Maryknoll Retreat and Meetings--Thailand (January 1999)

Thailand Retreat and Meeting Schedule
(January 1999)
17 January Travel Day
Hong Kong to Bangkok I flew Gulf Air to Bangkok, 2 1/2 hours on a 767. Gulf Air had called me on Friday and left a message to call them back, and I had spent almost an hour trying to get through to them on Saturday, their phone constantly busy or putting me on hold. I asked the check-in agent why Gulf Air called when no other airline does that, and he didn't know, but he said "I'll give you a nice seat." And when I boarded the aircraft, he had put me in business class!
I got to Bangkok, zipped through immigration and customs, and took the airport bus to Silom Road where I got off and walked the two blocks to the Christian Guest House. They had my reservation under the name "Bishop Ford Center" for some reason, but I got settled OK and quickly ran into a few other Maryknollers staying here overnight also.

18 January Travel Day
Bangkok to Hua Hin I met more Maryknollers at breakfast this morning, as well as some other missionary types of different religious flavors. The Christian Guest House especially caters to religious workers passing through Thailand.
After eating, Lynne from Northern Thailand, and I took a taxi over to the Maryknoll Center House where the main body of our group was staying, and from there we took a big bus down south to Hua Hin, the old royal summer capital of Thailand. We stopped at a different place for lunch on the four-hour trip, and about an hour later one of the guys threw up on the bus. Something he ate!
The Salesian Retreat House where we stay has had a major remodeling, especially the surrounding campus where a new kindergarten, new access roads, and even a swimming pool have been added! The Salesians are known world-wide for their dedication to education for poor people, and they have built a beautiful school center here to serve poor village children from the surrounding area.
The most appreciated improvement, as far as I am concerned, is the addition of Internet access at the retreat house! There is now a free e-mail and web account for people staying at the center, and that is why I am able to update the homepage so quickly and easily while I'm here. Our meetings don't start until tomorrow so most of the crowd went down to the beach on the Gulf of Thailand for the afternoon, but I'm experimenting with this new-found web connection.

19-20 January Maryknoll Mekong Mission Meetings Maryknoll meeting at Hua Hin 19 January: Today was the first day of the MMMM meetings, and a lot of the talk centered on Burma. Maryknoll does not officially work in Burma but various of our personnel have gone into Burma unofficially for discussions on spirituality, women's issues, disabilities, agriculture, etc. We would like to support the people and the Catholic Church in Burma without giving any support, financially or otherwise, to the repressive Burmese government. The reports heard today gave glowing testimony to resilience of the Burmese people who have been so cruelly oppressed for so long.
Internet problems continue, even with the free Net connection provided us! I was not able to transfer files using W98's FTP program and downloaded a freeware FTP program but still have not been able to FTP the files for my home page. It took forever to download 855k on the very slow connections here in southern Thailand, and then when I did get the FTP program installed and working, the connection kept terminating. The biggest problem, though, is getting to use the computer! Everyone wants to check e-mail back home and the secretaries also need it to do the minutes for the meetings every day! :(
20 January:The meetings continued today, again focusing largely on Burma in the morning. The presentations on Burma ended with a caution that although several members of our groups have gone into Burma, it is still an inherently dangerous place. The army is probably not completely under the control of the central government, and consular protection can be non-existent for anyone running afoul of the law.
The State of the Union address by President Clinton aired on CNN at 10:00 AM here, so it was taped during our meeting and replayed several times during the day, and again tonight for the benefit of a busload of Maryknollers who arrived from Bangkok this afternoon. They are from countries not in the MMM area (Vietnam, Thailand, Cambodia) so the first two days of meetings did not affect them.
Tonight a group of us walked along the beach into the town of Hua Hin, about a kilometer away. There was no moon but plenty of stars, and the fluorescence in the water tonight was magnificent. When certain plankton are disturbed, they emit a cool light like a firefly. Tonight the white curling edges of waves coming ashore would turn bright blue as we walked along. Once in town, we headed for an Italian ice cream shop we discovered on previous trips, and then we walked through a night market set up along several blocks on one of the main streets. Our two newest members had their first taste of durian, an Asian fruit with a strong taste and even stronger smell. Durian is commonly said "to taste like heaven and smell like hell."

