Tuesday, 26 August 2003
When we gather in Hua Hin each year, there are always different meetings scheduled on the various days, everyone taking advantage of the fact that all of us are there to get together in different groups. This first official day of meetings was set aside for what are known as the Sending Groups. Maryknoll is an umbrella organization that has subgroups for the priests and brothers, the sisters, and the lay people. Today all of them met separately to discuss business and plans particular to their group or charism. The Maryknoll Lay Missioners had the most business because of our recent general assembly, and we met the longest, from 8:45 after morning prayer to 4:45 PM when we ended with a group photo.
Here is a picture of the group. (L-r: Judy Helein, John Tucker, Hiep Vu, Tawny Thanh, Kathy Tucker, Lisa Pirie, Kathy Kremer, Eileen Velicky, Pooja Park, Chong Park, Cece Augilar-Ortiz, Daniel Augilar-Ortiz, Jim Campion, Kelly O'Brien, Kathleen Doerner, Charlie Dittmeier.) Missing from this meeting are Billy Doerner (home with the two daughters) and Dee Barlow.
In the afternoon we turned our attention to the topic of advocacy. Marie Dennis, the head of Maryknoll's Office of Global Concerns, lead the session this afternoon, explaining about the work of the office and then about the structure and operations of the United Nations. Maryknoll has traditionally been active at the U.N., and in 1998 received consultative status there. Luise Ahrens and Mike Bassano are holding the U.N. diagram.
This morning Marie Dennis from the Maryknoll Office of Global Concerns presented the second half of her workshop on advocacy about issues of justice and peace. We broke up into groups according to the types of ministry we are involved in (AIDS, women, trafficking, education, labor, etc.) and then presented the results of the discussions, all the nuances and suggestions that might help OGC to put together better documents for their lobbying and educational efforts.
At the meetings, we first discussed our relationship with the local church in the various countries where we work. Maryknoll tries always to work with the local church and hierarchy but sometimes there are misunderstandings because Maryknoll in the MMM tends to work in service of the poor rather than in administering sacraments in a local parish. Later we explained the ministry structures in each of our countries, to give an overview of our work, especially to the many newer people we have now. Jim Noonan here explains the work of the Cambodia Mission Team.
Morning prayer and liturgy today was organized by the Maryknollers and partners from southern Thailand. At our meetings in the morning, we continued our discussion on shared expenses, adding updated numbers and proposals after several overnight consultations and discussions. The basic problem is that up till now, Thailand has been picking up most of the charges for the Hua Hin gatherings. That made sense in the early days when technically all the Society members were in the Thailand unit, but as the MMM grew and expanded, the mechanisms for paying for the meetings didn't. Now we are trying to apportion the costs more equitably among the different countries and the different sending groups.