Well I guess we haven’t told you much about what is going on here in Chile at the moment. So here is an abbreviated version!
Rachel has two more shifts up the mountain before a 7 week period where she will be based in Santiago. She is longing for time to settle into Santiago properly and to get on with work in the office, including writing papers based on her PhD thesis.
Douglas has had two interviews now, one with a UK-based consultancy company with a branch here and another with the Chilean treasury. The latter was conducted in spanish and looked really hopeful- he proceeded to the final selection stage but was not selected (or the job may have been withdrawn in light of flutters in the copper price). He has another 6 job applications pending, including one with a branch of the UN, the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean, as an economist evaluating environmental impacts and mitigation policies.
We’ve continued to plan and hold meetings of CrossConnexions, a group for 11-15 year olds at the english-speaking Santiago Community Church. We’re planning a weekend retreat for them later this month, with the title, “I’ll be there for You” and the theme of friends. We’re looking forward to it, although it involves a lot of preparation and logistical planning! Your prayers will be appreciated, particularly as we discuss the basis for our faith in Jesus Christ and how to tell friends about Jesus.
Our hot water system has been a bit temperamental recently and required a replacement pump last week. This has been stressful, stretching my spanish and our relationship with our landlords. But God has been faithful and the heating (albeit not always the hot water) is working now.
We enjoyed a great evening with friends Kurt and Melissa and baby Aidan recently, learning and playing a new card game called Phase 10 till the wee small hours of the morning ! It was good fun and it has been nice to get to know another couple who will be in Santiago for more than 6 months! They are here on mission with Campus Mission for Christ.
We’ve had our first proper rainfall since arriving in December! Last week it rained for 2 days solid. The last time I experienced that was on the final day of my stag-doo last year in early September in Aberfoyle, Scotland! In Santiago, after 6 months of fairly uninterrumpted, pleasant weather, it has come as a little bit of a shock. I’m hoping to buy another rain jacket soon! Average day temperature at the moment is about 12 degrees, average at night a lowly 4 degrees! And we hear there is a heatwave in Britain (and in Germany at the World Cup!) at the moment. Grrrr.
The upside of cooler, wetter weather is that we have fewer seriously smoggy days and on clear days, a cracking view of the mountains that surround Santiago. They are now covered in snow! From our flat, its like waking up to a view of “Glencoe in January” every morning. Only the mountains here are 3 times higher. The evening light reminds me very much of Scotland- rich hues of brown, red and purple below the snow line. God likes to “do” good views! We’ll post some pics soon.
It’s dinner time. Time to stop. We’ll post more news and experiences and pictures soon. If you haven’t already discovered them, we have lots of new photo gallery pages. Just follow the links on the page “Our Photo Gallery”.
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on Thursday, June 15th, 2006 at 4:53 am and is filed under News from a long narrow country- Chile 2006.
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