We’re the Daggetts: Katie, Jeremy, Adileen (almost 9! Just finished 3rd grade!) and Kinney (Almost 6! Just finished kindergarten) and we’ve lived and worked in Arequipa, Peru for the last ten years. This is the Team Arequipa Newsletter, a publication that’s been running consistently for more than 15 years and for which you, at some point, signed up to receive in your electronic mailbox. Overloaded? Unsubscribe. Here to stay? Welcome!
We’re the Daggetts and for the last ten years (!!) we have lived and worked in a city of a million people in southern Peru. Katie and I share faith and hope with small house churches as we work to unite love of God and love of neighbor in the city of Arequipa. We work with a small non-profit doing sustainable community development focusing on education and sharing life with Arequipa’s marginalized communities. We direct Harding University Latin America, a residential study abroad program where we invite 20-30 students every spring into the process of intercultural spiritual formation.
We. Are. Thankful. The kids have been in school since March, and are loving it. Kinney wasn’t speaking much Spanish in March when he started, and he chose not to speak Spanish for his first two months. He would come home from school and tell us that everyone spoke Spanish that day but that he had spoken in English. It’s an amazing process. After two months of school, he came home one day and told us he spoke Spanish that day. And since then we’ve gotten to hear him switch into Spanish when he plays with friends, speaks with neighbors, worships with the church. Adileen has been learning to read in both languages. What a gift language is, and the chance to use it as we learn about others in God’s diverse world makes language sacramental. Through my kids I’m challenged to continue learning how to speak goodness into the lives and spaces around me.
¡Hola from Arequipa! We’re well into 2022 and less than two weeks away from our next Harding University Latin America group arriving. There are 30 students coming along with Jonathan Roberts (who directs Harding’s financial aid) and our dear friends Debora and Sira (with whom we spent a significant amount of time in the 2020 lockdown).
It’s springtime here, but Peruvians call it “Arequipa summer” because our true summertime (i.e. January) is the coldest it gets because...rain. This month we celebrated 7 years in Peru! There is so much to be thankful for. We love the house churches. We love our neighborhood and friends throughout the city with whom we get to share life and faith. We love partnering in sustainable community development with CUDA in schools and with microloans. We love guiding Harding students through a process of intercultural learning through the history and culture of Peru.
Well, that’s all I’ve got. Thank you for joining us in prayer. For those at Cedar Lane and Central who support us directly through giving to those churches—thank you. We’re more convinced than ever before that we are where we need to be, thankful for the chance to be a part of God’s mission here in Arequipa. Let’s just all do our best to show the love of Christ whenever we get the chance. That infinite, unknowable, boundless, Ephesians 3:14-21 love of Christ that changes everything. If you’re looking for something to read…
We're just a family living in Arequipa doing our best to follow God's lead as God's family experiences reconciliation, new creation, justice, wellbeing, and joy. By the way, the “we” here is: Jeremy, Katie, Adileen, and Kinney Daggett. We work with two small house churches. We try to build community around shared faith and hope in the neighborhood. We work with the Christian Urban Development Association helping vulnerable communities break cycles of poverty in education. And we direct Harding University Latin America.
Hello to everyone! We have had such a good last several months. We celebrated Christmas with some neighbors on December 23, again with some other neighbors December 24, and then again as a team on December 25! Jaclyn and Katie cooked 4 turkeys in a span of 2 days upping the total number of turkeys cooked in their lives to 4. It was such a special Christmas spent with these friends and neighbors that have become like our family and treat our girls as if they are their own. Lots of pictures in this post!
