Gluten Free Quick Cheese Biscuits

Happy 5th day of Christmas!

I arrived back home in Sorrento on Friday after some time with the family in Savona for Christmas. I've spent the last two and a half days sleeping and indulging in what Netflix has to offer. I'm also in the midst of finishing Christmas cards which at this point in my life I can't ever imagine getting out to the post before Christmas Day! So, I've decided to embrace the 12 days of Christmas a bit more fully in a few different ways... one being that I've decided it's totally acceptable to send out cards between December 25 and January 1 (or even a bit later!). Accept it friends!

Today I managed to make a lovely pot of Chicken Vegetable Rice soup (I've been waiting to have time to make soups since fall arrived long ago) and a batch of Cheese Biscuits which you'll find the receipe for below. The original biscuit recipe was not gluten free but I adapted it slightly to make it so (I love to experiment with my baking and tend to make gluten free options for potlucks... it's always nice to have options!). To make it "non gluten free" just use your regular flour and omit the xanthan gum. 

It's been good to sleep, good to make cards and good to cook. 

Happy baking and resting, friends!

Gluten Free Quick Cheese Biscuits

(inspired by Canadian Living's recipe) 

Ingredients:

1 ¾ cups all-purpose gluten free flour

1 ½ tsp xanthan gum

4 tsp baking powder

1 tbsp granulated sugar

1 tbsp dried parsley

½ tsp salt

½ tsp garlic powder (I omitted)

¼ cup butter, cubed

1 cup shredded old Cheddar cheese

1 cup milk

In large bowl, whisk together flour, xanthan gum, baking powder, sugar, parsley, salt and garlic powder. Using pastry blender or two knives, cut in butteruntil mixture resembles coarse crumbs.

Add Cheddar cheese and milk, mixing with fork until ragged moist dough forms. Drop by ¼ cupfuls, 1 ½ inches apart, onto greased (or parchment paper lined) baking sheet.

Bake in centre of 425F oven for 13-15 minutes, or until lightly browned.

*To make not gluten free, replace the all-purpose gluten free flour with your basic all-purpose flour and omit xanthan gum. Continue with recipe as directed.

Cranberry Orange Muffins

These are fabulous! They passed the younger sibling test as well and that is always the big hump to get over. Makes about 12 muffins, was super quick and easy to make and really do taste delicious. 

The link to the original recipe is http://www.joyfulhealthyeats.com/cranberry-orange-muffins/#_a5y_p=1071720, I adapted it a bit. 

Ingredients

1 cup all purpose flour

1 cup whole wheat flour

1/2 cup sugar

1 teaspoon baking powder

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 cup cranberries

1 egg

3/4 cup orange juice

1/4 cup melted butter (could use melted coconut oil)

1 1/2 teaspoon grated orange zest

Instructions

Preheat oven to 400º.

In a large bowl, combine flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. Stir in cranberries.

In a small bowl, beat egg, orange juice, melted coconut oil, and grated orange zest.

Add wet mixture to dry ingredients, stir to combine until it is just moistened.

Spray muffin tin with PAM or put in paper liners and spoon mixture into tin until 3/4 full.

Bake for 15-20 minutes until lightly browned.

Remove and serve! :)

Wordless Wednesday

The November image on my wall calendar gave me this piece of wisdom... 

WCC Assembly - Heading Home

The time has come and I am now en-route to home... I left my hotel at 10am Saturday morning (in Busan) for a 2pm flight. I had a two hour layover in Tokyo and then entered into the 8+ hour flight to Vancouver. It all went smoothly and I think I managed to even get around 5 hours of sleep/rest on the flight to Vancouver.

I arrived in Vancouver and did the lengthly customs, picking-up luggage, checking into next flight, dropping off luggage and going through security for the third time. I've had a six hour layover in Vancouver, I'm at the tail end of it now with two hours to go. I had a lovely and lengthly call with my mom while I had lunch. It was good to hear a familiar voice. I am tired but not as tired as I could be.