21 January Maryknoll Association, Congregation, Society Meetings
Asia Units Meeting The first part of the morning was given to meetings of what we call the three "sending groups," that is the Maryknoll Society (priests and brothers), Congregation (sisters), and the Association (lay people and associate priests). In the Association's meeting, our Asia area coordinator gave a report on the last leadership team meeting in November, the first to take place in Asia itself, and brought us up to date on various changes in the MMAF structure and administration and then briefed us on the current status of several issues under discussion.
Then the members from all the Maryknoll countries in Asia met together to hear reports about what is happening in the other sending groups and to make joint plans for future activities that affect us all. In the afternoon, the large group meeting continued as we planned next year's retreat and meetings here at Hua Hin.

22 January Free Day Today was a free day, a break between the business meetings and the retreat that starts tomorrow. Many of our group took a song-tag, a pickup truck taxi, to the Buddha Caves about an hour away. They are a series of deep cavernous rooms underground, with occasional openings to the sky that let in spectacular shafts of sunlight. Over the years hundreds of Buddha statues, big and small, have been placed in the caves.
Buddha statues in Thailand Two others from our group and I went to a peak nearby where there is a huge standing Buddha statue placed on a rocky point on the Gulf of Thailand. The place is invested with aggressive monkeys that are a real nuisance. One tried to grab the shoulder bag I was carrying to see if it had any food in it. From there we walked back along the beach to the retreat center, about 1 1/2 hours up the coast.

23-27 January Retreat 23 January
We began our retreat this morning. Sr. Helen Graham, MM, is a Maryknoll Sister with a doctorate in scripture. She teaches in the seminary in the Philippines. Today she outlined her program for the week, showing us a plan for looking at Luke 4, especially from an Old Testament perspective. She brought along many documents from the church and the United Nations which she plans to relate to her theme. Today we had presentations by Helen in the morning, and the afternoon was given to our own reflection. So far so good!
At lunch the sister and priest here from Nepal received news that another Maryknoll sister, one of their colleagues, had died this morning of a heart attack in Kathmandu. They hurriedly changed their plane reservations and an hour or so later returned to Bangkok to fly back to Nepal tomorrow.
24 January
It's probably a misnomer to call this week a "retreat." Basically it's a scripture workshop, and today we continued the Old Testament themes that underlie Luke's chapter four. We looked especially at the idea of sabbath, and then at the ideas in Isaiah (which Jesus quotes in Luke 4) about giving sight to the blind, hearing to the deaf, etc. These were to be signs of the jubilee. Then we began to look specifically at the text of Luke 4. We also met in small groups to discuss the ideas that have arisen in these talks, looking at what they mean in our own lives and mission contexts.
This afternoon we had a more solemn liturgy than usual to acknowledge the special nature of the sabbath/Sunday which Christians celebrate as a day of resurrection. I was the celebrant, and the liturgy turned out pretty well from the comments afterwards. We involved a lot of people in various ministries.
This evening about 20 of us went into Hua Hin for dinner at an Italian restaurant, ostensibly to thank Roberto for arranging our daily social gatherings before supper. Of course we stopped for ice cream at the Italian gelato shop on the way back. This year they have a blue viagra ice cream. Tastes like blueberry to me!
One of our group trying to check for viruses on a floppy disk has disabled the A: drive on the comuter we use for e-mail. No computer stores were open to get a head cleaning kit which is all we need so I was not able to update the home page today.
25 January
This morning continued looking at Luke's gospel. Some of the background on the Hebrew and Aramaic language has been very interesting and exciting to many in our group who have not been exposed to those concepts before. Those of us in the seminary in the 1960s and later welcome the chance to have the ideas refreshed for us. Again the theme today was to connect the ideas of Luke 4 with ideas of jubilee from Isaiah, Deuteronomy, and Leviticus and the Psalms.
