Moving church premises again!

The space that we currently rent for our church meetings is basically a hall with a tiny corner separated for the creche area (imagine a largish cupboard) and our older church children go "off site" to the missionary's home for their Sunday school class. This is not ideal and to be perfectly honest if we were visitors or a young family looking for a church I don't think we would be very attracted to the current set up for childrens' minstry at El Puente. It is important that the childrens' work is taken seriously , our current rental contract is also up for renewal and the landlord could decide to increase the rent or ask us to leave so the church leaders decided that we would look for a bigger place that cost a similar amount. Some of us doubting that we would find such a place for the price available!

On Thursday morning Scott prayed that God would provide a suitable place for the church and then he looked in the newspaper where properties are advertised. We are all amazed that a few hours later 4 out of 5 of the church leaders are in the new place chatting to our prospective new landlady. 5 mins walk from where we currently meet is a ground floor maisonette to rent it has a large open space which we would use for our main meetings and then 2 separate rooms which would be used for creche and Sunday school.(As well as a kitchen and bathroom) It is in a safe , middle class residential area and is perfect for our needs and the price is right too ! Right now Scott and Luis (the 5th church leader who hasn't seen it yet) are talking to the new landlady about the contract .

We will possibly be moving our church meeting place in a few weeks time! In true Peruvian style we will have an inauguration ceremony! We are signing a 2 year contract and are very hopeful that in the next 2 years we will raise the money that we need to buy our own church building then we won't have to keep moving all the time . God is certainly showing us that El Puente church is the people and not the building!

When we first moved to Peru our language teachers told us that a missionary needs a bible in one hand and a suitcase in another, how true that is !!

Peter and John went to pray

This video was the Williamson family's contribution to morning devotions at the BMS Latin America retreat a few months ago . Hope you enjoy watching it as much as we enjoyed making it!

Clothes donation

Jess and Sam are growing like weeds ,they are much taller than their Peruvian friends and Samuel's nickname at school is cuello largo which means long neck! We recently had a big clear out of clothes they have grown out of and which need a new home.
When we lived in the UK we passed clothes on to friends or often gave them to charity shops. Today it was a real joy for us to take sackloads of Jess and Sam's old clothes (and some dressing up shoes too which were well received!) to a christian orphanage on the outskirts of Cusco where some of our friends work. This afternoon they had a team meeting, so us visiting meant that we could help to look after the children while the staff held their meeting. The photos are of Jess and Sam and some babies, the reality was Sam played with the babies for about 30 seconds and played with the older kids for about 3 hours! Jessica was a huge help cuddling, feeding and singing to the babies as well as having a lot of fun running around with the older children too!
Hearing the stories of how the children came to be there was heartbreaking, but what a blessing to be in such a loving environment with happy well cared for cheeky children!

Peru Action team

Whilst visiting her parents in the UK, Anjanette enjoyed meeting the Peru Action team at IMC (BMS training centre.)
It was a great reminder of God's faithfulness to us throughout our time with BMS. Exactly 4 years ago we started our 1 year course at IMC as we prepared for our Peruvian adventure. 4 years later we are preparing to receive the first ever Peru BMS Action team.
4 young people are taking a Gap year to work with BMS World Mission in Peru, (other teams are working in different countries around the world) This month they are at the training centre in the UK, then in mid October they will arrive in Cusco where they will spend 6 months working with us, followed by a few months visiting churches in the UK sharing about their experiences. We are really looking forward to receiving the team soon, please pray for them as they prepare for their Peruvian adventure......

God is in the details!

Last week Scott was in Lima speaking at a conference, little did we know what a week he had in store!
Initially he wondered what he would do with his time since he was only speaking every evening. However whilst he was there he was able to support our colleague who is seriously unwell, it was quite amazing that he was there in that place at that time and his diary soon became very very full! Scott needed to extend his trip which meant that we had a very short turn around in Cusco, he returned back in Cusco on our wedding aniversary and then the next day Anjanette left to travel to the UK to visit her parents for 2 weeks. Please pray for us all it has been a stressful and unsettling time, thankyou !

