October 2020 Issue Header and Pictures

October 2020 Issue Header and Pictures

Hola from Arequipa! We’re the Daggetts: Jeremy, Katie, Adileen, and Kinney. At the beginning of the month we celebrated 6 years in Arequipa. We’re here because we believe we’re all part of a bigger story, one of a God who is open, loving, welcoming and invites humanity to be alive. A God who is still creating the world and asks us also to create. A God who is healing the world, wants to heal us, and also invite us to help heal others. In this newsletter we share about our life, our family, our work, and our faith. For those of you who have been reading what we share and praying for us and reaching out to us and blessing us all these years—thank you.

We’re Home

We’re Home

After 6 months of living at the hotel we have finally moved home! We are beyond thankful for the refuge that El Castillo was for us for those 6 months of quarantine. It was such a huge blessing having the yard and gardens at the hotel so the kids could play outside all day every day and also the community we had there within the hotel with the owners and their family.

CUDA’s Living Libraries Impact

CUDA’s Living Libraries Impact

Schools in Peru are still closed, and will finish out the school year (in December) this way. As you might imagine, that has affected the way we train teachers through Living Libraries. Despite a great learning curve for virtual training, I asked our team—Lucía, Nancy, and Julié—to share some specific stories of teachers who have grown throughout this year, and what they shared is encouraging. And one more thing…

“The Mission of God” for the Latin American Theological Workshop

“The Mission of God” for the Latin American Theological Workshop

My dear friend Jonathan Hanegan, missionary in Buenos Aires, Argentina, invited me to teach the first formal course his workshop is putting on. Two weeks ago today we started with the first of eight 2-hour sessions that I get to teach on my favorite topic of all time: The Mission of God. This is a virtual course, and the students are incredible: 40 students from 14 different countries in Latin America. Men and women who are servant-leaders in their churches, some who are preachers and ministers and others who serve as leaders, always wanting to continue learning and deepening their understanding of who God is and how we can be a part of God’s mission.

Quarantine in Peru - an Update from Day 144 of Lockdown

Quarantine in Peru - an Update from Day 144 of Lockdown

We are on day 144 (that's almost 5 months!!) of lockdown quarantine here in Arequipa. What this means is that you are only allowed to go out to buy essential items. This is supposed to cut down on the number of people out, the amount of time people spend out, all to decrease the amount of contact between people. However, because of the way of life here, it hasn’t worked exactly as the government hoped.

What do we do every day?

What do we do every day?

We have been living in a small apartment at this hotel since March 16 when the quarantine lockdown went into effect. At that time we had the HULA group here with us until they left two weeks later. After that Jeremy’s parents and siblings were with us for another two weeks and then headed back to the US on a repatriation flight. For the last 4 months it has been us and the Spanish teacher that came with HULA, Debora, and her daughter, Sira (7 years old). Also living at the hotel is the owner, Zenet, and her daughter, Nathalie (17 years old), and one hotel worker, Yulisa. We have become a family seeing as we have been locked in the hotel grounds together 24/7 for 5 months now. We have celebrated 4 birthdays, Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, and Peru’s Independence Day together. Arequipa’s birthday, August 15, is right around the corner.

CUDA Update - First Half of 2020

CUDA Update - First Half of 2020

It’s mid-March. The school year is about to begin after January and February’s summer break. Families spend what they earned in February to buy school supplies for the beginning of classes in March. For CUDA, new libraries are in place. We have geared up for our biggest year yet, ready to work with 4 new schools and 2 second-year Living Libraries schools: 55 teachers and 1300 kids. And then the world falls apart.