OKEHAMPTON Baptist Church’s lay pastor Jeff Jacobson is to fly to Peru later this month to spend two weeks with the Baptist Missionary Service (BMS).

The BMS works in 35 countries involved in leadership training, healthcare, development work, education, justice projects and establishing new churches.

Bristol Baptist College arranges every year to take students abroad with the BMS. This year, the college is taking eight students, including Jeff, to see how baptist churches work in Peru.

Jeff said: ‘I’ll spend one week in Lima where I’ll see development projects and church work. The second week I’ll spend in Iquitos, the world’s largest city which is inaccessible by car.

‘Iquitos is on the Amazon river, and has access to villages within the rainforest. While there, I will see how the church seeks to improve the lives of those in this remote city as well as those villages, accessible from it.

‘I don’t know what to expect. I have some apprehensions about going and sad to be away from my family and the church over Easter. However, I think experiencing different cultures and seeing how the Christian faith is practiced in a different context will help me find different ways for the church here to engage with our culture here.

‘I think for many, the church is increasingly seemingly irrelevant. However, this is not the case worldwide. The Christian church is growing, especially in South America, I look forward to see how the church impacts their society.’

At the end of the planned trip, Jeff will take a week’s holiday to hike the Inca Trail with a few other students and plans to be back in Britain around April 12.