Baking my way around the world...

I spent Saturday helping to prepare for a pastors' conference which is happening this week.  The theme is 'llamados' or 'called' and it's about mobilising churches to send and support missionaries.  So the preparation involved making 300 cookies and icing them to look like maps of the world!

It was fun to be back in the world of mass-producing biscuits.  Skills from Fellowship Afloat stood me in good stead.

And it was great to have a day of making some new friends in Lima, and chatting and joking in Spanish.

I also had to concentrate hard to draw the continents from a southern-hemisphere perspective, and sadly realised that the UK wasn't big enough to show up.

   

But ultimately it was lovely to know that we are part of a whole global network of Christians wanting to follow God and support each other as we learn to serve him.

In Lima

I arrived on Friday morning after a long (but easy) journey - the decision not to go via the USA meant not only that I didn't need to sort out a visa waiver, but also I didn't have to collect my (significant amount of) luggage again until I got to Lima.  Also that I could sleep for a whole seven hours on the plane - unheard of! So I was surprisingly lucid when I arrived.

Only a few photos so far (click on each for a larger image), but here is the area around the SIM guesthouse:

  

The city itself is pretty flat, but to get to some of the suburbs you have to go round the dusty hills which are the very beginnings of the Andes.

  

And the guesthouse itself - the SIM office is on the top floor and there is a nice green park opposite:

So far I've visited:
 - a prison ministry - we went shopping in Lima's chinatown with a lady on parole
 - spanish-speaking church - with familiar songs!
 - Anna, my neighbour of 2 years ago at Bible college
 - various SIM missionaries in Lima

I'm looking forward to seeing more of the SIM ministries, as well as meeting up with recent friends (from my Reading church), and long-term friends (it looks like the engineers I worked with in Moyobamba 11 years ago may be in Lima in the next few weeks).

Next week I start Spanish classes - and hopefully also a couple of peruvian cooking lessons!