Anniversary celebrations in Lambrama

Here's the village of Lambrama, which you may recognise from my February post about Project Mochila.  I went back, this time not with AIDIA but with my church.  The main church in Lambrama was celebrating its 3 year anniversary.  It's Baptist, and it's supported by the Baptist church in Abancay, so the pastor, and leaders of various ministries went along.  I was very keen to go back so encouraged the music group and the youth to go along too.

Jesús feeds the crowds (yes that's actually his name).  One of the local church members had given a cow to help the festivities along, so over the weekend we ate pretty much all of it in various forms.  For the first time I tried "chairo" - a soup made out of the stomach and intestines along with dried potato and various other things.

We'd brought our instruments from Abancay and practised various songs, but a lot of what we ended up doing was accompanying songs in Quechua that we hadn't practised at all!  It was very good for me to figure out at least part of the Quechua musical style and fortunately there are usually only a few chords.  And a local guy on the flute joined us - it was a bit of a free for all and very celebratory.  We had lots of time in a shaded area next to the church, but also did an evening event in the village's main square.

On Sunday, on eof the local chuch attendees was baptised.  She told her story of coming to faith to the church and then we all went down to the river to witness her baptism and sing songs praising God for his gift of forgiveness and new life.