Description
2021 marks the centenary of the missionary effort in the Peruvian Andes by the Free Church of Scotland. This remarkable book draws on a wide range of sources – and personal memories – to tell , for the first time ever, the story of that effort. It documents the extraordinary difficulties that confronted the early missionaries, who travelled into the mountains by mule-back on paths and tracks cut into solid rock in the times of the Incas. It documents too the problems that the men and women of the Free Church faced in the forms of the ever-present danger of earthquakes, and the ever-present reality of poverty and disease in the northern mountains of Peru. And yet these doctors, nurses, ministers and teachers – over a century of selfless effort – made a significant contribution to the material and spiritual welfare of the people among whom they worked, in the form of churches, schools and hospitals.
The Free Church in the Andes is extremely well-researched and well-written. It will be of interest to all students of missionary history, and of Scottish history more generally.
