A-maize-ing Yucay Seed Project

listening to the speeches and prayers before the seed distribution

Scott arrived sitting on top of sacks of maize !

Jane Dunn measuring out the maize seeds


Peter Dunn

Today we distributed maize seed to 400 families who lost their crops in the flooding earlier in January, it was great to have Peter Dunn ( BMS World Mission director for mission) and his family helping us too! The folk were thrilled to receive their seed, now they can start to grow their crops .When they reap the harvest next year we hope that their lives will begin to return to normal once again. What a privelege to be involved in this project!

Inauguration of the new church building

Peter Dunn (Pastor Pedro) gets ready to cut the ribbon so we can enter the church

the new church

praying for the new church building

Scott and Paty pray for the youth ministry

Peter Dunn preaches and Anjanette has her first attempt at translating

Tonight we held our first service in the new church building. Pastor Pedro cut the red ribbon and also preached , we are very honoured that the Dunn family are here to celebrate with us as well us help us with the church preparations! Praise God for his faithfullness, it has been a busy time getting the new church ready and we are so blessed to have this new space for our growing church. Here are a few photos:

The church children help us get the new church ready

handpainting on the walls!

Roxana helped with the cleaning

Samuel and Patricia cleaning


Carla cleaning

Today was a mad clean up day getting ready for the new church opening. Carla helped the children paint their handprints on the wall in the childrens' area, the children were then very keen to join in and help with the washing and cleaning too !

Ausangate festival cultural

Jess, her friends and her teacher Miss Susan

The World

Sam and his classmates

Sam and his teacher Miss Miriam

Today there was an international day at Jess and Sam's school. The children learnt about different countries and were encouraged to wear their traditional outfits to school what an interesting colourful array of outfits . We are very blessed that Jess and Sam are part of such an international educational community.

Moving church

Well we moved house last week and so this week we move church! We have outgrown the small room where we have been meeting so are moving to a larger warmer location which is round the corner from the old church still close to the bridge so the name El puente is still very apt! The new church building is not on the main road (the cultura) hence the rent is much cheaper which is also wonderful. Our director of missions Peter Dunn and his family are staying with us and helping us get the church ready for the move, Pastor Pedro is a dab hand at DIY which is a huge blessing for us !!! On Sunday 25th July we will inaugurate the new church building and Peter will be preaching , in Peru the inaugural ceremony is all important! Thankyou God for providing this great new location for us and thankyou for sending the Dunn family ( Peter, Jane Tim and Ruth) to help us!

Read Ruth's blog

Peter Dunn, the director for missions for BMS World Mission and his family are staying with us for 2 weeks, his daughter Ruth is writing a daily blog about her experiences and you may be interested to read her postings about life with the Williamsons in Cusco




http://ruthsperublog.blogspot.com/

Help from so many amazing people

Well yesterday we moved house , poor Scott went to the new house at 0500 to help the previous tenants load their lorry. Then at 0830 once the children were dropped off at school we moved everything using 2 cars and a pick up truck and driver who charged us s/. 25 ( about £6) per load . Here's the amazing part we had a fantastic band of people working, Anjanette and Scott Williamson, Goya our home help, Carla and Carlotta 2 of our church members, our friend Andy, Jen Holden ( from our home church in London passing through Cusco ) and all the following missionaries: Roland, Joel, Steve, Scott Dillon, Scott Englund, Jason and Rebecca. Yes can you believe it 3 of the missionaries in Cusco are called Scott! So with such an amazing team the move was fast and smooth and when they moved our clothes from one wardrobe to the next the naughty missionaries were sporting Scott's worst ties ! So we are nearly unpacked but not quite there , the bidet has a drill in it, the fire place has a telephone in it and our Scott and Anjanette's bedroom has all the kids dressing up clothes , but we are certainly ready to receive our 4 visitors later today.
Thanks to our amazing helpers and thankyou for praying for us, the new house is wonderful!

Moving house again!!

