Si Senor ,El Condor Pasa and the Peruvian national anthem.

Here are 2 clips of the band playing at the Cusco united churches thanksgiving service this weekend. Similar services of thanksgiving took place in cities all over Peru simultaneously. With the recent inauguration of our new President, it was a good opportunity to pray together for the government and ruling authorities. It was fun to participate, although it inevitably meant lots of waiting around for people to turn up on time for band practice this week. Anjanette is now feeling very Peruvian having been persuaded to play a cheesy jazzed up version of El Condor Pasa in public!! However if she needs to stand on the stage with the worship band in similar events in future when the Peruvian national anthem is played she really needs to learn all the words!

Huambutio holiday club August 2011

Please join us in praying for our first ever El Puente holiday club event which will take place next week.
On Monday and Tuesday 1st and 2nd August our church is running a holiday club in the school in Huambutio. Huambutio is the village on the outskirts of Cusco where we soon hope to start a small clinic and cell group, the headteacher of the school has invited us to run a holiday club event during the school holidays, we have no idea how many children will attend ( it could be as many as 200 if they all come!)
Please pray that the church members from Cusco who participate in the club will know great joy in serving, for all the logistics and practicalities, for safety , for good communication, for fun and friendships and most importantly that God's love will be shown to the community there. Thankyou!

New President of Peru

Today is the day of Peru and our new president Ollanta Humala has come into power. Please join us in praying that he will rule fairly , peacefully and wisely.

The blessing of visitors

This is the first week of the 2 week school hols and Scott and Anjanette are busy working this week, which leaves the usual problem of childcare. Problem solved since we have some friends from our home church visiting, Alan and Beverly Duncan. They have rolled up their sleeves and got stuck in with anything and everything that needs doing, helping with the construction at La Fuente clinic, counting out meds at the clinic, helping Jess and Sam dig our vegetable patch,doing mountains of washing up in our home and also at church, storytelling,helping with homework, babysitting, laying down lino and clearing up our church kids area , they will also be helping out with our holiday club next week.When they arrived and unpacked their suitcases it was like christmas! Their visit is encouraging us and helping us enormously what a blessing!

Festival cultural del colegio Ausangate 2011

Sam and his spanish teacher


Jess and Sam in their fabulous Indian outfits



with Jess's teacher in her traditional Bolivian dress


This has been a hectic week for us. Scott has been busy revising his verbs and polishing up his grammar in Arequipa, he has been attending a weeks refresher course at our old language school. Anjanette has been busy working in the clinic , holding down the fort while Scott's been away, doing the school run, attending school activities, hosting visitors and getting locked out of the house! We have also been busy preparing for the school's international day, we contributed towards the UK exhibition, we made traditional foods, organised outfits for Jess and Sam and wrote out a small speech in spanish about the clothes Jess and Sam chose to wear in the parade. All very well until Samuel decided at the last minute (actually 0500 am the morning of the festival) to change his outfit from his kilt to his Indian outfit.
Our beloved Auntie Geetha keeps Jess and Sam in fabulous Indian outfits! As always the festival cultural was a great event. Right now however like many parents in the UK at present we are breathing a sigh of relief that it is the school hols, even if it is only 2 weeks it will be a very welcome break for us all !!!!

school sports day

This week Jess and Sam's school held a 2 hr sports event for each separate year group. The focus has been on competition between the 2 classes in each year group rather than each individual child and it has caused lots of excitement in the Williamson household. The event was called "The Olympics!" So maybe we didn't get tickets to London 2012 Olympics but the Cusco 2011 Olympics was quite entertaining!!

New Friends (by Anjanette)

with Kristen, looking good in our "la Fuente" outfits


con mis amigas Claudia y Cecilia


One of the saddest things about leaving the UK 3 years ago was saying goodbye to our fabulous friends and family. We know that God has a perfect plan for our lives and he has blessed us with amazing friendships over the last few years and also used us to befriend others in need of friendship. I would like to introduce you to some of my new friends.

Kristen is a nurse practioner from America, she and her husband moved to Cusco 2 months ago. Kristen and I work together seeing patients at La Fuente clinic and she is a terrific help. She decreases my medical work load and she also helps me with very important practical things like helping to drive the kids to school on the way to the clinic. We so appreciate the ex pats who helped us to settle in Cusco during those first few difficult months a few years ago, it is great to be of some help to others in a similar situation, she is fast becoming a good friend and I thank God for her.

It is every missionary's dream to develop deep and lasting relationships with local people. We are very blessed that in the last 2 months Claudia from Columbia and Cecilia (my Peruvian friend who recently moved back to Peru from USA) and her family have joined our church family. Both of them were looking for a new church since moving to Cusco, and we are so thankful that God sent them to El Puente. I have some wonderful new latino friends who I love spending time with regularly and my life is greatly enriched because of our friendships .

