Community

I am hoping to write a few blog posts in the next few weeks to give you a better idea of what life is like for us personally here in Peru. If you ever come and stay with us, one of the things you will notice straight away is how many people live in and are around our house every day (and how many people eat together every day!) Because we are passionate about discipleship, and the importance of modeling life to others, we try to welcome people into our every day life. Like Jesus did with his disciples, and we see the early church doing in Acts, we eat together and try and fellowship with one another throughout the week. But it has not always been that way...

Ever since we have lived in Peru (now 4 years), I have wanted to live in a community and to create community too in our house.

Our house is large by UK standards (5 bedrooms), and God provided it for us miraculously back in 2009. Nearly two years on, I am so amazed and humbled by how God has answered our prayers for community.

When we first lived in Peru, God provided us with a rented house in a nice part of town. So nice, that the neighbours didn’t talk to one another, and as much as we tried, the only people we got to know in the community were the watchmen. It was the perfect house for the time we were there, but I always craved living in a community and doing ministry in and around the community.

Los Cedros - our street now.

Where we live now is an emerging community, called Los Cedros, existing for only around 40 years (50 years ago, it was all farmland), where everybody knows one another and is in and out of everybody’s business! We know not just our next door neighbours, but all the people who live on our street, at least to say ‘hello’ too. We have shared meals with 5 different families, and have regular visits in and out of the houses of three of our neighbours. In our ‘ministry’ community, we currently have 11 adults regularly eating lunch together, all of us living within 3 minutes of each other (5 of them under our roof).

A normal lunchtime

I am just loving living in community!

I love that so many generations are connected – and all look out for one another.

Haseena, our current intern from Sheffield, UK, plays with Joel after lunch
Sunday evening after meeting together in Los Cedros, people often hang out in the kitchen

But yet I know that it was something that has taken a lot of prayer, work, selflessness for all those involved and commitment (and it is not without its difficulties for sure!) It seems so strange for me now to imagine how most families in the Western world now have only 3 or 4 people at most in general around a table to eat (if in fact they do eat together.) For me, it is weird on days we only have 6 adults around the table!

This week, our community has been under attack. Most of us have been sick, and there have been many attacks on our sleep too. But all of this is an encouragement to us of how God is at work in our community. At the moment I am so impressed by the love and commitment to one another I have seen. The lack of need for a washing up rota, the stopping and praying for one another, the love and care for one another when one is sick or in need of something from the shops.

Our sitting room often looks like this!Amanda showing off our weekly timetable, to try and keep track of our 11 leaders!

At the moment it feels a bit like Acts 2, where the disciples ate together and had all things in common, but although the temptation is to remain comfortable, we are all being challenged to be radical in our love to others, and with the love I have personally received from the people around me at the moment, I am really excited to see what God is doing and going to do!