At this point I plan on driving out to Sorrento - I'm ready for familiar space. I'm now in the debate of what tomorrow will look like... I am contemplating a trip to town so I can see familiar and friendly faces and connect with some of my family before I take off on Tuesday for my next meeting. We'll see how I feel tomorrow morning.

It's been a long Saturday... I feel like it might never end.

I need to say a huge thank-you to so many of you who have written to me via email or Facebook. Please know that your notes, photos, words, love and prayers have been been so appreciated as I've been on this journey. I'm not sure if it would have gone this smoothly without knowing that you're all out there! I wish I had had time to respond to all of your messages while I was away or even in the next few days - know that I've treasured them nevertheless. I look forward to connecting with you all soon and also sharing more about the Assembly in the weeks to come.

WCC Assembly - November 8, 2013

Morning Prayer this morning touched me, my heart, and my spirit. Language has not proven not to be a barrier in worship. We have the text of the service and prayers before us while pieces of the service are daily said in different languages. What happens in the space is that we speak prayer… no matter the language, age, or gender.

Anglican Church of Canada delegates ready for
Closing Prayer

And we sing… Together the prayers of our songs are lifted up to God. In song too we sing in multiple languages as a way of gathering together our voices. 

Today was different. Today in the service the act of foot washing was celebrated... As a gathered body of Christian churches from around the world we currently cannot gather together at the Holy Table in celebration of the Holy Eucharist because of our different understandings around Eucharist. For me (with my background of one where the Eucharist is central to my life) this morning foot washing became that gathering together as Jesus taught us. Only a small group of people took part but we all felt part of the act itself. We were all humbled to our knees in service to one another. It's where we came together... Different denominations, genders, ages, cultures, languages, backgrounds… we were one sharing together in the actions of Jesus.

Foot Washing - WCC Photos

It was the image of the elderly man kneeling before a middle-aged woman who washed her feet... It was the moment where their hands met in an embrace and she supported him in rising from his knees. It was seeing the General Secretary wash the feet of a young person… It was the deep care and love for one another… it was the gathering of us all together in the midst of this humble action. This is what brought my eyes to tears; this is where I truly saw unity in God’s church… within God’s beloved family.

After worship we had two very long Business Plenary sessions where lots got done (more details on some of the statements past to come), we said lots of thank-yous to staff, volunteers, stewards, the host committee, etc… And then we gathered together for our Closing Prayer time.

Melissa, Nick, Father Michael, Emily

Closing Prayer was good, we heard a very powerful sermon from Father Michael Lapsley, (You can read his sermon here) and gathered our voices together in song and prayer one last time. Unfortuenly during our time of Intercessory Prayers the unexpected happened and we were reminded that not all Christians want the ecumenical WCC movement to succeed (let alone to be in Korea). I've talked about the protesters that have been around in a previous post but today was different... today didn't feel like a peaceful protest. One of the protesters rushed onto the stage while the intercessions were being prayed and as quickly as that happened he was briskly swept off the stage by some men who were dressed in plainclothes but who I imagine were police officers or other security who had been very present during the whole Assembly. It was unexpected and it definitely shook a number of us up. 

Back to where I began... the beach on my last night

This evening was spent on the beach and then with some of the delegates for dinner. I've also spent significant time packing this evening (my goodness I've been away for a long time!). I reach the end of this Assembly feeling excited, tired, full, hopeful, grateful and challenged. I have half written blog entries everywhere so I imagine that I'll keep reflecting for a long time. 

I leave tomorrow (Saturday) at 10am on a shuttle bus for my 2pm flight and begin the long journey home. As much as I am truly ready to be home I also feel like I've only just started. 

At the end of Father Michael's sermon he concluded with this prayer which I will hold with me as I journey:

May God bless you with a restless discomfort about easy answers, half-truths and superficial relationships, so that you may seek truth boldly and love deep within your heart.

May God bless you with holy anger at injustice, oppression, and exploitation of people, so that you may tirelessly work for justice, freedom, and peace among all people.

