impressive pinata

Below is a photo of a pinata made by the children and young people at New Malden Baptist church, last week they had a special focus on our work here in Peru and one of their activities was making pinatas! Thanks for remembering us and for praying for us at NMBC! We had more lovely surprises today Godalming church sent Sam a lovely birthday card and present and Kate from Union Baptist in High Wycombe has sent more toys and puppets for the cafe church, thankyou all so much!!

the final birthday celebration!

with his teacher Miss Maria


Anjanette shows the class the photos and explains about Samuel's last year

Birthday cake for the 3rd time!


Here are a few photos of Sam and 2 of his class mates who all had birthdays this month. We had to show photos of Sam's last year and join his class for cake and party food. This really is the final birthday celebration apart from the fact that he is still waiting for birthday parcels and cards to arrive from the UK due to the postal problems in UK and Peru! It is wonderful that Jess and Sam are so settled and happy at school . Having said that when we took Sam home early today Jessica developed instant stomach ache (that didn't prohibit very fast running towards us) and said that she needed to leave school early too!

Sam's actual birthday

Well what a lot of celebrating. Party with his friends on Saturday, shared cake in church on Sunday,actual birthday and opened his presents today then later on in week he will have a celebration with all the children in the lower school years who have birthdays in November!
Sam has had a great day scooting about on his new scooter and we had dinner in a Korean restaurant which reminded us of New Malden days. He went to bed very happy singing happy birthday in spanish to himself!

four Williamsons have fun in the park near our house

Happy birthday Samuel

We marked Sam's 5th birthday with a party today, we invited school church and missionary friends, how great to enjoy the company of good friends here in Cusco and to celebrate together.

Jess and Sam describe the pinata

This is a video we made for our supporting churches, one link church, Newbold Verdon celebrate BMS Sunday this weekend, and our sending church NMBC have a special focus on our work in Peru during their childrens' activities this Sunday.

new house photos

Sam and Jess by front door

Andes view from bedroom window

Jess and Sam's room

our new dining table made by a local christian carpenter that seats up to 12 people !!

chaos at the cafe

The road in front of the cafe is being dug up, with the added factor of lots of rain at present it is a big muddy mess! Here are a few photos including Samuel throwing his hands up in despair! They tell us it will be finished by Christmas we will wait and see......

first meeting of our new church leadership team

We are so excited to have a new church leadership team. In the photo from left to right, Scott, Patricia, Anjanette , Michael and Carla. Please pray for us as we seek God's will for El Puente Cafe Iglesia.

Rainy season is here

Well the workers are digging up the road where they are building the bridge, there is no path outside the cafe just a big flood, here Scott is sweeping the water off the pavement trying to keep it out of the cafe!

wonderful encouragements

After quite some time we sent out our official prayer letter. ( It is available in the people and places section under Williamson on the BMS World Mission website).

Whenever we send out a prayer letter it is wonderful to receive back encouraging emails from our friends reassuring us of their prayers and support,

our friend Katherine from our old church in Luton wrote this:

O I'm so glad the cafe is finally running. Im also thrilled about the converts man!!!! good news!
The rest God will do. In Uganda we say, when God gives you a goat, He also gives you the grass to feed it and the rope to tether it!!!!!!

Tracy and Graham from our link church in Godalming wrote:

I asked God for a promise for you and it is from John 14 v 12 He that believeth on Me, the works that I do, he do also.

Hikmat from Lebanon wrote

This is beautiful, wonderful, excellent job. I love the newsletter. Praise God!
Blessings great warriors!

Thankyou all for your support , never underestimate the positive effect you can have when you take a moment to encourage somebody!!

two thefts in one week!