After the morning talk I went to a computer store across the street and found they didn't have a head cleaning kit for 3.5" disks! I can't believe it! They had five or six sets of cleaning disks for 5.25" drives although I can't imagine who would be using them. Or maybe the level of technology here is such that most people still use the large floppy disk size.
26 January
We continued the study of Luke 4 today, expanding our survey to include Luke's version of the Lord's Prayer. In the afternoon we had a question and answer period to address particular queries that different members of the group had.
This evening at 5:00 PM we had a liturgy in which one of the priests renewed his temporary oath with the Maryknoll Society (the priests and brothers). He was formerly an Associate priest like me but decided to make a permanent commitment with the Society to ensure that he could stay in mission service. The daughters of one of our families from southern Thailand danced two Thai dances as part of the ceremony.
I spent a good part of the day creating disks for people who wanted a copy of the F-Prot anti-virus software. We are also creating disks with the HTML editor called Dida for people to begin to learn how to make their own home pages.
27 January
We had our closing liturgy at 8:00 AM this morning, led by a priest from Japan who introduced some zen elements into the celebration. Then we finished up our workshop talks with a final presentation on Luke's gospel. Today's session focused on the five "rich man" stories and the "banquest" stories in Luke.
Charlie beside a Thai fishing boat After the session we had a group photograph, and then it was time for lunch and a free afternoon for everyone who is still here. I wrote a quick letter to Mom and then walked down the beach to town to the post office and bought some stamps. Then I walked through the main market of Hua Hin. I was looking for a Thai machete, partly out of curiosity about what they looked like, and partly from interest in buying one to use on some of my hikes in Hong Kong. The ones I found were quite different from my traditional idea of a machete--and quite a bit larger than the ones I am used to also. These were almost two feet long, much too long to be carrying around in HK! From there I went on to a store where I bought some more floppy disks for the computer, and then I walked along the beach at the far end of town, where we tend not to go since it's at the opposite end of town from our retreat center. I checked out some fishing boats along a jetty, and then walked back along the beach.
The rest of the afternoon and early evening I prepared some floppy disks for various of our members to use to make home pages. Many are interested but don't have the tools so I gave them a copy of Dida HTML editor, a freeware, and PKUNZIP to uncompress it.
Tonight we had a special goodbye supper arranged for us by the retreat center manager. It was a very enjoyable meal and we had a chance to thank the kitchen crew in person.

28 January Travel Day
Hua Hin to Bangkok This morning our bus to leave the retreat center at Hua Hin was scheduled for 8:00 AM.
This afternoon, after arriving in Bangkok, I visited the site in one of Bangkok's biggest and worst slums where a priest friend of mine is working with abandoned street children in a run-down area around the docks. He and I entered Maryknoll together in 1987, and he was assigned to Chile. Now, though, he has decided to join Maryknoll as a permanent member (before he and I were temporary members), and he has been assigned here to Thailand. A Redemptorist priest has started a hospice for AIDS patients, several shelters for orphans and abandoned children, 30+ kindergartens and a full school, and community programs for the slum dwellers, most of whom work in a slaughterhouse. My friend is working with him now.
We went back to the Maryknoll center house for supper, and then two others and I took a taxi to the Christian Guest House where I was staying tonight. It's a neat place that caters to missionaries and their families. I like its homey-ness and its low rates, just $15 a night.

29 January Travel Day
Bangkok to Hong Kong I got up at 5:30 AM at the Christian Guest House and walked in the dark out to Silom Road where I waited for the airport bus (70 baht) rather than take a taxi (330 baht). I must have just missed a bus because I had to wait 31 minutes, but with the new expressways the trip to the airport only took 35 minutes. I checked in and then ate at Burger King before boarding the Gulf Air flight back to HK.
In Hong Kong I walked off the plane at 1:23 PM and at 1:34 I already had my suitcase and had cleared immigration and customs and was on the street heading for the airport bus! Eleven minutes must set some sort of record for getting out of an airport after an international flight!