Official Prayer letter Sept 2011

Dear friends thank you for your faithful prayers and support for our work here in Cusco, Peru. We have just celebrated three wonderful years living in Peru, and are so grateful for your support that enables us to be here.
We have lots of news to share with you and so as we write about the different areas of our lives and ministry we ask you to join us in praying for the different needs as you read them.


Yucay
We were delighted to visit Yucay back in March when we returned to Peru and to see the maize from the BMS seed project being harvested. Our colleagues James and Julia Henley who are currently at language school in Arequipa plan to church plant in Yucay in the new year. Please consider using the sacred soil harvest video on the BMS website which is based on our work in Yucay and Cusco and please do pray for James and Julia as they start the new ministry there.

La Fuente clinic, Cusco.
Anjanette is nearing the end of her busy few months when she has been the only doctor at the clinic. Old and new doctors from different mission organisations are returning/arriving in Cusco soon to work at the clinic please pray that we will all work together well and be a blessing to the patients that we serve . Do look out for the BMS birthday scheme video it is a promotional video based on a day in the life of doctora Anjanette!



Hosting teams
In April we were very blessed to host a terrific team of ministers in training from Bristol Baptist college. We gave them a taste of our life in Cusco as they joined in hospital and clinic visiting, schools work, pastors meetings, church activities, special events and some manual work. We are now gearing up for the next team, the first ever Cusco BMS Action team will be joining us for 6 months in October please pray that God will touch the lives of these 4 young people and that their presence will have a huge impact here in Cusco.

Scott's travels.
Scott has been busy travelling to various cities in Peru attending and speaking at youth conferences and teaching on the subject of Youth Ministry. The Peruvian baptist convention has no trained youth ministers, please pray for Scott as he seeks to help with training in this area.



New work in Huambutio.
We are gradually getting to know folk in the community in Huambutio; Neil and Amanda teach in the school weekly, we recently had a very exciting time as El Puente Iglesia had an experience of "mission" running a children's' holiday club there and we are still planning to start a small clinic in Huambutio. Please join us in praying that the paperwork for Anjanette's medical license soon comes through so we can set up the clinic.





El Puente Iglesia news
God is transforming our small church plant into a loving, caring family of disciples. He has sent us some wonderful new church members and we are entering a really exciting time in the life of our church. We have some new Peruvian church leaders and it is wonderful to see many different church members serving in different areas of church life, a far cry from when we started the church 2 years ago and did all the preaching, music leading, children's and youth work ourselves. Anniversaries are very important here in Peru and we all really enjoyed celebrating our 2nd church anniversary in August, Pastor Pedro our old language teacher from Arequipa preached , this was a great reminder of God's faithfulness to us over the years. Once again our church is outgrowing the current premises and the time has come to try and purchase our own property. BMS recognises that in order for El Puente to be sustainable one day our supporters will need to stop paying the church's rent, so BMS has set up a special project fund for this sole purpose. If you would like your church to support our fundraising to build a new church in Cusco, please contact Alastair Clunie in our Church Relations Team on 01235 7620. Alastair will be pleased to talk you through how you can support the Cusco project through our Co-Mission programme for churches. With your help, we are hoping to raise the £100,000 we need for this important church planting project.

Well that's a summary of what we have been up to over the last 6 months, thank you for journeying with us.
Love from Scott Anjanette Jessica and Samuel.

Tuesday nights ladies bible study

It is our desire for the people in our church plant to grow numerically but more importantly we want to see each individual grow spiritually. How exciting that our Tuesday night bible studies are achieving both objectives, we are seeing an increase in number ( an average of 10 ladies each week ) and during these studies as we grapple with spiritual principles and read God's word together we are growing in our faith and deepening our relationships with each other. We are so blessed to have such wonderful people attending our church plant and we thank God for them and for their enthusiasm and hearts to serve God.