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Step by step to Peru

Interview with Cecily Maclagan on her call to Peru

John Peet interviewed Cecily Maclagan, a Scotswoman, working with the Irish Baptist Mission in Peru.

JP: Where are you working in Peru, and who with?

CM: I'm working right down in the south of the country on the border with Chile, and I'm seconded by Grace Baptist Mission to the Irish Baptist Mission.

JP: Let's go back some years. How did you become a Christian?

CM: I first heard the gospel when I started my nursing training in Glasgow. There was a young girl from the Highlands who started with me; she had only just become a Christian but she took the time to tell me what Christ meant to her and the change that he had made in her life. It was through her testimony and going with her to church that I began to hear the gospel and to recognise that I was a sinner. Finally, in January 1970, in my room in the nurses' home, I bowed the knee and asked the Lord to forgive me, to cleanse me in his blood, come into my life and save me.

JP: Did you immediately have a desire to become a missionary?

CM: Very early on, yes, I did want to go to the mission field, but I remember a male missionary coming along to our church one day and saying that single lady missionaries were more of a hindrance than a help on the mission field! I decided at that point that perhaps the Lord wasn't calling me to go, but that my place was in the church at home.

JP: Do you think he was right in what he said?

CM: Now, no! I definitely think there is a place for single lady missionaries!

Amy Carmichael

JP: So it was obviously some time later that you felt the Lord was calling you to the mission field. How did that come about?

CM: After I had been saved for 16 years, a friend in America sent me a book - Amy Carmichael's life story. I was reading that one night and I found myself in tears, thinking: 'Lord, if you were to ask me what the greatest desire of my heart is, it is still to be a missionary'. From that point, I started praying and really seeking the Lord, asking him to show me whether I should be going out to serve him in another country. And the Lord did open doors over the next three years; just step by step he began to open the way for me. First of all he put me in contact with Grace Baptist Mission; through them I learnt of the work in Peru and in June 1989 I was able to join a team going out to Peru for six weeks. It was while I was in the country that the Lord very clearly confirmed that this was his will for me, through the words of Joshua 1.9.

JP: You obviously went out not as a young girl, but a more mature person. I think that in the past we have tended to think that the younger folk are when they go out, the better. Obviously they have good health, vigour and so on. Has it been an advantage to go out as an older person?

CM: I think there is a place for both. There is definitely a place for younger people who can give their lives to the mission field, but I do think there's a place for maturer people going out, yes! I can remember being afraid that really I was too old to think of going out. But I was told that someone with some experience of life, with a working life behind them, having had some knocks from real living and down-to-earth experiences has a maturity and a wisdom that a younger person cannot be expected to have.

Housemother

JP: What did you do when you first went out to Peru?

CM: I had been asked to help set up a boarding school for missionaries' children. Alongside an elderly, retired couple who were teachers, I went out as housemother to look after the domestic side of things and be a mum to the children.

Church planting
JP: What happened after a couple of years?

CM: In August 1993 I moved on to the city of Tachna which is right down on the border with Chile, into a new church-planting situation. We had just built a small church in one of the big new towns, on the southern edge of the city; I was working among the women and children in the area.

JP: How would you sum up the needs of that region of Peru?

CM: The needs are tremendous. Socially, we were dealing with people who were very, very poor in a shanty-town type of area. Spiritually, there is an interest, a hunger for the Word of God. When we went out with tracts, people would come after us to ask for them. We could have an open-air meeting/stall to sell Bibles - all of the Bibles would be sold even though some of the people didn't know where their next meal was coming from. There is an openness, a receptivity to the Word of God. If we went round the doors speaking to people, we could invite them to meetings and they would come! There is a lack of missionaries, a real need for more people to be out there involved in front-line evangelism. There is also a real need for people to get alongside the believers in the country; a lot of the churches are weak, with no pastors or leaders equipped and able to minister and teach. There is a tremendous need for teachers, so that the people can be rooted and grounded firmly in the Scriptures and in the doctrines that we know and love.

How about you?

JP: It sounds as if you are giving us a picture different from the one often given to us - that the days of the missionary are over and that British Christians do not need to go out to other countries. There is still a need; are missionaries welcome in Peru?

CM: There definitely is a need. We do get the idea in this country that missionaries have been going to the four corners of the world for many, many years and that people have been saved and churches planted. But the needs are still tremendous - there are still many, many villages, even in the small area that we're working in, where people have never had the opportunity to hear the gospel. There are still many people in the shanty towns on the edge of the big cities down on the coast, who have never had the opportunity to hear the gospel. There are believers who have been saved and who love the Lord, who still are desperate for people to get alongside them to teach them.

JP: Thank you, Cecily. I hope some of the readers of your comments will feel encouraged to enquire further, through their churches, about opportunities for service.