cafe church

a few pics of tonight's cafe church meeting

Sunday morning cafe church

Jessica usually likes to have mariposa facepaint

Nidiam sharing her story of faith

Jackie playing games with the children

Mery teaching the children and yes Samuel is wearing a jacket shirt and tie!

delighted that Michael and Maxi 2 students from our church group are working in the cafe too!

Praise God for a great morning our second Sunday morning cafe church style. We were starting to wonder if it was really going to work since no one was coming and Peruvians tend to spend all day Sunday with their families, then 90 mins after the advertised start time about fifteen people came to the cafe! We served free drinks and pancakes, did facepainting , played games, had a small Sunday school and had a good long time to chat and share with the adults. One lady in particular expressed a desire to know more about God and plans to return to our church service this evening. Please pray for wisdom as we try to work out the best strategy for this very informal Sunday morning meeting. Whilst we have been in Arequipa this week the radicales held the fort, they have been doing questionnaires in the universities and had the cafe open for business including many new students attending our Thursday night youth meeting.

God provides us with great friends in Peru

It has been so good to spend time with our Norwegian friends Andreas and Margaret and their lovely daughters, Margaret is a missionary kid who grew up in Peru , Andreas Scott and I had fun together in language classes, we have a lot in common as we left Europe and moved to Peru at about the same time, leaving good friends was very hard but how wonderful that God has provided us as friends for each other and how amazing to hear our kids speaking fluently to each other in spanish.

Return to Arequipa

feeding the pigeons in the plaza de armas

fabulous snow capped mountains in the distance

excited about the bus journey!!

We are enjoying being back in Arequipa staying with friends for a short family holiday. Perhaps we did overdo the warm clothes for the bus journey , but Cusco bus station at night was quite cold. The Arequipa weather is quite different and we are so enjoying the heat and sunshine here!!

The new sign is up

more fundraising

Stan and Barbara Crees from Carshalton Beeches Baptist church, our church from 2000-2004
hold an impressive annual garden party. Stan sells crafts and plants to help overseas projects and he kindly designated the plant sales money to support our cafe church project, thankyou and God bless you Stan and Barbara!!

ordinary people with inspirational stories

Doug and Sam in their cool Peru jackets!

We would like to tell you about our friend Pastor Doug. He is a widower in his late 50s , he and his wife had a dream to serve God overseas. Well sadly she became ill and for years he nursed her through her terminal illness and some time later decided to pursue the calling that God placed on their lives so he said goodbye to his job family friends and home and moved to be a missionary in Peru. We studied at language school with him, he will soon be travelling to Ecuador where he will take teams into the jungle to tell them stories from the bible and work alongside them sharing their lives. At a time when many would be getting ready for retirement Doug is getting ready for the next adventure , we are inspired to see God using ordinary people to do extraordinary things for him !