The first weekend of September our church exploded with people, jumping from the usual 20 to around 70 in attendence. Why? The church anniversary.
Church anniversaries are an integral part of churches here in Peru and usually pretty big celebrations with visitors from other churches and food prepared for after the services.
Several people from our church have asked us over the last two years “When we can have a church beach day?”… Well, what better way to celebrate our anniversary than by taking everyone to the beach!? We prayed for sunshine and started planning. Friday evening we had a movie night, Saturday a beach day while our Arequipa invited guests began arriving, Saturday night a special church service and Sunday morning an even more special church service with food afterwards.
All in all it was a great success! ...and a lot of work. Oof! Thankfully though, this year Pastor Elvis and Rosita took care of the main meal and divvied out the making of the side dishes between willing church members. That meant all we had to do was make the cakes and host. Even though we had only about half the number of Arequipa guests as last year, we doubled our local guests and even had a few family members of regular attendees come for the first time! I also realised how much our kids program has grown over this past year. Praise the Lord!
