This is my second stint in Magaluf. I first moved over in September of 2017 not knowing how long I would be there, but I figured a minimum of a year.I came home after 8 months. Even just writing it as bluntly as that reinforces my own concern that I failed, or that others will believe I did because I came home having not even been there a full year, never mind three (a typical 24-7 stretch) or seven (how many years it took to build the temple).

Regardless, when I came home I felt like I had unfinished business, and for two and a half years all I was waiting for was the right time to go back. In September of 2019 I accepted a job that was available to me - full-time, close to home and with a wonderful company whose mission was to keep children safer in an online world. A week after I started there I got a message from Mallorca - we have accommodation for you! A month after I started the job I got an email from Mallorca - we have a job for you.

I was devastated. Instead of trusting God as my provider, I had jumped on the first opportunity that had come along - I had taken things in to my own hands, thereby missing out on the accommodation I was hoping for and the job I was ecstatic to be offered. If both had come up in August, I would have accepted them, politely declined the job here and moved straight over.

In September of 2020, for a myriad of reasons, I was told “you should wait another year and then go out.” If anything, that was the straw that broke the camel’s back - I was going back now. I had already waited another year. When I first left Mallorca I said I may only be home for two weeks!

I reached out for the same accommodation - it came through. I had been saving so I didn’t need a job as soon as I moved over. I checked flights and there was one last direct flight from Ireland. I handed in my notice almost immediately. Then I booked the flight, and less than two weeks after I had been told to wait another year I was in Mallorca again.

As a result of this timing I met someone on the plane who was earnestly seeking Jesus and needed guidance, I was there to help a friend in a dark place, and I have met people I otherwise wouldn’t have met if there wasn’t a pandemic. So much of what I have achieved, of who I have helped and of what I have simply enjoyed while in Mallorca has been as a result of being there in this specific timing.

I don’t know, at least I’m not convinced, that all this means that I didn’t miss an opportunity the year before (I probably would have been on the same flight after visiting home, I would be here during my friend’s dark time, I would have been here for the pandemic), but what I do know is that God has used me in very specific, unplanned, unforeseeable ways that have me convinced that even if I didn’t come back at the right time, I have come back to the right place.

And every time something just happens to fall into place or things or people move in a curious coalescence to see wonders occur, we find ourselves repeating, “There are no coincidences.”