The Streets of Rome

So I've now been back from being on holiday in Rome (17 Feb - 21 Feb) and I can certainly say I walked a good deal of the city of Rome.  I probably walked more than I have ever walked (at least over a five day period) ...I'm guessing at least between 15 and 20 miles the middle three days and at least 5 to 7 on the first and last day (when I was only there in the evening and the morning).  Can't be sure since I didn't have any real way of tracking my movements, but it was enough that my feet hurt more than they did when I ran the marathon earlier this year.  It got to a certain point where they just kept hurting, but I kept going...there was just too much I wanted to see.  Each night gave my body enough time to recover.

Rome reminded me a lot of Athens because of the ancient buildings interspersed throughout the city.  It differed from Athens by being substantially cleaner, looking relatively nice (compared to Athens which looked like it was falling apart), and being relatively smoke free (again compared to Athens and Paris which smoking seemed to dominate outdoors).  Most places I visited that did cost money didn't cost much more than 12 Euros.  I think one place cost 16 Euros (maybe the Vatican museum) and a couple cost as little as 6 Euros.  The two hour flight from London Gatwick wasn't too bad and the food was overall amazing.  Living there full time I think I would get sick of having mostly pizza/italian resturants around, but I guess it's a little like that in London with Pubs/fish and chips shops.

Some things to note:

• Wine in resturants is sold by the bottle - either small or large
• There's a reason Romans conquered the Greeks and not the other way around
• The Vatican, while amazing to visit, had an odd feel to it, partly because of the money spent (St Peter's and the Vatican Museum itself), and because of the massive wall surrounding it

Overall, a great trip.  Didn't spend much time "relaxing," but then again that's not really my type of holiday, at least not yet.  I'd go stir crazy if I tried to sit on a beach for a week.  While I've posted a couple of my favorite photos here, the full albums are on facebook.  Only 445 photos in all.    

The next two weeks I will be preparing for another BB course, this one for "Senior Church Leaders" e.g. those in positions of senior leadership or authority, whatever that means for their respective denomination, whether it is a Bishop, Archdeacon, or Rural Dean, etc... but tonight I am leading a "review of the emotional journey" of the past year for the local Mennonite Church.  I'm hoping it will be prove to be insightful and useful for members of the church, but there's really no way of knowing until it happens.

Also in the next two weeks the LMC Trustees will *most likely* be making some serious decisions about the future of the Centre.  Time is starting to slowly disappear, so their window for decision making is starting to close.  They've got two meetings in the first two weeks of March, so prayers for them as they work to come to a common mind on a couple of important issues would be appreciated.

- Sam

Latest TCC course, beyond, & a visit from Egypt MCCers!

The latest foundation course, which Bridge Builders' in London from 6-11 February, turned out to be quite a different experience all together.  It was the first course in which the lead trainer was non-existent for the first day of the course.  When we (Alastair, Liz, and I - the three trainers) gathered on Sunday evening to set up for a start on Monday Alastair was not looking good at all and seemed quite ill.  Upon returning to the LMC for the evening Liz and I set out a contingency plan to run the day without him and divided up his sessions between us.  Shortly thereafter we received word that he would not likely be in the next day and to do in fact what we had been planning. On a typical course Alastair is responsible for approximately 40-50% of the content, perhaps more on the first day, so Liz and I really needed to step up to the plate.  We did and it turned out to be a great day.  Alastair joined us on Tuesday and gradually integrated himself back into the course.  While perhaps a bit more stressful than Liz and I would have liked starting off, it was probably the best course we've led so far as a training team.

Below is a picture of the group of participants which we had on the course, I am in the front row. (a couple of people were unfortunately late for the picture, so they're missing)

  

This week has been catching up on work which has piled up whilst I've been away on the course and preparing myself for taking a short holiday in Rome, Italy.  I'm excited to see the sites of Rome, but also nervous in the sense that it is yet another country I'm visiting where I don't know the language.  I'd like to take another holiday sometime in either the end of March or early April, but I don't have anything too concrete yet.

On the London Mennonite Centre side of things there isn't a whole lot to provide for an update.  Decisions regarding any future location will need to be made, most likely over the next couple of months, but again, who knows what will actually pan out.  My hope is still that Bridge Builders will be able to remain co-located with the Centre.

