www.thegilmours.co.uk

Facbook cheerfully reminds me that i’ve to say Happy Birthday to some people today:
Julie Gilstrap and Colin Snodgrass…

Well its been a while since we’ve told you what we are doing at the moment. As you can see from the blog, we’ve grown quite lazy in updating it but in the last two months we’ve been travelling with Rachel’s family and Rachel has had a two week shift (yes… the longest yet). After a week of recovery time, which unfortunately coincided with Chile’s National Independence Day celebrations- the “dieceocho” or “fiestas patrias”- on the 18th September, we’re settling back to “work” and normality, whatever that is. Facebook, BBC, Scrabbulous and blogging…. So we’ve been out of the loop for effectively 8 weeks.

We had a fantastic trip to the north of Chile with Rachel’s parents and their two foster children, Liam and Savannah. Rachel’s brother turned up to the surprise of everyone one day after they all arrived (carefully coordinated only 4 days before by William and Doug). And what a welcome too! “want an egg?” asks Rachel’s dad calmly while her mother weeps for England. And we were 7.

Thankfully, our Land Rover accommodates 7 people. But not normally their luggage too. So we borrowed lots of toys from friends, the most important being an enormous coffin sized roof box, from Gaetane and Hughes (Thanks guys!). Thanks also to Paula for her GPS, which provided endless entertainment on days when the road made one turn every 200km. It also took us on a lovely tour through the rougher parts of Antofagasta in search of a Shell Station, up one-way on gradients even the Landie struggled with and over railway lines.

Returning through Argentina was a “long way for a short cut” as we might say in English, but translates badly in spanish to mean “you must go on the long road for a radical hair cut”. North west Argentina is largely untouched and uninhabited but stunningly beautiful albeit on a large scale. The high altitude salt lakes and the mountains of the 7 colours were particularly memorable. In fact, 7 might as well be the meaning of life. 700 miles to a very big tank and 7 hours a day driving. 7 pesos to the £.

Well, since then, we’ve had 2 visitors who claim to be welsh but are actually Brazilian and practically English, studying in Birmingham and Chile (for 1 year) respectively. We’ve got another two friends staying with us tonight, who live in La Serena when they are not getting married in the US or skiing near here. Then we are looking forward to two visitors to Chile at the end of October/November- Stephanie Biden, one of Rachel’s university friends and Chris Reilly (you know who you are huevon). Today has been the first day in Santiago when it actually feels like Spring. So they’ll be looking forward to a tan then since the UK didn’t have a summer this year!

Of course, all of this has so far avoided mentioning the rugby world cup! Scotland, Argentina and Namibia got Doug’s support, while England and Wales and anyone playing Scotland gets Rachel’s support. Chile didn’t even qualify, despite a chilean complaining to me last week that their qualifying match was unfair… against Portugal and Uruguay. It’s great to get coverage of the matches here in Chile. Although it does serve as a terrible destraction from studying for Doug.

Studying? More studying? Yes, Doug starts a distance learning MSc in GIS and Project Management this month… which will keep him busy. He’s trained in it before, but needs an update and to learn another software package, called ArcInfo if he wants to use it at work in future.

Rachel’s work is going… although not always well. She is grateful to have some time in Santiago to get on with her research.

Some prayer requests:

Doug is on the look-out for suitable and challenging jobs in the transport economics sector again. These may require him to start before the end of Rachel’s remaining contracted year here. Pray for guidance for this and that God would open the doors and make it clear to him.

Rachel is struggling to complete a paper with a complex computer model which has lots of bugs/issues after transferring to Chile. Pray that she would enjoy her work and be determined. Yet give thanks for opportunity to witness in such a secular environment.

For our friends Paul and Joyce as they settle back into life in Edinburgh after Chile.

For the youth group which we run in Santiago. We have 9 regular attenders now (almost 100% growth) which may not seem fantastic, but these are unchurched youth, open to reading the Bible, learning about God and His gift to them of love and grace. We are encouraged every time we meet with them to be bolder in our witness and in teaching them. PTL is the first prayer on our lips at the end of every meeting!

We want to run a Christianity Explored Course here in Santiago for english speaking friends and aquaintances. The problem is getting the resources, and to co-ordinate a regular time for 10 sessions amongst 5 people who work long or irregular hours. Pray for determination and courage as we ask friends and prepare to run the course.

We’re back to the UK at Christmas and New Year this year which will be marvellous. We hope to catch up with you all, or, in the memorable words of an american friend, “all y’all”.

This entry was posted on Friday, September 28th, 2007 at 8:45 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.