Friend of Team Arequipa (as well as co-founder of TA and CUDA, co-founder of Luminous Coffee, but of course, better known as friend of Team Arequipa), Greg McKinzie wrote a great piece for Fuller Studio connecting his 6+ years in Arequipa reading Mark with Peruvians to what he's studying now at Fuller. Here are a couple excerpts to whet your appetite:
I plugged in our 220V waffle-maker and waited for the green light to turn on to indicate that it was at the right temperature to scoop in a ladle-full of delicious, pre-waffle perfection, batter into the collection of metal squares below me…
I’m getting ahead of myself. The best churches I know in the US are “seeker-friendly...”
We have now lived in our current neighborhood for 2 years. In the past two years God has blessed us with some true friends and great neighbors. However, there were still some people that live on our street that we didn’t know yet! So that is why we decided to throw a block party and invite all of the neighbors.
July has come and gone so quickly for us. It was a busy month that ended with a lot of goodbyes. We ended our two months with our four interns and said goodbye to them at the end of July. A few days later, the Morgans along with Benji, the apprentice that had been here working with us for the past year, moved back to the States. We are now a two-family team. Our new team picture is above. Please continue to pray for the Morgans' and Benji's transitions back to life in the States and for the rest of Team Arequipa as we adjust to our new normal here in Arequipa as well.
One of the assignments of my internship with Team Arequipa this summer was to do a project related to missions in an area of my own interest. I chose to survey missionaries from around the world with some questions related to language acquisition. My objective was to understand how missionaries learn new languages and the specific ways in which ministry goals and cultural adaptation are contingent upon language acquisition. I sent out my ten-question survey through SurveyMonkey to as many missionary contacts that I and my mentors for this project could think of. A mix of 26 short-term and long-term missionaries from 11 different countries and territories shared their cross-cultural experiences as it related to language learning as well as cultural/ministerial goals. I explain some of my most interesting findings in this article.
One year ago I had recently graduated from Harding University with a degree in Spanish and Missions. I was looking forward to an exciting new year spent with Team Arequipa. However, I didn’t know exactly what I was getting myself into, and I mean that both in the sense of how I would be filling my days and with all the events that would happen over the next year. In the past year, I have come to love this city and culture, improved my Spanish skills, been in the midst of two missionary families transitioning back to the States, lived alone for the first time, eaten incredible arequipeño food, learned how to cook (kind of), avoided rabies, learned I was allergic to the rabies vaccine, climbed a volcano, seen a world wonder, read a few impactful books, learned how to share my faith, worked with house churches, come to a better understanding of what holistic ministry is, seen the various parts of what makes CUDA a great NGO and ministry, and experienced what life as a missionary could be like -- and I could keep listing things all day.