May God bless you with the gift of tears to shed with those who suffer from pain, rejection, starvation, or the loss of all they cherish, so that you may reach out your hand to comfort them and transform their pain into joy.

May God bless you with enough foolishness to believe that you really CAN make a difference in this world, so that you are able, with God's grace, to do what others claim cannot be done.

- Benedictine Sister Ruth Fox, 1985

WCC Assembly - November 6, 2013

"God of life, lead us to do justice in today's world!"

This was the overall theme of today and the plenary started with a few important questions:

Theme Plenary on Justice

• What kind of world are we living in?
• What kind of world will they (children) be living in in 20-30 years from now?

And went on to remind all of us that were gathered in the auditorium that we can't achieve justice or peace without Christ, that Christ is the hope with us and justice is incarnate. If we believe that Christ is with us then we must believe that we are the hands of Christ and justice in the world. How do we take our authority and speak for all of those who have no voice? The work towards justice cannot be an option one... as we believe in a God of justice we (as individuals and churches) must go into the world and hold our governments, community and local organizes accountable. 

The plenary session ended with being challenged/reflecting on what we can do when we leave Busan... how we can go home and do both prayer and action. How we can go home and advocate for justice in our community and in our world... that we go and find all of those who fight for justice and who question the injustice of the systems in our world today and stand side-by-side with them. 

• What will you do?
• What stories will you listen to when you go home?

I had my first lunch break without any meetings in longer then I can remember. Unfortunately due to the fact that we did not complete the Nominations work the other night we had a special closed Business Plenary session at 1pm (we normally don't meet until 2pm) to finish that work. And have much conversation and voting we finally elected a new Central Committee. Yahoo!! (Seriously, this was a lot of work!)

Much of the rest of the day was filled with Business Plenary sessions where we heard many reports, read many recommendations and did much voting. We've put a small dent (read 2/11) in the Public Issues statements and there are already some recommended changes in the documents so we meet again at 9am tomorrow to get some work done on those! 

Evening Prayer 

Evening Prayer tonight was led by the local Korean Churches and followed the traditional structure of a Korean Wednesday service. Sounds pretty cool, eh? The problem was that the Canadian delegates planned to gather for dinner this evening after Evening Prayer and this evening prayer was scheduled for an extra 30 minutes in order to follow the traditional structure of the service. A group of us were still wanting to attend and decided that 9pm dinner wasn't the end of the world. We walked into the worship hall which was packed and discovered on our chairs a 74 page worship book for the evening for each of us... now, I'm sure that part of the reason for the size was due to the fact that the service was translated into five languages but even after a quick scan of the service we realized that there was much choral singing, scripture reading, two sermons, page after page of prayers with time for silent and loud prayer after each section, and more singing. By the time that we had gotten through the sermons and the first section of prayer it was 8:40pm and there was at least an hour to go. So some of us snuck out while other stayed. 

Canadians gather for dinner. Photo: Bruce Myers

It's a service I probably would have loved staying until the end for, but at this point in the Assembly and at that hour the day I was not ready to be in worship until 10pm and then gather with folks afterwards. I will take the resource home though and read through the prayers more carefully... and dinner... it was simply just wonderful to gather with friends old and new!

WCC Assembly - November 5, 2013

The theme of today has been unity and so this morning we attended the Theme Plenary Session on Unity. Some things that stood out to me from this mornings presentations:

• unity is grounded in the communion of love
• unity is about becoming a community where gender, age, sexuality, colour, race, economic status, etc… are being challenged and understood
• unity is about dancing and singing together in the rich diversity of our cultural backgrounds
• our unity is in the living word of God – this is our true hope… this is our only hope… to meet God in the places and people where we don’t expect
• when you can no longer afford dis-unity you start to come together in the unity of Christ

Bishop Mark MacDonald, in his presentation during this plenary session said, “at 50 below zero denominational differences disappear” based on his experience in Alaska. Can you imagine this being the case when it’s not 50 below zero… that we as churches can come together to work on issues of peace and justice, to gather for prayer, to provide opportunities for our young people to gather and share… that we can get to a place where we are not all trying to do the same thing but coming together to put our common passions together. That together we let our differences stand and join hands in the love of Christ to make a difference in our communities and world?

