This is a page for James Palmer and our links with him.

Here is his prayer letter from May 2009

We are now two months into Autumn, it said on Peruvian radio this morning (which also reported the resignation of Michael Martin over the UK members of parliament expenses row). Today is overcast and miserable, though the end of last week was sunny and warm: we are back into the winter cycle of several days of rain/clouds and then 5 or 6 of sunshine. Term is now much of the way through, and we are all tired. Last week was the mission, when the students went to help with two ex-students churches as well as a small group who went down to the South to work in the Alto Bio Bio, which is true countryside/no telephone or sushi Chile (Santiago has a major sushi obsession, which I recently caved into. I don't like the wasabi though. I have been through some of the villages outside of Santiago which are obviously largely dormitory towns and you see the incongruous combination of rural Latin American style hovels which sell sushi). I was ill with what turned out NOT to be the Swine Flu and stayed here. Much c-F Santiago is terrified that we are all going to die (when I last heard we have the highest number of cases in the Southern Cone, but the main issue is the hypochondria of Santiaguinos, which I have mentioned before). I think that this is improbable, though am rather wishing I had a car and didn't have to use the metro!

I have been in Chile for nearly 3 years and am due back in the UK in the autumn for church visiting and my main news, I suppose, is that I have decided not to return to Chile afterwards. Chile is a county where family links are so close and extensive that you have little chance of being accepted into friendship groups unless you at least went to university here. That means that it's unusually difficult to be single in Chile and I have not found the support that I need to last. There are a few people who I get on very well with, but I see them so infrequently and irregularly that it just isn't sustainable. Also, as my Mother has noted occasionally, Chile is a very long way away from my family and it has been hard to get back to see them, which at this stage of our lives is really not good. I am planning to leave Chile in August and will come back to the UK, via Orlando, and will be based in Cambridge from mid September until Christmas. I am just starting out in the process of looking for teaching jobs in the USA/Canada and Europe for afterwards. At the moment I haven't any idea where I will end up, which is both fun and terrifying (depending on the weather and how much sleep I got the night before etc). If anyone knows of departments of Jewish Studies who are looking for someone to teach Early Judaism and "religion" (AKA the courses that no-one else wants to teach) then let me know. Also, if people from my supporting churches would like me to visit them this autumn, then email me back with some dates so that I can get myself organized. I will be doing my best to see friends too (I have not forgotten you).

I'd better get back to my lecture notes. At the moment I am preparing a class on Puritanism in the C17, and then I have to do one on how the early Christians read the bible. It's rather like being a hamster on a wheel:

you finish one class and have to get straight on with the next.

James

Dr. J.K. Palmer,

Centro de estudios pastorales,

José Miguel de la Barra 480, of. 205

Santiago

Chile