Right now, I'm getting ready to call Egypt and I
needed to get the phone number from an email message.
It's Sat. morning and it would have been nice to sleep
in, but that didn't happen!

This week, we had different sessions each morning and
afternoon for about 2 - 2 1/2 hrs each. Some of it
has been learning about Mennonite Central Committee
which is the organization doing all the planning for
our assignments. We also had a brief overview of what
is going on in our part of the world one afternoon.

Thursday morning and afternoon we had sessions on the
"theology of peacemaking and service". Those are 2
areas very important to the Mennonite church and I
learned quite a bit. It's also good to note that not
all the volunteers in this orientation are Mennonite
-- it's not a requirement. Christians who want to
serve and share values with the organization are
eligible, regardless of their denominational
association.

A couple of the mornings, we have had an opening
"devotional" time with a very dynamic African-American
pastor. That's good for waking us up! The first day
he came in and started us thinking about how we are
more like pilgrims on a journey into the unknown than
we are missionaries.

Friday morning, we discussed "power relationships",
but I was tired. It was good, but just very low key.
Lots about how if you have power, you need to
recognize that fact so that you can use it to help
people and/or keep it in check and not harm people.

That's been the official stuff so far. Beyond that,
I've been trying to meet and talk with lots of the
people here. There's definitely a "20-something"
group with 5 or 6 of us, but the older adults are
great too. More on that in my journal. I'm going to
post there later this afternoon and hopefully send out
the link.