Spiritual Life Conference

(I took none of these photos, all are from various members of the team - thanks guys!)

Every year the SIM Peru team comes together to the coast near Lima for a Spiritual Life Conference.  For me, this year, it was a chance to meet the rest of the team, enjoy time living with lots of people around, and have some distance from Abancay after my first month to review my time there so far.  It was also lovely to see people from the Lima team again after spending a couple of months with them when I arrived. It was also quite nice to have a week in English.

 

 Here I am with Mary (she does the prison ministry, and has been a great blessing to me from the beginning).  I have just got off the 17-hour Abancay-Lima bus and onto the bus to the conference in Kawai - I think I look remarkably awake!    &   Sunset over Kawai (which is quechua for “look”).

Despite the long journey I did feel full of beans when I arrived - maybe because my body is now used to the Abancay altitude so being at sea level made it really easy for my body to do its job.  We had a ‘Race to the Rocks’ on one morning - a 7km run across the bay and back, between 2 headlands.  I planned to run about half and walk the rest, but when it came to it I found I could keep going.  It’s the furthest I’ve ever run and certainly not the most I’ve ever ached… another great result of coming down from altitude!

Race to the Rocks - the starting lineup & our director and running enthusiast giving out ice cream vouchers for the finishers.

I have been feeling like a minority as the only English person among lots of USA missionaries in Lima and Abancay - it was great at the conference to meet Canadians, Australians, South Africans, Germans, Swiss and South Koreans.  I’m still the only English person but there’s so much more variety in the team than I had realised.  One of sessions was on how, with all our differences, we can resolve conflicts well.  Here we all are…

Most of each day we spent in teaching sessions, going through the whole Bible “from about 10,000 feet” - so looking at the big picture.  It was great to look again at this overarching story, and to think on the fact that, although the beginning and end and most of the middle are written, we are the ones who live the penultimate chapter… so how are we going to do this?

And there was all sorts of fun on the beach - water balloon games, “dizzy astronaut” (you hold a paddle up in the air, look at the top and spin round 10 times - running back to your team afterwards is a hilarious experience for all spectators), and sandcastles.