Depto

After a protracted and often stressful and disappointing journey, I'm delighted to say God has had me stumble across the most perfect little apartment. It's going to be sad to leave my Chilean family but I'm so excited about decorating and looking forward to having a little place of my own where I can cook yummy meals, have people over and generally enjoy myself.

Perdonado y amado

I think I shared with you an earlier attempt to write a 'Vision Statement' for my ministry here, but I can't put my hands on it now. Anyway I thought I'd show you the very latest (hopefully the last) version. I'm happy to say it's got a whole lot more heart...

As they read the Bible, I want women to get to know their God, and learn what it means to live as people who have been forgiven much and are much loved. 

And the Spanish version: Quiero que las mujeres conozcan a su Dios mientras estudien la Biblia, y aprendan lo que significa vivir como gente que ha sido perdonado y amado en gran manera por él.

Cerro San Cristóbal

Monday was a public holiday so me, Emy, the kids, her mum, a tia and prima went on an adventure! To Cerro San Cristóbal, a great big hill in the middle of Santiago. I love the place.

Better said

¡qué pena! = how awful! (literally: what pain!) While this expression does have its English equivalent, there's something about the use of "pain" that makes the Spanish ring sharper and more true.

es una lástima = it's a shame Again there's something about the word lastima that just sounds right - maybe I'm associating it with an English word I can't currently think of, or maybe it's that the use of the longer word in Spanish allows you to put heavy emphasis on the first syllable, so you can really say it like you mean it.

¡pucha! (Chilean) = crap! bugger! My understanding is that while this widely-used expression has heart, it isn't at all rude. (Perhaps it's like if in English speakers actually went around saying "bother!".) The plosive "p" at the start is great for when you drop something, as is the English "bugger!". The expression also gets used to convey general disappointment.

¡qué fome! (Chilean) = that sucks! While the English translation uses a verb, "sucks", to express the 'suckiness' of the situation, the Spanish word, fome, functions as an adjective describing the thing itself. I guess either works well depending if you want to focus more on your experience of the crappy situation (English) or the crappiness of the thing/situation itself (Spanish).

vale la pena = it's worth it (literally: it's worth the pain) The Spanish has so much more emotion than the English, which in comparison is a cold, calculating thing. In Spanish: "it's worth the pain". No whitewashing of emotions here.

Extranjeros

So the point of me being here is to help some Christian women (God willing, a lot of women!) to better understand God's Words, to help them obey all that Jesus commands, and, obviously, as they do all this, to discover great peace, confidence, hope and joy and be a massive blessing to the people around them. But new contexts and first years are funny things - you end up doing not exactly what you thought. And it turns out that there are a few other, sometimes lonely, extranjeros (foreigners) around the place. I've got to know people from Australia, the Netherlands and England, plus some from other countries only here for a short time, a couple of whom have come along with me to church. And I've been made welcome by missionaries from Australia, England, Mexico, America, Germany and Switzerland. So there's been a fair bit of speaking English over lunches or coffees, which isn't exactly what I had planned. But I do what God gives me to do, not abandoning my earlier goals, but making the most of this opportunity to develop relationships in English when this is still hard for me to do in Spanish.

Eucalipto

I don't know what it is about gum trees, but they're everywhere. There are lots of them here, especially in the south, and I have also come across them in Ireland and Sri Lanka.

Gum trees matter to me - I love their unlikely elegance and their ashen colours. My pride and sense of connection are almost as if I had a hand in their making. It's an Australian thing. But it's also a Tasmanian thing - our trees are a key part of our identity, although the wood most precious to us comes from other species - myrtle, sassafras, huon pine. When I lived in Ireland there a gumtree up the street from us and the smell and sight of it made me glad. But here there are too many and how am I to explain that in Australia they are not one species among many, but the tree, our tree. I feel like someone's mucking around with my heritage. Poor gumtrees, so far from home, trying to fit in...

Campeones mundiales / 2

Delegating work
There is a great labour force in this country. Hardworking people capable of responsibly carrying out instructions. But it's equally true that in the heart of each of them lies a frustrated boss. The Chilean never feels like he is the last in the pyramid, even when he is. He will always find someone else to whom he can pass on his duties, because if he has 10 hours to do a job, he would prefer to spend 9 of them thinking about how to foist his work onto someone else. And he does this wishing to 'share responsibilities' and to not end up the only person suffering the costs of a possible 'negligence'. To be lazy but not appear to be so, requires a lot of ingenuity.
I wouldn't have been able to put my finger on it this way, but, yes, I have noticed (and Chileans have told me) that oftentimes people are happy if something is adequate ("Así, no más.").

Accumulating stuff
The Chilean spirit is accumulative. One doesn't start over so much as place one layer on top of the previous. Our houses are full of relics because at one time we realised that we could both start a business and create space in our houses. Perhaps certain periods of national shortage have created this hoarding tendency, the feeling that any one thing may at any moment - a moment that never arrives - be useful . . . We think the television that one day stopped working will miraculously revive. We have created places for recycling . . . where we pretend to change our paradigm and which make us believe that our treasured possessions aren't going to die but will be reincarnated in a bin.
Haven't observed this one, but a friend told me his Dad's famous for it.

In Santiago, Chile ('Tain't Chilly at All)

H/T Margaret :)