Today was the first official event for the board of directors meeting. The Mission Assembly is the highest level of governance for the Maryknoll Lay Missioners and board members are invited to participate--except for the missioners active in the field who are on the board: Kathy Bond and me. I spent the day meeting with various people over at the seminary and at the Walsh Building headquarters for MKLM.

To start the day, Bill Vos presided at a liturgy to which the new candidates and staff were invited. Here he organizes the readings with Chris Keavney.

Since I wasn't going to the Mission Assembly, I went over to the Seminary Building to meet people in several offices. I was also staying in the seminary building and had all my meals there which gave me an opportunity to meet a lot of old friends.

One nice part of coming back to the Knoll for meetings is getting the opportunity to meet new staff of the Maryknoll Lay Missioners. The most recent new staff member is Lucy Leety-Wheeler who works in communications and networking for the organization. She has been with MKLM about one month.

Another new staff member is Laurie Rumph who is the major gifts officer in the Advancement Department. She started with MKLM about six months ago.

A third new member is Bill Bachmann who is the administrative assistant in the Advancement Department. Bill has worked with Maryknoll almost a year.

At the end of the day, after all the board had arrived, we had a dinner with the five new lay mission candidates who are now in training at the Knoll. Charles McCarthy is here introducing himself to the board. He has been assigned to Cambodia.