MMM Annual Retreat and Meetings Hua Hin, Thailand--11-20 January 2002 The MMM is the Maryknoll Mekong Missions, the Maryknoll mission teams living and working in Cambodia, Thailand, and Vietnam. Each year these Maryknollers get together for extended meetings in January, with a five-day retreat as a prelude. In recent years, other Maryknollers and partners working with Maryknoll have also come for the retreat which is held at the Salesian retreat center in Hua Hin, Thailand. Itinerary 11 January 12-17 January 18 January 19-20 January Travel day Retreat MMM Meetings Sending Group Meetings

Travel from Cambodia to Thailand

Friday, 11 January 2002 This morning John and Kathy Tucker and I were driven to the airport by Siphal, the office manager for Maryknoll in Cambodia. We were about an hour early which is plenty of time at the Pochentong airport which is not one of the world's major travel hubs! I will have to admit that they are improving the facility, though, and now have actual jetways for boarding the planes on a new section of the terminal building. The flight to Bangkok is only 50 minutes on a 717 aircraft, but Bangkok Airways manages to serve a small hot meal in that time without appearing unduly rushed. Other airlines could follow their example! In Bangkok the taxi driver must have thought we were first-time tourists and tried to cheat us. Then the police stopped him for speeding! At the Maryknoll center house, we said hello to everyone, checked which rooms were ours, and then I headed to Silom Road. First I went to the Bangkok Nursing Home, actually a major hospital, to see if I could find some eye patches for a baby of some lay missioners in Phnom Penh. They didn't have them so I went to a regular pharmacy, and they had a box although they may be too big for the child. Then I bought some plastic envelopes at Office Max, one of my regular stops whenever I come to Bangkok. Then, for the highlight of the day, I went to see Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone! I have read all the books and was just hoping it would still be playing when we got here. It was and I really enjoyed it. Here it cost 100 baht which is US$2.33. Here in Thailand all the English-language newspapers advertize the movie as "Harry Porter and the Sorcerer's Stone"!

Hua Hin--Retreat

Saturday, 12 January 2002 The bus to Hua Hin left the Maryknoll Bangkok center house at 9:30 AM with about 25 people aboard. At least this year we didn't leave the retreat master behind like we did last year! The trip down was a bit longer than usual, mostly because of backed up traffic due to an accident on a bridge. Traffic going north to Bangkok was held up by the motorcade of the king who was returning from Hua Hin to his Bangkok palace. He had quite a cavalacde with him, the biggest one I've ever seen. Once we arrived in Hua Hin, we greeted all the people from Thailand who had come down yesterday and were having Thailand country meetings all day today. Then we ate a quick lunch which they had saved for us after we didn't show up on time. The rest of the afternoon was free so some people went to the beach and others rested or walked around. I decided that I would actually go in the water this year after not even seeing the sea for the last several trips so I went down to swim a few laps and see if that would be good exercise for my knees. I was one of the two people who ran into big jellyfish and got stung. This evening Rachel Smith led an opening exercise in which the twelve different mission countries represented here were recognized. In the photograph, Rachel watches as Bill O'Leary puts a symbol of Thailand on a map of Asia. That was followed by some housekeeping announcements, and then Nonie Gutzler, a Maryknoll sister from Taiwan who just finished her PhD in systematic theology at Fordam, gave us the introduction to the retreat she will be leading for us this week. Her theme will be A clean-swept heart: the beginning of wisdom.

Sunday, 13 January 2002 This morning our retreat started in earnest, with Nonie Gutzler giving two talks before lunch. Her theme today was first the idea of Mary as the herald of Jesus and the reign of God he initiated, and then the baptism of Jesus as the awakening point for Jesus, when he understood and acknowledged his special relationship with the poor who had come to listen to John the Baptist. The afternoon was free today. At 11:30 AM all this week, we have a eucharistic liturgy. Today the Vietnam group were responsible for it. Tom O'Brien and Charlie Robak, the two priests already there, had a simple ceremony to welcome Chong and Pooja Park, a Korean-born couple who are the only new lay missioners to come to Asia this year. They received several symbolic gifts from the Vietnam group and then from Cambodia and Thailand also. Here Tom O'Brien drapes a piece of yellow Vietnamese fabric on the shoulders of Chong and Pooja.

Monday, 14 January 2002 The retreat continued today with two more talks and an afternoon discussion session. The first talk in the mornin was about the healing of Jesus and the second about how Jesus crossed various religious and cultural boundaries of his society, especially as he established an "open table" to welcome all people. Nonie Gutzler made a point that it seems, from a low Christology point of view, that Jesus was at times pushed across some boundaries rather than leading the way across. She described this as part of his "becoming" who he was as Messiah and God's Son. Interesting. The presider for liturgy this morning was Charlie Dittmeier and he tried to pick up the themes Nonie presented. He used a symbolic table to represent the open table of Jesus. At 3:00 PM, Nonie led a discussion group, about one third of the total participants, in a deeper look at some of the ideas that have surfaced so far. There is no structure to these afternoon sessions and anyone can bring up any idea. The conversation got quite heavy at times today! People who did not attend the discussion went to the beach or walked into town or played tennis or basketball or took a nap. After evening prayer, the sisters from Nepal showed a 12-minute video on women in that country.

Tuesday, 15 January 2002 Nonie Gutzler is our retreat director and she has done a very credible job so far. Everyone is quite pleased with her presentations. She certainly knows her theology and presents it with some surprising twists and questions, usually generated by a feminist perspective. The first talk this morning was on "dangerous memories" of Jesus and included several strategies for reading the New Testament to note details and layers of meaning often overlooked. The second talk centered on the problem of suffering and evil and God's cooperation with suffering. Nonie advanced the idea that the women in the gospels understood the suffering of Jesus more because of their own identification with suffering women in the Hebrew scriptures. One nice aspect of this retreat has been the human schedule. Breakfast is at 7:00 AM, morning prayer at 8:00, the first talk from 8:45 to 9:45, then a break till 10:15 when the second talk starts. Liturgy is at 11:30. The only activity in the afternoon is the 3:00 PM discussion session.

Wednesday, 16 January 2002 A group photograph of the retreat crowd at the Salesian retreat center in Hua Hin. We have about 70 people present for the retreat this year. Kelly O'Brien, Rachel Smith, and Mike Bassano have been our social activities coordinators this year, and they have done a good job. Here the lead us in a couple old folk songs. The weather has cooperated tremendously this year with temperatures as low as the mid-70°s, a rarity for Hua Hin where sometimes it is beastly hot. So far no rain, either.

Thursday, 17 January 2002 This morning saw the last of the talks give by Nonie Gutzler for this year's retreat. She spoke to a general theme of "the faces of Christ." At the closing liturgy, Nonie gave the homily and summarized the ideas she had presented to us this past week. Everyone was quite pleased--and challenged--by the content she offered during these days. The whole afternoon was free. Some MMM members had already made retreats this year and didn't join us for this group retreat, but now they have started trickling in join us for the meetings in the rest of our time together. One of the features of the past few years has been a talent show sometime during our days together. Today was the day for this year and a wide display of talent was on display this evening. A parody of the retreat leader; magic tricks; lots of songs; even an elephant act--everything was fair game. In the photo Pat Conroy and Charlie Robak put a lot of feeling into a Korean song. Pat now works in East Timor and Charlie in Vietnam, but both started out in Korea.