Taize singing - from WCC photos

During this Plenary Session we each wrote on a piece of paper a prayer for unity, these were then collected in a basket and gathered together at the front of the stage. The Plenary Session concluded with the singing of Ubi Caritas led by Brother Richard of the Taize Community. This was probably one of the most powerful moments of the Assembly so far... a small group of people sitting in a semi-circle on the stage facing away from the audience gathering us through song in this prayerful time of reflection. 

The Ecumenical Conversation on the Advocacy for the Rights of Children had their last session and a document is being sent to the Assembly / the new Central Committee (the body that meets between Assemblies). 

Evening Prayer tonight was exactly what I needed... it was prepared by the Catholic Church and led by one of the Nuns from the community. It has moments of silence and the energy was peaceful and calm. We sang, accompanied by a harp and song leaders, we prayed, we read scripture and the Canticle of Mary was shared with soloists singers and Korean body language dancers. This was a wonderful way to end a full day as our time here begins to come to an end. 

The rest of my day for the most part was filled with the final work on the Public Issues documents which soon need to start being reviewed by the Business Plenary Sessions.

WCC Assembly - November 4, 2013

Today is the start of my last week here in Busan. We have four more days after today together as the WCC Assembly and I think we have a fair amount of work still to go. I never thought I'd say this... But things are going by so quickly! 

Friends back home: you have just had that beautiful night where you get an extra hour of sleep as the time falls back. Well, daylight savings time does not exist here in Korea, this means that I've totally been robbed of my extra hour of sleep for this year. This also means that there is now a 17-hour time difference between here and home. Sleep calls my name. 

During Morning Prayer today we sang Peace like a River, a song that has been part of my children and youth ministry life since it started. We sang the second verse in Korean with English being sung on both sides of the middle verse. There were no actions but the energy was still there. Check it out!

I was not in Bible Study or the first set of Madang workshops this afternoon due to the continued work of the Public Issues Committee. Alongside deep editing of statements we have moments of debate over what in reflection are somewhat small things… but this is the work of the committee: to get the document as close to perfect as possible so that there is a higher chance of it being approved by the Assembly Business Plenary session. We are so close to being done, tomorrow we start reviewing the last document and after that they will start being looked at by the wider WCC Assembly group in Business Pleanary, I imagine there will be some slight edits and changes after it goes through that part of the process.

I attended the Ecumenical Conversation on Churches’ Advocacy for Children’s Rights where using the world café model we explore some questions on:

•        Empowerment and Participation of children as agendas for justice and peace
•        The protection of Children’s Rights
•        Prophetic witness and advocacy
•        Theology and Spirituality

There were three questions at each station often around affirmations, challenges and actions. I’m sure I’ll have lots to share after our last session together tomorrow if today’s wonderful conversations say anything.

Our Business Plenary session this evening was a closed session meaning that only delegates (read: no advisors, participants, guests, etc…) were part of session. The session received and reviewed the third report of the Nominations Committee. Our eight presidents were elected by acclamation including Bishop Mark MacDonald, the National Indigenous Bishop for the Anglican Church of Canada, for North America!  We also were presented with the first draft of the slate for the Central Committee. The Nominations Committee had to get 220 nominations for the Central Committee and had to get that down to 150. After almost the whole session being spent hearing members concerns about the slate it was not approved by sent back to the Nominating Committee so we’ll come back to this work in another session.

Evening Prayer tonight was far from anything I’ve ever experienced… for me Evening Prayer is rather quiet, soft and reflective… tonight’s service was let by a Korean Pentecostal mega-church. They brought in a massive choir and for the most part things were rather loud. There was energy and much music, but for the most part things were a bit too loud and fast for my evening prayer likings! 

