Day 3: Collaborative Efforts

Dear readers, if any of you ever plans a conference, please do this: 1) fill it with all the amazing things you want people to hear and do, with speakers, committee mtgs, tea breaks, meals. 2) cut 25%.

In the few opportunities that I've had in between our sessions to speak with people, I've had the most amazing conversations. I attended a session today to hear a case study of MDG work being done in Zambia. It was interesting and a lot of thought went into preparing it. We listened for 2 hours, having already been to a 2 hour session and heading to another. At the end of it I was able to talk to the young man sitting next to me. He was Henry from Tanzania, and is involved with an HIV/AIDS ministry there. He shared with me the kind of work he does and the kind of difficulties that are involved with it. He described the great partnerships in his diocese with ERD and Carpenters Kids through the Diocese of New York. (The New York program is of interest to me as a model for how the KY partnership with Hannah Ministries could grow.)

Later I had a conversation with another new friend about the complicated issues involved in a US response to the MDGs. 'Don't we have our own problems?' people often ask. As we discussed this we were joined by a young man from Southern Malawi who added much to our discussion and shared with us information about the MDG work being done in his own diocese.

These conversations are at least as valuable as the formal sessions, and I hope to find myself in many more of them.