Today was the first full day of the retreat and Larry Lewis really delivered on his topic of “incompleteness” as a focus of a spiritual life.
Breakfast is at 7:00 AM, followed by morning prayer, and the Larry Lewis gave two talks for the rest of the morning.
The retreat center has several coffee machines installed and they are the center of attention at the morning break time.
In earlier years this gathering would have had 90 or 100 people attending but this year we are 47 Maryknollers from Asia. Retirement, death, and the closing of some areas of mission have reduced our numbers.
Maria Montello made a map to show where all those attending this year are working mission. The largest group is from Cambodia.
The morning always ends with a liturgy. Today it was organizaed by Nepal and East Timor. Rodrigo provided the rhythm section for the music.
Every year at our first liturgy we welcome those who are newly come to the Asia South region, and this year we received Sr. Susan, a Maryknoll Sister assigned to East Timor.
The food has always been good at the Salesian Retreat House but this year it seems even better. Today kitchen staff prepared a Vietnamese-style noodle soup to order for each hungry person.
We have a team that has prepared morning and evening prayers for all the days of the retreat.
Larry Lewis likes to use movies to illustrate themes he speaks about and tonight we were to watch Rider but found that the center’s DVD players were disconnected. We finally were able to play the movie through a laptop. Here the group is waiting while we hunt for a large external speaker to use for the audio.