Back at home I started putting things away and catching up on the faxes and e-mails that in during my absence. Then I prepared our RCIA class which we have every Friday night.

17 January	Travel Day Hong Kong to Bangkok	I flew Gulf Air to Bangkok, 2 1/2 hours on a 767. Gulf Air had called me on Friday and left a message to call them back, and I had spent almost an hour trying to get through to them on Saturday, their phone constantly busy or putting me on hold. I asked the check-in agent why Gulf Air called when no other airline does that, and he didn't know, but he said "I'll give you a nice seat." And when I boarded the aircraft, he had put me in business class! I got to Bangkok, zipped through immigration and customs, and took the airport bus to Silom Road where I got off and walked the two blocks to the Christian Guest House. They had my reservation under the name "Bishop Ford Center" for some reason, but I got settled OK and quickly ran into a few other Maryknollers staying here overnight also.
18 January	Travel Day Bangkok to Hua Hin	I met more Maryknollers at breakfast this morning, as well as some other missionary types of different religious flavors. The Christian Guest House especially caters to religious workers passing through Thailand. After eating, Lynne from Northern Thailand, and I took a taxi over to the Maryknoll Center House where the main body of our group was staying, and from there we took a big bus down south to Hua Hin, the old royal summer capital of Thailand. We stopped at a different place for lunch on the four-hour trip, and about an hour later one of the guys threw up on the bus. Something he ate! The Salesian Retreat House where we stay has had a major remodeling, especially the surrounding campus where a new kindergarten, new access roads, and even a swimming pool have been added! The Salesians are known world-wide for their dedication to education for poor people, and they have built a beautiful school center here to serve poor village children from the surrounding area. The most appreciated improvement, as far as I am concerned, is the addition of Internet access at the retreat house! There is now a free e-mail and web account for people staying at the center, and that is why I am able to update the homepage so quickly and easily while I'm here. Our meetings don't start until tomorrow so most of the crowd went down to the beach on the Gulf of Thailand for the afternoon, but I'm experimenting with this new-found web connection.
19-20 January	Maryknoll Mekong Mission Meetings	19 January: Today was the first day of the MMMM meetings, and a lot of the talk centered on Burma. Maryknoll does not officially work in Burma but various of our personnel have gone into Burma unofficially for discussions on spirituality, women's issues, disabilities, agriculture, etc. We would like to support the people and the Catholic Church in Burma without giving any support, financially or otherwise, to the repressive Burmese government. The reports heard today gave glowing testimony to resilience of the Burmese people who have been so cruelly oppressed for so long. Internet problems continue, even with the free Net connection provided us! I was not able to transfer files using W98's FTP program and downloaded a freeware FTP program but still have not been able to FTP the files for my home page. It took forever to download 855k on the very slow connections here in southern Thailand, and then when I did get the FTP program installed and working, the connection kept terminating. The biggest problem, though, is getting to use the computer! Everyone wants to check e-mail back home and the secretaries also need it to do the minutes for the meetings every day! :( 20 January:The meetings continued today, again focusing largely on Burma in the morning. The presentations on Burma ended with a caution that although several members of our groups have gone into Burma, it is still an inherently dangerous place. The army is probably not completely under the control of the central government, and consular protection can be non-existent for anyone running afoul of the law. The State of the Union address by President Clinton aired on CNN at 10:00 AM here, so it was taped during our meeting and replayed several times during the day, and again tonight for the benefit of a busload of Maryknollers who arrived from Bangkok this afternoon. They are from countries not in the MMM area (Vietnam, Thailand, Cambodia) so the first two days of meetings did not affect them. Tonight a group of us walked along the beach into the town of Hua Hin, about a kilometer away. There was no moon but plenty of stars, and the fluorescence in the water tonight was magnificent. When certain plankton are disturbed, they emit a cool light like a firefly. Tonight the white curling edges of waves coming ashore would turn bright blue as we walked along. Once in town, we headed for an Italian ice cream shop we discovered on previous trips, and then we walked through a night market set up along several blocks on one of the main streets. Our two newest members had their first taste of durian, an Asian fruit with a strong taste and even stronger smell. Durian is commonly said "to taste like heaven and smell like hell."
