Bienvenidos a la familia Jeffers!
Last night, I met with our friends Paul and Joyce Jeffers and their son, Gabriel for dinner! It was great to see friends, speak english to native speakers and have a bit of “home” chat! Welcome to Chile guys! We know its going to be a great adventure for you as it has for us! But you won’t regret it!
They arrived in Chile on thursday for Paul to start a year-long contract based in Antofagasta but working at the Paranal Observatory. He is responsible for getting a construction project back on target there… and will work up the mountain in 6 day shifts. Joyce will be holding the fort and looking after Gabriel in Antofagasta. She also hopes to study textile designs in Chile while she is here (she formerly worked at Edinburgh Art School).
The story of our meeting each other in Edinburgh is one of divine coincidence. I started a spanish course at the University of Edinburgh last June and, in the second lesson, we were asked why we wanted to learn spanish. When Joyce explained that she was moving to Chile, my ears picked up and my head lifted! Que? Porque? She didn’t explain why. So it came to my turn in the class and I said I was moving to Chile too… because my wife was an astronomer.
We spoke afterwards and it emerged that Paul was working at the Royal Observatory Edinburgh, where Rachel was completing her PhD at the time. Indeed, Rachel knew that she would be working at Paranal by this point, so there was a good chance they may cross paths in her new workplace, despite being 12,000 miles from Edinburgh!
In addition, I knew immediately that Joyce was a Christian (funny how Christians can discern and identify another Christian so quickly!). So we also shared church connections!
So, here we are, almost 9 months later, in Chile together, facing the challenges of setting up home, phone, family life, making new friends, learning another language and joining a christian community! Its great to have christian friends here in Chile, even better to have Christian friends from the UK in Chile!
Que buenissimo! Que rico! I’ll leave Joyce to work out what that means!