WCC Assembly - November 3, 2013

We were each given a bus number earlier in the week for
Sunday morning, when we arrived a BEXCO we found a
long line up of folks waiting for us! "Find your number!"

Sunday morning I had the opportunity to worship in the local Anglican cathedral. It was about an hours journey away from BEXCO and involved walking from the main road up some small roads to meet the church entrance. (Our bus also had a hard time finding it... we ended up at a different church as we tired to find the Cathedral and as a result the driver impressed us all with his amazing u-turn skills while down a teeny tiny back road!) 

New friends while waiting for the buses to church!

The Cathedral is a small parish space with about 50 parishioners on a Sunday morning. There were a few younger members along with some children. The choir was small but filled with powerful voices. A group of us from the WCC Assembly attended the service and felt so welcomed... The division that language can so often provide did not get in the way. We gathered together and filled our morning with prayers, singing, scripture and the gathering around the table. 

Road to church

Preacher and translator 

 

Lunch at the Cathedral 

It was a powerful moment during the breaking of the bread when together in our different languages we said together, "we differ one from another, but sharing in the one bead, we become one body". We were assisted throughout the service by an amazing translator who translated the sermon (a visiting Bishop preached) from English to Korean and translated announcements from Korean to English.  After the service we were invited into the parish hall for lunch, like in Canada a group of dedicated parishioners (here it was probably all women) prepared a traditional lunch for us. I was told it was anchovies soup... A broth with pieces of fish cakes, zucchini, noodles and some other types of fish along with a plate of salad, sweets, mandarin oranges and kimchi - both the traditional spicy and a non spicy white kimchi. I ended up at a table with some of the young women from the parish who spoke English. We were able to share stories of parish life, family life, and my experience of Korea over lunch. I shared with them a photo of my brothers and sisters and they were beyond surprised by the size of my family. What an honour to be in their midst. 
 I had to leave the parish gathering after lunch as the Public Issues committee had plans to continue working back at BEXCO from 3pm - 8:30pm. So a group of us said goodbye to our new friends and boarded the bus to head back to our work. 

 Back to the bus

The Public Issues group put in some dedicated time on Sunday, we worked until we could no longer negotiate grammar and sentence content and structure anymore. When I got back to the hotel myself and one of the committee members decided to grab a drink and some dinner. It was great to just sit and chat about parish ministry in our local context and share the joys and challenges facing our churches today. By the time I got back to my room I enjoyed a relaxing shower and went straight to bed (hence why this is a day late!).

WCC Assembly - November 2, 2013

Where I spent all of sunny Saturday! 

This weekend is titled "Ecumenical Pilgrimage for Peace with Korean Churches" on our WCC Assembly agenda. The Korean Host Committee has invited delegates and participants of the Assembly to take part in a weekend pilgrimage for justice and peace "to deepen their ecumenical fellowship with the Korean churches and to immerse themselves in the life and struggle of Korean people and society." (Assembly Handbook) A large group of people got up early this morning and boarded high-speed trains to head to Seoul for their pilgrimage and another group of people stayed in Busan to participate in pilgrimages here in town. On Sunday morning we join local parishes for worship.

I spent my short lunch break in the sun!!

Sounds exciting, doesn't it?! I can't wait to hear all about the different pilgrimages people experience... my weekend pilgrimage is with the Public Issues committee. That's right, committees use this weekend to get a whole lot of work done. The working group on "The Human Rights of Stateless People" statement pretty much finished their work the other day so today I worked with "The Human Rights of Stateless People" working group and together we attached the draft statement before us. I am learning tons, and I'm not even exaggerating that! I left my resource book on Stateless People in our meeting room so some pieces that really touched me while reading background information will be shared later on.