For the last couple of days we've also been blessed to have some MCCers from Egypt staying at the Centre while they sort out their options for going back to Egypt (or not) with MCC.  It has been interesting to hear their stories and perspectives on what has been played in the international news media most recently and what it has been like for them on the ground in Egypt.  The MCC family that is here also has two young daughters (ages 5 and 8), who have been fun to have playing around the Centre.

In general I'd ask for continued prayers for LMC Trustees as they make decisions regarding the future of the LMC and for myself as I journey to Rome from 17 February until 21 February.

- Sam

Heard Tony Campolo speak in London

So I got the opportunity to hear Tony Campolo speak in London on Friday night (28 January 2011).  He was one of a couple of speakers for the speak network.  Very incredible speaker.  He has so much passion for life and for what he believes in.  One of which is supporting "speak."  It's a group made primarily out of mid-20s/30s who are concerned with issues of peace/justice.  I've been on their mailing list for a while, but typically have other work engagements whenever they've got events going on, so this was the first I was able to attend.  Tony gave a couple of stories from his experiences in life regarding mainly "doing what you can" in an effort to raise some money for speak.  We (the crowd) even got him to keep talking after he sat down for about the amount of time he spoke to being with...he's just got a lot of passion.

Speak is a group that has a lot of passion for what it does, but not the resources.  Sounds a bit like my life right now...  A group I'd like to get involved with, but don't know for sure whether anything will pan out due to my own work/life restrictions.

If you haven't heard Tony speak before and he's coming to an area near you - go to see him, he's well worth the trip.  This guy had an incredible itinerary before speaking with us in London...over the previous 2 weeks he was on the west coast for 3 days, then the east coast for another couple of days, back to the west coast, then back to the east coast, then to the UK - day in Ireland, N.Ireland, Scotland, Wales, then London, then back to the east coast... you get the idea - constant travel, no time for adjustment... incredible to do what he does (and at his age - 75).

Busy week coming up as we have a course starting in 1 week's time, lots to do.

Summary of Details from latest LMC Newsletter

A summary of details from a London Mennonite Centre Newsletter which was sent out in January of 2011.  If you would like the PDF copy of it, just contact me and I will e-mail it to you.  I can't post it easily here -not even the text only - I tried.

Letter is from - Jeremy Thompson, Chair of the London Mennonite Trust

Sale of the LMC was completed in December of 2010 for a sum of £3,250,000.  The agreement is for up to nine months until completion.

Bridge Builders (whom I work for), as a product of the London Mennonite Centre's ministry, is going to be granted a one time gift of £105,000 as it works toward becoming an independent Charity.   This should cover expenses incurred in the first two years of operation.  London Mennonite Trustees are still hoping for a possible co-location with Bridge Builders, dependent on an adequate future location, for both parties.

LMC Trustees would like to have a portion of the completed sale for use as an investment to bring in steady income for the future Centre.  They now have under £2,000,000 to work with, including renovation, for use to purchase a new Centre.

Trustees are also in the process of interviewing a possible North American candidate to become the future Director of the Centre.  This is an on-going process and will likely take up to a year from any accepted offers before the Director will arrive.

On a lighter and happier note, a longtime staff member of the Centre was married in November of 2010.

Do let me know if you would like a copy of the PDF.

- Sam

Reboot

So I'm going to try and reboot my blog.  Basically I fell off the wagon in posting and now need to get back into it.  The last six months have been very busy and very much a roller-coaster so I won't attempt to bring everything up to date (beyond a summary), but rather start off on a new foot from today.  I'm going to try to post three different streams with each new post.  One related primarily to the work I do with Bridge Builders, one for my present "life," and one for my prayer requests.  First, a summary of the last 6 months or so...

Spring/summer 2010: 

I completed two additional Bridge Builders courses in June and July, the Church Leadership and Family Systems course, run by Richard Blackburn of the Lombard Mennonite Peace Center, and the Mediating Interpersonal Conflicts course run by Alastair, Colin, and Jo Williams (Director of BB, Assistant Director of BB, and associate trainer respectively).  I particularly enjoyed the course on family systems given the emphasis on looking at your family history through a genogram.  August was a rather quiet month work-wise since the Bridge Builders' office is more or less closed since Alastair and Colin were on holiday the whole month.