21 January	Maryknoll Association, Congregation, Society Meetings Asia Units Meeting	The first part of the morning was given to meetings of what we call the three "sending groups," that is the Maryknoll Society (priests and brothers), Congregation (sisters), and the Association (lay people and associate priests). In the Association's meeting, our Asia area coordinator gave a report on the last leadership team meeting in November, the first to take place in Asia itself, and brought us up to date on various changes in the MMAF structure and administration and then briefed us on the current status of several issues under discussion. Then the members from all the Maryknoll countries in Asia met together to hear reports about what is happening in the other sending groups and to make joint plans for future activities that affect us all. In the afternoon, the large group meeting continued as we planned next year's retreat and meetings here at Hua Hin.
22 January	Free Day	Today was a free day, a break between the business meetings and the retreat that starts tomorrow. Many of our group took a song-tag, a pickup truck taxi, to the Buddha Caves about an hour away. They are a series of deep cavernous rooms underground, with occasional openings to the sky that let in spectacular shafts of sunlight. Over the years hundreds of Buddha statues, big and small, have been placed in the caves. Two others from our group and I went to a peak nearby where there is a huge standing Buddha statue placed on a rocky point on the Gulf of Thailand. The place is invested with aggressive monkeys that are a real nuisance. One tried to grab the shoulder bag I was carrying to see if it had any food in it. From there we walked back along the beach to the retreat center, about 1 1/2 hours up the coast.
23-27 January	Retreat	23 January We began our retreat this morning. Sr. Helen Graham, MM, is a Maryknoll Sister with a doctorate in scripture. She teaches in the seminary in the Philippines. Today she outlined her program for the week, showing us a plan for looking at Luke 4, especially from an Old Testament perspective. She brought along many documents from the church and the United Nations which she plans to relate to her theme. Today we had presentations by Helen in the morning, and the afternoon was given to our own reflection. So far so good! At lunch the sister and priest here from Nepal received news that another Maryknoll sister, one of their colleagues, had died this morning of a heart attack in Kathmandu. They hurriedly changed their plane reservations and an hour or so later returned to Bangkok to fly back to Nepal tomorrow. 24 January It's probably a misnomer to call this week a "retreat." Basically it's a scripture workshop, and today we continued the Old Testament themes that underlie Luke's chapter four. We looked especially at the idea of sabbath, and then at the ideas in Isaiah (which Jesus quotes in Luke 4) about giving sight to the blind, hearing to the deaf, etc. These were to be signs of the jubilee. Then we began to look specifically at the text of Luke 4. We also met in small groups to discuss the ideas that have arisen in these talks, looking at what they mean in our own lives and mission contexts. This afternoon we had a more solemn liturgy than usual to acknowledge the special nature of the sabbath/Sunday which Christians celebrate as a day of resurrection. I was the celebrant, and the liturgy turned out pretty well from the comments afterwards. We involved a lot of people in various ministries. This evening about 20 of us went into Hua Hin for dinner at an Italian restaurant, ostensibly to thank Roberto for arranging our daily social gatherings before supper. Of course we stopped for ice cream at the Italian gelato shop on the way back. This year they have a blue viagra ice cream. Tastes like blueberry to me! One of our group trying to check for viruses on a floppy disk has disabled the A: drive on the comuter we use for e-mail. No computer stores were open to get a head cleaning kit which is all we need so I was not able to update the home page today. 