So, the process of this committee is that we review all the proposed statements, minutes and resolutions that are sent to us in the first 24 hours of the Assembly, figure out which ones meet the criteria and then present a list to the Assembly seeking their guidance and consensus so we can move forward with our work (this was done yesterday). Today we met from 9:15am until 5:15pm and for most of the day we worked in small groups on the different documents before us. As I mentioned, I worked on the "Statement on Abyei" document which is about a critical situation that has been ongoing in Abyei in South Sudan. (I *loved* our working group!! The world is filled with such lovely people.)

The "Statement on Abyei" working group. 

The process continued into the afternoon when we gathered back as a whole plenary group and started reviewing the documents that had been revised by working groups. How can I explain this process to you... Well, have you ever been part of the process of writing a vision statement with a group of people? Can you remember that moment after you've done the brainstorming and you're now trying to agree on the final set of words, language, order, etc...? That part of the process that just seems to never end? Well, in some ways that is what this is like. The document is projected on the screen and is read paragraph by paragraph, word by word in order to make sure that the Public Issues group is at a

"Official Dinner"

consensus with with is going forward to the Assembly. This process takes a long time, I'm sure that we'll be up all night tomorrow working through the rest of the documents. Today we got through two documents (and we'll have to review some changes in one of them tomorrow), one of those documents was eight pages long. We have somewhere around ten documents before us. To add a bit more pressure on the process we learned this afternoon that all of our documents need to be sent to the WCC office in Geneva by 10pm on Sunday night (tomorrow) so that they can be translated into the other four official languages used by the WCC.

Clam shells in my soup!

I'm interested and fascinated by this work and am so grateful to be part of it... but my goodness, it's a lot of work! Thankfully we have an amazing moderator and amazing staff support and overall great people to work and laugh with.

After a full day of work this evening we were all invited to the Official Dinner hosted by Busan Metropolitan City and the Mayor of Busan. It was a great dinner with good company and some amazing and fun cultural performances with Korean drummers and fan dancers! Thank you Busan for a great evening!

Korean Fan Dancers 

Are you wondering about the above photo? Well... those of you who know me well know that I'm not really a fan of fish and seafood. I've learned how to eat and even appreciate/enjoy some fish like salmon or cod but anything like scallops, clams, lobster, shrimp, etc... just doesn't work for me. Well, at tonight's dinner there was a soup filled with a few different types of seafood, soft tofu and mushrooms. I've been trying to be "adventurous" and was doing alright but then I caught site of the clam shells at the bottom of my bowl... never in my life did I expect that I'd be encountering clam shells in my soup! I enjoyed the broth, tofu and mushrooms and ignored the mysterious/"I don't know what to do with you" things. It was fun, nevertheless!

WCC Assembly - Friday, November 1

Business Plenary seating....

I can't believe it's November 1st... before I know it we'll be at Christmas and if I blink the WCC Assembly will be over. As I've accepted every day will be, today was another very full day. I'm not saying it was bad or too much just full of richness in many different ways.

This morning in our Theme Plenary session we heard greetings from the Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby. I met him briefly yesterday, he is a very nice and humble man - what a gift he is to the Anglican Communion. You can listen to or read his remarks here. Here is one of the pieces that resonated with me:

Archbishop of Canterbury shares greetings

"When we look to God our eyes are turned outwards to His world, and we hear again the command, as Pope Francis said, to be a poor church for the poor. The children of Christ act instinctively to love those who suffer, as He loves us. If justice faints, hope fades. But when justice is loved, and lived, the poor have hope and the whole world begins to sing. Our vision has to be of God and God’s world and the Church made sense of in that perspective."

