Peru, and it feels weird to be starting this new chapter without them.

Yet, this is the dawn of something amazing and I’m really looking forward to seeing what’s going to happen to myself and those around me for the glory of God!

I’m back home for now and it’s also great to have some down time with the fam!

Min-Y-Don is a Christian outdoor adventure centre in north Wales and all the Action Teams went there this past week. We had to face a lot of challenges, all with the aim of bringing us closer as a team. I had to do things that I’ll probably never do again and some things that I shouldn’t be allowed to do again!

I found that, as the only male in my team, I was volunteering myself for tasks that I knew the girls wouldn’t like to do and often being the first to try scary things, mainly because girls had told me that I need to be “the Man”  of the group .

I also realised how close the girls were, mostly because there were able to share rooms together and spend more time together, were as I’m constantly being separated and put in different places. This was quite hard, but I’m grateful that I was able to talk to my team about this. In turn, I had to face this in-built desire that I have to impress people, because when you get into that place where all you want is for people to like you, you never feel good enough. Thankfully, God has helped me face up to this and I think I’m making progress.

However, overall, it was a good experience!

The church paid for us to go to Warwick Castle and it was great to spend some time together as a team and not have to do anything! We could actually relax! I acted as tour guide, as the others had never been to the Castle before and I have, on countless school trips . I think we bonded really and we got to encourage each other for the year ahead.

Everyone in the church was very welcoming and friendly, they opened up their homes to us, fed us and allowed us to use their homes as our own.

On the Sunday, we had about a 10 minute slot in which to introduce ourselves. We wanted to make ourselves memorable, and with the help of one of the members of the church, we managed to get the minister to dance like a chicken in front of everyone! So hopefully they won’t forget us any time soon!

I was walking in the wooded grounds of the IMC training centre, where I’m preparing to go to Peru, and I was completely alone. The idea came to me (I think God placed it there): I should spend this time with God; as any time alone is  rare in this place. So I said out loud, to Jesus, “walk with me” (I think Jesus inspired that too). I instantly felt another presence, but not in a scary way, a calming, reassuring way, although, physically, no one was there.

Have people ever asked you “if you could have dinner with anyone from history, who would it be and what would you say to them?”, it was one of those moments, only, I didn’t feel the need to say anything, I was comfortable simply walking with Him, which is never how I imagined a walk with Jesus would feel like. We did talk a bit, I asked some questions, some He answered, some He didn’t.  I told Him how thankful I was for how He accepts me just as I am; I got a glimpse of how Jesus sees me and the love of it brought tears to my eyes. Not sad tears or tears of laughter, more like ”wow” tears. But for the most part, we just enjoyed each others presence. Jesus enjoying my presence?! How crazy is that?!

He promised He’d never leave me, that I won’t always have moments like the one I was currently having with Him, but He would ALWAYS be there.

He’s there for you too.