Plants, teaching and travel to come

This week is an office week – catching up on emails, planning for future teaching, study, etc. [left: Mary's plants are finally gathered after other folks have cared for them for two years]






Recently Mark attended the Australian Association for Mission Studies (AAMS) conference in Canberra (2-5 October). He presented a paper as did several other AAANZ folks – It was a good networking opportunity.

Mary participated in the AAANZ tele-conversation with Tim Costello on 4 October. She joined others at the Longleys for the call.

9 October we hosted a young Korean couple who were on their honeymoon in OZ. The husband is interested in Anabaptism and would like to go to theological school in the future.

18 October, Mary helped lead a half-day retreat with Sally Longley. Mary has also been working with Doug Sewell on getting PayPal up and running (as well as her usual run of phone calls and visits with people).


[Right: Mary presenting the Peacebuilding wheel by Barry Hart]


20-24 October we taught a course on “Community-Based Trauma Healing” through the Peacebuilders International programme here in Sydney. Mary put the course together and was the main instructor with Mark assisting. [Below: class participants]













The Tuesday evening during the week we attended their annual dinner. The course was taught at The Kings School so we had at least two hours of driving each day as well as eight hours of teaching. These courses are exhausting but worth it in the affect that they have on people around the world. We had students from nine countries from around the Pacific and Africa We hear stories from past students and others about how what we teach gets applied in their countries.
[Below: PNG Group illustrating their first thoughts on trauma]









Tonight we are scheduled to do a mediation session with a church in our local area but we are not sure if it is going ahead or not.

Some future events:
1 November – Speaking in a Blue Mountain’s house church
6-9 November – Attending the national Pace e Bene National Gathering, Adelaide (two day drive on either side)
10 November – Tabor College Adelaide, speaking on “Living As Peacemakers in Ministry”
17-21 November – Mark teaching a PPBI course on “Practices That Sustain Peacebuilders” (with Mary and Sally Longley assisting)
24 November – 15 December – Western Australia – We are planning for about ten days of AAANZ work in Perth and then some holiday time in the south of the state (Moriah joins us 3 December)
[Below: Each day of the trauma class we had circle time when we shared our views or experiences of trauma healing. This day we used photos to tell stories.]