The full day of board meetings always starts with a liturgy together with the staff and the new candidates applying to join Maryknoll Lay Missioners. Here Bill Bachmann, Joanne Blaney, Marj Humphrey, and Sarah Welch chat before the mass begins.
About 9:00 AM the board meetings began. There was a full agenda to be addressed this day. Some of the issues, like increasing retirement pensions for retiring lay missioners, are addressed regularly in the board meetings, others are new to the agenda and our attention.
Several members of the board were participating in their last board meeting as their terms expired and a significant amount of time was spent discussing board replacements and the timing of new members in the next two or three years.
There was not much time to enjoy the outdoors today–or even to get outside–but it was a beautiful warm day, more like spring than autumn.
Since the last board meeting, the executive director of Maryknoll Lay Missioners and the director of mission both resigned and were replaced. Part of the planning for this meeting was a thank-you dinner to show our appreciation for the tremendous commitment and work that Sam Stanton and Margo Cambier showed over a number of years. The board went out to eat, which we normally don’t do, but unfortunately Sam Stanton was sick and couldn’t come.