Once again the Williamsons are on the move, we are moving to a much warmer house even closer to our church ( 1 minute walk as opposed to 5 mins walk) , it has a small garden and is completely independent. Currently we live in a very cold and dark house where we share a patio and driveway with the owners who live behind our house. It has actually been a good time to organise and clean out and give away a lot of stuff that we have accumulated and don't need, especially Jess and Sam who are growing like weeds; we gave away loads of their clothes and toys that they have grown out of !
So here goes 4th house move in Peru in less than 2 years, (10th house move in almost 13 years of our married life together) we are aware that we've said it before but we really do hope this will be the last move for a very long time! The day after we move we have 4 visitors from the UK coming to stay with us for 2 weeks, please pray with us that this will be a stress free move!

Our huge church family, all over the world!

Sometimes people comment on how many friends we have , the reason for that is that many of our friends are folk we have had the privelege of knowing, worshipping with and sharing our lives with in the churches we have attended over the years. We had friends from churches we grew up in from New Malden (Anjanette) and Lincolnshire (Scott) before we met each other at Vernon baptist church in London and made more friends together there. When Anjanette started working as a doctor we moved to Luton and joined a wonderful loving church called Stanton Rd baptist church. It was this church that recognised Scott's calling to youth ministry and supported him in his training. We really enjoyed leading a youth cell group in our home in Luton together 11 years ago.
From Luton we moved to Surrey where Scott was the youth minister at Carshalton Beeches Baptist church and then we moved to New Malden Baptist church where Scott was the associate pastor. Our final move in the UK was in summer 2007 when we moved to IMC missions college for a year, we lived in community there with other missionaries in training, God gave us more firm friends for life who are now living and serving all over the world. Our current church family that we love dearly are here in our Cusco church plant as well as some lovely missionary colleagues who also serve here in Cusco. It has been amazing to see that God has used many church friends from all of the churches mentioned above (and others too) to journey with us over the years as we prepared to work overseas and they continue to support us in prayer and financially in the work we are doing here in Peru now. Another huge blessing comes from our link churches, BMS links us with baptist churches that adopt us and support our work and that has been another opportunity to make more precious friends and increase our circle of support.

Having read all of the above you will understand our joy this week to have a skype conference call to IMC in the UK to chat with 8 of our colleagues who were in training with us 2 years ago , now serving in a mixture of different countries. It was sad this week to hear that some friends of ours from New Malden Baptist Church needed to rush their new born baby to Great Ormond Street Hospital to be put on a heart and lung bipass machine , we sometimes feel so far away from friends and all we could do was join the whole church in praying together for this family. One of our greatest disappointments is not being able to be present when Natasha ( one of our young people from that youth cell group in our home in Luton 11 yrs ago) gets married at the end of July. She wanted Scott to take the ceremony and Jess and Sam to be flowergirl/ page boy but sadly it is just not possible. We are so thankful for modern technology to keep us in touch with our friends and family all over the world and we hope that on the wedding day we can skype and greet the family in their wedding garb before they leave for the church!
We had similar feelings today when a church member who has attended our church plant since the start 1 year ago phoned us to say she is leaving Cusco and moving back to Lima this weekend, she is very young in her faith and wanted to know of a church in Lima where she could go,we pray that God will lead her to a wonderful supporting loving church family, as has been our experience over the years!

Grain for Yucay

Today with the help of Carlotta one of our church members Scott had a meeting with a granary in Calca and was able to secure 400 sacks of maize seed. In 2 weeks time when our director of mission Peter Dunn and his family visit us we plan to hold a special event in Yucay when we will distribute 1 sack of grain to each of the 400 farming families in Yucay who lost their crops during the January floods.

This project is so exciting, since we are giving them independence and dignity and once again they will start to farm their land. Many thanks to BMS World Mission, IMB, Berea baptist church and a CEBP church offering in Lima together all of these organisations have donated money to make this agricultural project in Yucay possible. When it is harvest season next year we will ask each farmer for a small portion of their crop which we then plan to use to buy some small animals (guinea pigs, rabbits) for other families in Yucay to restart their businesses since many small animals were also destroyed by the flooding.
Please join us in praying that God's love will clearly be demonstrated as we donate the maize seed and in particular that they will reap a good harvest !