Rev Nicholas Pang reads the Gospel during our Eucharist
of all the Saints service

There is lots from the Theme Plenary session on Asia today that I'd like to reflect on but I'm afraid that will have to wait until tomorrow (or somewhere thereafter!). This evening we gathered for Confessional Meetings... so all the delegates from the Anglican Communion from around the globe met together at a nearby hotel. Our evening was a lovely one together filled with sharing and listening, receiving many greetings, celebrating the Eucharist of All Saints together (I'm loving worship at the Assembly but there was something absolutely lovely and relaxing about the familiar Anglican service), and enjoying dinner together. I had great conversations with fellow Anglicans which were encouraging and filled with laughter and joy... common connections and experiences alongside unique stories. Our program went late which means that dinner was served at 9:15pm and I didn't get back to my room until just before 11pm. I'm taking note that if I'm every planning an event where there is translation taking place (everything we did tonight was in English and Korean) to make sure to add extra time... everything takes double time. In terms of the sermon though, it add lots of extra reflecting time on each and ever sentence which wasn't a bad thing at all (maybe a method to adopt?!)

And incase you were wondering... overnight Christmas
arrived at Starbucks here in Busan! 

Like I said... it was all very wonderful and inspiring but it's now time for bed as there is no sleeping in tomorrow! Canada friends: Enjoy November 1st - it was wonderful here, I hope it's the same for you!

WCC Assembly - Thursday, October 31

Today was my first day with committee meetings. I serve on the Public Issues Committee which prepares public statements for adoption by the assembly. We meet throughout the Assembly mostly during our lunch breaks but our small working groups (I'm currently on the group that is working on the draft of the "Human Rights of Stateless People") meet at other times (usually during breaks or the evening if required). We will also spend all day Saturday and Sunday afternoon meeting together.

So, why do I say "first day with committee meetings" like it makes a difference? Well... because it does! During our committee orientation and welcome we were told that this is the most labour intensive and demanding of all the committees (I'm pretty sure that over the last five year the meaning of my name has changed to "serves on committee that have way too much work!")... we are the visible face of the WCC, we are responsible for our voice in the world. It's very interesting work but it makes for very long days. I leave my hotel somewhere around 7:40am and I arrive back in the evening around 9:15pm, with meetings now taking up the lunch break it's taken the pace of the day to a whole new level. I am though, honored to be part of this important committee and work.

Our our way to the Theme Plenary session 

Some thoughts from the day:

- Our mornings (from 8:30-10:15am) are filled with prayer, scripture, song and study. We gather for morning prayer at 8:30 and from there move into our Bible study groups. I am in a small Bible Study group (small being around 50 people...) and will meet with the same group throughout the meeting. We break into about five smaller groups of 10 or so people as we spend time discussing and exploring the days reading. Today we looked at Genesis 2:4b-17.

Greetings from the Prime Minster of Korea

- In today's Theme Plenary session we received greetings from the Prime Minister of Korea. In order for this to happen we went through some tight security... our name tags were checked and we had to go through metal detectors before entering into the auditorium. The Prime Minister shared some comments with us and ended by saying "we hope that we can have peace in divided Korea and we hope that the WCC will pray for us as we hope for this peace."

- One of the highlights of my day was listening to Mr. Michael Sidibe who is the Executive Director of UNAIDS. Sidibe shared many stories with us and shared about the goal of having no new AIDS diagnosis and no more discrimination against those who live with the disease. He shared that we need a new paradigm of leadership, one that is more inclusive and more people focused... that in the treatment and prevention of HIV/AIDS we need to reach people where they are in their families and communities. His dream is that by 2015 we will be able to say to the world, "no more babies are born with HIV."... We must be inclusive if we want justice and peace, heath care and education must be for all, no one should be left aside and all should have access to treatment.

Regional Meetings

     0 deaths due to AIDS
     0 discrimination
     0 new cases of HIV
I can't wait to see this become reality hopefully within my time. When you close your eyes can you see this dream coming true?

- I look part in the Ecumenical Conversation called "Evangelism today: new ways for authentic discipleship".

- We met in our Regional groups this evening for a meeting/conversation on the theme of the Assembly, how we as a region can impact the Assembly and the important issues in our region. This is the only time that we will meet as a region.

I have some reading on Human Rights of Stateless People to do before sleep takes over (and it's already past my bed time!) but you can see the second edition of Madang Live sharing what happened yesterday as the opening of the WCC Assembly took place here.