25 January This morning continued looking at Luke's gospel. Some of the background on the Hebrew and Aramaic language has been very interesting and exciting to many in our group who have not been exposed to those concepts before. Those of us in the seminary in the 1960s and later welcome the chance to have the ideas refreshed for us. Again the theme today was to connect the ideas of Luke 4 with ideas of jubilee from Isaiah, Deuteronomy, and Leviticus and the Psalms. After the morning talk I went to a computer store across the street and found they didn't have a head cleaning kit for 3.5" disks! I can't believe it! They had five or six sets of cleaning disks for 5.25" drives although I can't imagine who would be using them. Or maybe the level of technology here is such that most people still use the large floppy disk size. 26 January We continued the study of Luke 4 today, expanding our survey to include Luke's version of the Lord's Prayer. In the afternoon we had a question and answer period to address particular queries that different members of the group had. This evening at 5:00 PM we had a liturgy in which one of the priests renewed his temporary oath with the Maryknoll Society (the priests and brothers). He was formerly an Associate priest like me but decided to make a permanent commitment with the Society to ensure that he could stay in mission service. The daughters of one of our families from southern Thailand danced two Thai dances as part of the ceremony. I spent a good part of the day creating disks for people who wanted a copy of the F-Prot anti-virus software. We are also creating disks with the HTML editor called Dida for people to begin to learn how to make their own home pages. 27 January We had our closing liturgy at 8:00 AM this morning, led by a priest from Japan who introduced some zen elements into the celebration. Then we finished up our workshop talks with a final presentation on Luke's gospel. Today's session focused on the five "rich man" stories and the "banquest" stories in Luke. After the session we had a group photograph, and then it was time for lunch and a free afternoon for everyone who is still here. I wrote a quick letter to Mom and then walked down the beach to town to the post office and bought some stamps. Then I walked through the main market of Hua Hin. I was looking for a Thai machete, partly out of curiosity about what they looked like, and partly from interest in buying one to use on some of my hikes in Hong Kong. The ones I found were quite different from my traditional idea of a machete--and quite a bit larger than the ones I am used to also. These were almost two feet long, much too long to be carrying around in HK! From there I went on to a store where I bought some more floppy disks for the computer, and then I walked along the beach at the far end of town, where we tend not to go since it's at the opposite end of town from our retreat center. I checked out some fishing boats along a jetty, and then walked back along the beach. The rest of the afternoon and early evening I prepared some floppy disks for various of our members to use to make home pages. Many are interested but don't have the tools so I gave them a copy of Dida HTML editor, a freeware, and PKUNZIP to uncompress it. Tonight we had a special goodbye supper arranged for us by the retreat center manager. It was a very enjoyable meal and we had a chance to thank the kitchen crew in person.
28 January	Travel Day Hua Hin to Bangkok	This morning our bus to leave the retreat center at Hua Hin was scheduled for 8:00 AM. This afternoon, after arriving in Bangkok, I visited the site in one of Bangkok's biggest and worst slums where a priest friend of mine is working with abandoned street children in a run-down area around the docks. He and I entered Maryknoll together in 1987, and he was assigned to Chile. Now, though, he has decided to join Maryknoll as a permanent member (before he and I were temporary members), and he has been assigned here to Thailand. A Redemptorist priest has started a hospice for AIDS patients, several shelters for orphans and abandoned children, 30+ kindergartens and a full school, and community programs for the slum dwellers, most of whom work in a slaughterhouse. My friend is working with him now. We went back to the Maryknoll center house for supper, and then two others and I took a taxi to the Christian Guest House where I was staying tonight. It's a neat place that caters to missionaries and their families. I like its homey-ness and its low rates, just $15 a night.
29 January	Travel Day Bangkok to Hong Kong	I got up at 5:30 AM at the Christian Guest House and walked in the dark out to Silom Road where I waited for the airport bus (70 baht) rather than take a taxi (330 baht). I must have just missed a bus because I had to wait 31 minutes, but with the new expressways the trip to the airport only took 35 minutes. I checked in and then ate at Burger King before boarding the Gulf Air flight back to HK. In Hong Kong I walked off the plane at 1:23 PM and at 1:34 I already had my suitcase and had cleared immigration and customs and was on the street heading for the airport bus! Eleven minutes must set some sort of record for getting out of an airport after an international flight! Back at home I started putting things away and catching up on the faxes and e-mails that in during my absence. Then I prepared our RCIA class which we have every Friday night.