Katie, Adileen, and Kinney have collaborated in this issue to provide a directors’ commentary to the newsletter in the form of this 5-minute video interview. Since you don’t usually get to hear from our kids (we see you Team Bills), we thought our friends, family, and supporters might enjoy this.
As is the case with a lot of things in Peru, our church retreat started off being planned months ahead of time, and was only finalized in the hours prior to departure. We’re so thankful for the 21 people who were able to spend three days and two nights down on the coast. We stayed at a guesthouse that belongs to Paty’s family who is from Mollendo. That had an extra layer of specialness baked in because Paty and Lola are longtime hosts of the church, and getting to see them in their “happy space” where they grew up was special.
This renewed description of our mission was the beginning of a committed three-day strategy session with Chad Smith of CI Solutions, Clint Davis of Kibo Group and the Tulsa Christian Foundation, and CUDA board member Easton Proffit-Davis. The CUDA team was incredibly blessed to get to work with this trio and dream toward the future as we worked toward a 5-year strategic plan. Read on for an idea of what this looked like, the result (our strategic plan!), and our hopes for the future.
¡Hola from Arequipa, Peru! We’re Jeremy and Katie Daggett, on the cusp of 11 years in Arequipa. Along with Adileen and Kinney we make up the current version of Team Arequipa since 2019. This is “The Daggetts in Arequipa” (née Team Arequipa Newsletter), a collection of stories, articles, pictures and prayer requests which we also publish out to the Team Arequipa blog. It’s here for those who can’t handle another email in their inbox—just come see us whenever you’d like.
A few months ago we finally got a dining room table! This is big because we hadn’t had a dining room table since 2019! The last apartment we lived in didn't have room for a table; and then it took us a year after moving into our house to find one we liked. To us the table is a sacred place. And we want our table to be a place where anyone is welcome and those that come to it feel loved. We wanted to have a blessing table.
We’re fresh off a sabbatical month of August where our kids skipped school and we got to see a lot of incredible people in the US as well as spend special time with family. We arrived back to Arequipa refreshed and thankful for our home and work and are really excited about this season of ministry. We believe that God is always up to more than we realize and pray that God would lead us to participate in life, new creation, kingdom, salvation—which is breaking in all around us. We pray Jesus’s prayer in our context
I believe that God’s Spirit works in formative ways at the intersection of travel and reflection. Interacting with people who are different than you can teach us so much about God, the world, and ourselves. That’s true in your hometown and it’s true when you travel. The gift of travel is that the ludicrous act of hurtling through the air in a tin can and dropping into a different part of the world heightens our awareness of difference. And in that space the Spirit works.
2025 was our biggest year ever—just barely edging out the massive year we had in 2024: since March we’ve been working with 55 teachers and principals weekly, as well as the 1,530 kids in their classrooms spread out over five schools. We do what we do because we believe it’s a seed of the reign of God Jesus announced 2,000 years ago was breaking in. We believe children in Arequipa should be able to grow up learning to understand what they read. And to make that work long-term we need teacher transformation. So it’s a joy to share about three teachers this year who have caught the vision and where an impact is so readily seen.
Many of the books of non-fiction I read are incredible because of whom the authors have read and whom they are pointing you to read next. In the case of Becoming Wise: An Inquiry into the Art and Mystery of Living, Krista Tippett hasn’t just read the authors, mystics, scientists, activists, poets, she engages. She’s actually spoken with them, and has done so over decades. The result is an amazing book. Krista tells some of her own story as she walks us through a journey in the mystery and art of living by contemplating words, flesh, love, faith, and hope.