Jess and Sam's acting and singing debut

Today was an exciting day. Amanda and Scott planned our church's first ever all age Sunday service. Messy church comes to El Puente, great fun was had by all, including some visitors who responded when we gave out fliers and they just walked in off the street. The theme was the lost sheep, Samuel had his acting debut and was proud to play the part of the lost sheep. Jessica has been itching to lead singing at the microphone at church for months and being our first family service we agreed to let her, my fears were not realised and she actually did quite a good job. The bible tells us to make a joyful noise and so we know that God certainly liked her singing anyway!! We enjoyed drama, bible readings, songs, crafts, a creative prayer time, a family talk, video and party food, que bueno!

Kids games

Today we held our monthly kids games event in the local sports court, about 40 or so came ,they had great fun playing games, doing craft, having stories and snacks. We pray that some of the families we came into contact with will visit our church activities in the coming weeks. It was a real church team effort, Neil and Amanda did the organising, other church members provided the snacks and helped run the activities, Scott had fun at the microphone and Anjanette really enjoyed chatting with local families and onlookers.How great to now have a committed dedicated church team.We even roped in our visitors from New Malden , it is great to have Alan and Beverly with us, Alan helped out with the obstacle course and Beverly did a great job on the craft table.

Sacred soil harvest appeal promotion video

Harvest 2011 Promo from BMS World Mission on Vimeo.

The Sacred Soil appeal is the resource that BMS filmed about our work in Cusco last year. The community in Yucay receive practical and spiritual help after floods destroyed their crops. Watch the promo then go to www.bmsworldmission.org/harves​t to download the full resource which includes cooking demonstrations as well as bible readings from Pastor Chef! Please consider using this in your church services or house groups to promote the work of BMS World Mission thankyou .

Church day out

Today our whole church had a day out at a Cusco retreat centre called C.O.R.A.S.O.N. it is in the Cusco mountains. We enjoyed praying and worshipping together on the prayer mountain, playing games and sharing our day together. We are blessed to have such a wonderful church family and really enjoyed each others' company today.

Hace mucho Frio !!!!!

June, July, August is winter in Peru and we are feeling the cold. This last week has been unusually cold in the mountains, it has snowed in some parts of the Cusco region and we have been wearing many layers of clothes and even wooly hats to bed!!
We are blessed with a warm house and warm clothes to wear, we know that when we start feeling the cold that it must be so much worse for other people .
We would like to say a huge thankyou to Kirby Muxloe Free Church, they sent us a collection of wooly hats, gloves ,socks and scarves which we have been giving out to some of the patients at the clinic who are really suffering with the cold weather.

Anjanette writes about the March for Jesus

Last Sunday (6 days before the March for Jesus) in conversation after church I mentioned to someone I met that I enjoy worshipping God on my flute, something I rarely do these days since I play the keyboard at church . Well it just so happened that he was in charge of coordinating the music for this years March for Jesus. So at very short notice I agreed to play, thinking perhaps that everyone else (keyboard, drums, congas, electric guitars, bass guitar, singers) would be organised with their parts already prepared and knowing what they were doing as I was joining at the last minute. I should have known better and what a cultural experience this has turned out to be !

Almost 20 hours of my week have been dedicated to practising, writing out parts (the band I played with tend to just play everything by ear), standing around waiting for people to arrive to open the door for practice , for others to turn up for practice and 4 of those hours included setting up and playing in the plaza during the actual event.

Most Peruvians learn music using do re me fa so la ti , well apart from the sound of music film I don't know too much about do re mi. I am not very familiar with people shouting out chords like do menor or fa mayor so I have been struggling with a number of foreign languages this week!

Despite the frustrations it has actually been a really wonderful experience. The March for Jesus involves many of the Cusco evangelical churches joining together, (something we were always very keen on when we lived in the UK) . I am pleased to say that I made some new friends this week from various churches, learnt some fantastic new songs, it was a privilege to play with some very talented musicians, I loved playing in a large band with people who are devoted to using their musical gifts to praise God. We played a number of different styles; among them flamenco, marching songs, Rap, ballads,calypso, rock, and a really fun Huayno/reggae fusion.
It was particularly good to be referred to collectively as the jovenes (young people) in the band!

It was great to be on the platform , playing and watching as 1500 Christians marched into the plaza de armas where we held the service. I enjoyed participating in the original March for Jesus in London about 20 years ago! This was our 3rd Cusco March for Jesus, it always gives us a boost and lifts our spirits. Pastor Scott was also involved, he prayed on the platform in english for all the onlooking tourists, we pray that they were touched and challenged by what they experienced. We certainly had a ball today, our little church at El Puente is very small and it was a joy to be in the plaza amongst a huge crowd of Cusco Christians all worshipping God together.