Over the spring/summer months I geared myself up for training for the Loch Ness Marathon, starting my training in mid-June.  It consisted of running *only* 3 days a week and cycling twice a week.  I really really really enjoy cycling in London.  It gives me such an adrenaline rush as well as being good cardio.  I also cycled to Brighton from London (and rode the train back) in a day with Will Newcomb, one of the other staff of the LMC.  Definitely a worthwhile experience.  I hadn't ever cycled more than about 30 miles in a single day and we did a total of 73-4 miles or something like that.

Autumn/early winter 2010:

In the autumn we ran two additional "foundation courses" (the week-long Transforming Church Conflict course), one in September, one in late October/early November in London and Cheshire, respectively.  The second course was followed by our "Training of Trainers" course, which I was a participant on last year, so my role this year was basically doing a lot of the prep work for the course, but letting Alastair and Colin get on with it since it was a very short course (3 day).

In the beginning of October I ran the Loch Ness Marathon in a time of 3 hours 27 minutes.  It really whipped me hard.  I was really really tired when I got done.  Basically I went out way way way too fast.  The general flow of the course was the first 8-9 miles being downhill, 10-16 being "undulating", 17-20 being uphill, and 21-26.2 being mostly downhill or flat.  Running down really really steep hills for the first 8-9 miles took a beating on my legs.  I screamed through the half point in under 1 hour 35 minutes, which was a personal record for a half marathon for me, but I still had another half to complete after that.  The next half started to go downhill (not literally yet) until after mile 16.  After mile 20 (the last hill) I was truly hurting.  My quads and calfs were starting to get "mini-cramps" so I periodically was trying to  stretch/loosen them out and trying to take in as much fluids as possible to postpone any further cramping. Overall, a beautiful marathon, but not one to shoot for a decent time on.  I still ran faster than my first marathon, which was on a flat course, by about 7 minutes, so I guess I have something to be proud of, even though I didn't finish the way I wanted.

In November I got the opportunity to go to Vermont and Pennsylvania for Thanksgiving due to the "Moyer grant" - a.k.a. Mom & Dad.  It was really a good trip where I got the chance to see many family and church friends.  It reminded me how long I've been gone and particularly how much some of my cousin's kids have grown.  Not seeing their kids (or them or their parents :-) ) more regularly is one of the drawbacks to being overseas.

Christmas this year consisted of multiple "family traditions" of those living or in close connection to the LMC.  Traditions included: making gingerbread houses, eating oyster stew, eating seafood quesadillas, and eating eggs benedict (my own family tradition which I altered by making half a batch as eggs benedict and the other half as eggs florentine - for 9 people).  Notice how all of our traditions revolved around food :-)

So far in 2011:   

Bridge Builders' has been very busy since the start of the year.  We've got two week-long foundation courses in early 2011, one in February in London, and one in March in Sheffield.   Although they are still a ways away, we've got a lot of prep work to do for each course, some of which is administrative, such as making course manuals, sending out a mailing, making sure people have paid, etc... and some of which is planning how we will do things differently on each course.  I've also got a lot of misc. projects going on at the moment, mostly in preparation for Bridge Builders' eventual separation from the LMC Trust to become an independent charity.

I've done a bit of planning for some holidays to take in 2011, including a trip to Rome in mid-February (17-21) and a half-marathon in the end of May in Plymouth, England (my home town's namesake).  I look forward to both, but still would like to fit in another trip somewhere between the end of March and the beginning of May.  Mulling over a few ideas, but nothing concrete yet.

I would ask for continued prayers for the London Mennonite Trustees as they work toward finding a new location for the LMC.  The Centre is now sold with completion of sale coming later in 2011.  There will be a "friends" letter from the Trustees *hopefully* by the end of January to update folks on it.  I'll try to remember to post the text of the letter here.  Until that time I can't give specifics on when the move will happen beyond that it will be after the springtime, but before 2011 ends.

I would also ask for prayers for myself as I ponder my future and what I might consider doing.  In my mind, I need to have figured out whether I want to pursue graduate school by the end of May, in order to provide adequate time for any possible letters of reference for applications due in late 2011/early 2012 for a start in the autumn of 2012.

Cheers!