We have always known that the crime rate is high in Peru and gringos are often targets. Since living here we have had our mobile phones,camera and various parts of the car stolen. Well since the radicales have left we are running the coffee shop with much fewer staff and it seems like we are being targeted.
Last Friday annoyingly the church mobile phone was stolen from the coffee shop and today after a really great kids club( with 3 new children as well as 3 families who attend regularly) Anjanette put her bag at the back of the coffee shop where we keep our personal belongings near the counter. Inside the bag was a small ipod and speaker which we use for the music group. Well when it was time to go home we could not find the bag anywhere and we remembered seeing some people loitering near the counter earlier.
So we have tightened up on security and rearranged the coffee shop, we are all being much more vigilant and have also spoken with the shops either side of us who also are keeping a look out for thieves. In future Anjanette will transfer all the songs on to CD and use the coffee shop CD player instead of walking around with ipod and speaker, it has been a sobering reminder to us that we really need to watch our belongings all the time! Right now we are feeling very tired after a very busy few months starting the church, also our house move and we are annoyed and cross(with ourselves) that our belongings have been stolen !!

Pastor Scott attends the radicales graduation in Lima

We are so grateful to the radicales for the hard work and effort they put into their time with us in Cusco and now they have gone and left a big gap we appreciate all their hard work even more!
This weekend Scott had a flyng visit to Lima to attend the missions conference and their graduation. Please pray that God continues to use each one and to be at work in their lives as they return to their families.

Ladies bible study in our new home

Anjanette is delighted that since we now live close to the cafe church , we have changed the venue of the ladies bible study to our home.Previously she could not attend since our home was so far away and it was when Jess and Sam were going to bed. It was a joy to host and attend the bible study and in true Peruvian style a toddler joined us for a night time meeting too! Please pray that these meetings will be a time of fellowship and great blessing as God speaks to us through his powerful word.

Goodbye radicales hello hard work!

No to say that we haven't been working hard these last 3 months that they have been here but the radicales have really helped us get things up and running and have been a huge help at the start of our church plant, because of this and the friendships we have made with them , Jacki Nidian Meri and Josue will always be really special to El Puente cafe iglesia .Needless to say the goodbyes were traumatic, poor Jessica was inconsolable!! Scott will attend their graduation ceremony in Lima at the missions conference this weekend, hopefully one day soon the rest of us will meet them again, they live 1 plane ride (20 hrs bus ride) or 2 plane rides away so not exactly round the corner but at least in the same country as us ! Thanks be to God for these young people who served the church here, we look forward to seeing how he will continue to work in their lives and use them for his glory in the future.

El Puente first baptismal service

baptising Mercedes

lots of visitors came to the baptismal service

tamales (maize, egg and pork dripping) and lechon (pork)

What a great service! Fourteen year old Mercedes was baptised and many of her school friends came to the service. Maxi's parents are not keen for her to be baptised and she went to spend time with her family today since it is 1st November , Dia de los muertos, when many catholic families visit their relatives and feast at the cemetery often eating the favourite meal of their departed loved ones. On November 1st lechon (stewed pork) and tamales is typically eaten in Cusco. We had a double celebration at church today as it was also a goodbye service for the radicales and so 4 of the church ladies cooked lechon and tamales which we all enjoyed after the service!
We are so delighted that the church is growing , people are coming to faith, people are being baptised and others are becoming more commited to the church . Today we celebrate 3months since the start of the church plant God is so faithful! Thankyou for praying with us and supporting us.

House move

This weekend we have completed our house move, the furniture the carpenter made has been delivered and it feels like home now. What a crazy day we had yesterday! We ran another kids games event in the local park in the morning (70 kids came!) At lunchtime Chi Chi our language teacher from Arequipa popped in to visit, then in the afternoon we went to Jess and Sam's school fair! The radicales then moved in with us for the next 3 days until they leave. All that as well as packing cleaning and unpacking.
It is great to be in such a good location, our church, the supermarket, banks and nice play parks are all close by. However it is much busier and noisier here, last night the trick or treaters were yelling and screaming in the streets till late and one of the neighbours had a party and was playing loud music until the early hours. Sadly no double glazing here but when we unpacked we managed to find the earplugs!!
Today's activities are morning cafechurch,lunch , music practice, afternoon baptismal service, special goodbye meal for the radicales at church after the service.Will hopefully post some photos of our special Sunday later.