Once every 4 or 5 years each region of MTW has an Area Retreat. This year we had the Latin America one. There were about 300 people there from all over Latin America. We left home on Monday, Oct 9th. We drove to Atlanta, got a flight to Miami, then to Panama City. Then we had a 2-hour bus trip to the “Decameron.” It is an “all-inclusive” resort. There are lots of restaurants on the “compound,” and you can eat pretty much whenever and however much you want. Some places require a reservation to make sure there is enough room for everyone, and there are two buffet restaurants that do not require a reservation. On Tuesday I had meetings with the Latin America leadership team. The Latin America Area Retreat officially started on Wednesday evening. There were meetings in the morning from 8:30 until 10:15. Then a variety of seminars from 11:00-12:20. There was another meeting from 5:15 until 6:30. The rest of the time was free, although there were some other optional meetings. I gave a seminar (twice) on contextualization. There were some missionaries there who used to work in Japan and are now in the Spiritual Life department of MTW. They asked if I would go to Japan to present the seminar at their annual church planting conference. On Saturday there were excursions. Phyllis and Audrey went to Panama City and the Panama Canal. I was just getting off of crutches, so I stayed at the “compound.” We left Wednesday morning at 8:30, arrived in Panama City at 10:30, had lunch at the airport, took off at 1:15, arrived in Miami around 5:00, had supper with some missionaries who were on the same flight, took off again around 8:40, arrived in Atlanta at 10:30, took a shuttle to our van that we had left at the airport, and drove home. We arrived home at 1:30 in the morning (today).
Above: one of the restaurants
Inside one of the buffet restaurants
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All I can say is…we’re missionaries in the wrong (cold) part of the world! It looks tropical and beautiful there. Glad the seminars went well.
Ooooh, it was fun! 4 out of about 14 of the youth leaders were MKs and they gave their testimony and tat was really neat. The sentence topic of the youth was something like this; The gospel of Grace rooted in the Love of God leads us to surrender which allows us to live lives of Humility and Repentance. Each of the capitalized words (excluding The) was a topic for one of the days. We concentrated a lot on the love of God, and I thought it was good.It was nice to see friends again! There were times I felt a little left out of place, perhaps because I have been living in the states for 5 years and most of them are still living in Latin America. But I had fun! Thank you all for your prayers! I miss you all so much!
Audrey
I’m glad you had such a wonderful time! i wish I could have been there!!
Micah.