After seven years in Peru, the Rev Scott Williamson returned to the UK to take up his ministry at Rayleigh Baptist Church.

Reporter PAUL NIZINSKYJ asks him about his work and the impact his time in Peru had on him and his family.

AT 11,200ft above sea level, the former Inca capital of Cusco is almost at the top of the world.

The Rev Scott Williamson has returned from seven years in the mountainous region, immersed in rich and fascinating culture.

A Baptist minister of 12 years, the 39-year-old from Inverness left a comfortable life tending to his flock in the leafy suburbs of Surrey to embark on an adventure on the other side of the world, which focused primarily on building schools and medical facilities for impoverished Peruvians around Cusco.

“I was working in Surrey at the time and my kids were three and five,” Scott says.

“My wife, Anjanette is a GP and, when she studied medicine, she felt she wanted to work as a doctor overseas.

“The kids were old enough that they would remember their experiences but young enough so it wouldn’t interfere with their education so, rather than settle down to life in sunny Surrey, I thought I would fill the need the Mission had in Peru, and make a difference.”

As an Evangelical minister, Scott was about to throw himself into an intensely Catholic country which also had the largest concentration of Amerindians in South America – 37 per cent of the Peruvian population – many of whom also believed in the Inca Earth goddess Pachamama.

Although any conversions to his Protestant faith were the icing on the cake, he said his primary goal was to follow Jesus’s example in helping the poor.

“The Catholic Church might be big in South America, but it’s not big on social action,” he says.

“While here in Rayleigh all the clergy from different denominations meet regularly and work together to improve our community, I was disappointed to find there was no co-operation at all in Peru.

“The Bible says we should help the sick and the hungry and that’s what I set out to do.

“Now we’ve handed over the school and the clinic, which are all full, to national leadership and we’ve established something that they would never have been able to start on their own.”

He also says he left with a heavy-heart, having very quickly learned to love the people.

“I loved it,” he says. “It’s so rich in people, community and family.

Their values place a heavy emphasis on those things and they are a vibrant people full of happiness and excitement, even though death was a black and white subject because of the lack of medicine.

“In one sense we would look at them and saywow, they’re so poor, but actually they were quite rich in manyways and it felt as though we were the poor ones.

“Peru is one of the fastest growing economies in South America, and in seven years I saw dramatic change.

“Machu Picchu has became one of the wonders of the world, but Peru has gone from having this ancient Inca city to suddenly having five star hotels and shopping centres in nearby Cusco”

But even with visits every two years, he must have seen Britain change since 2008.

He said: “There were never food banks when I left, whereas there are now, and there don’t seem to be enough doctors and nurses – our infrastructure has changed.”