We're a mission team of two families living and working in Arequipa, Peru:
Kyle, Larissa, & Shaye Smith (with one more on the way) and Greg, Megan, Ana Grace, and Maggie Kate McKinzie.
Our purpose is to participate in the establishment of a house church movement,
which we describe in anticipation as God's family celebrating and serving in Arequipa.
The mission is God's, and we are merely servants in this field
and partners with many other Christians in the U.S. who make our lives here possible.
ICDU is the developmental ministry arm of our mission work.
Taking Jesus' ministry as our model, we seek to serve the whole person.
With an emphasis on sustainability, ICDU's projects aim for empowerment and transformation in the lives of the poor.
You can partner with us through ICDU's website. ICDU it.
Arequipa (pronounced ah-deh-kee-pah), at just around 1 million inhabitants, is the second city of Peru.
Nestled among a chain of volcanoes on the western edge of southern Peru's desert Andes, Arequipa is high and dry.
Here we live among the urban poor and rub shoulders with the impoverished every day.
Many of the migrants from the countryside are native Quechua speakers and use Spanish only as a trade language,
so the city is a mixture of traditional native culture, majority Peruvian culture, and the westernizing forces of globalization.
This is where God has sent us to serve, and we're happy to call AQP home.