May was a great month for our Mission staff. We started it out by enjoying a Mission staff retreat and with the blessing of receiving insight and sharing from the Director of Women Ministries of the Covenant in the U.S., Meagan Gillan. Her challenges to us each morning to go deeper in our individual spiritual journey with Christ left us with the challenge to spend one day in a solo retreat before the end of the year. Because much of our ministry is tied to being in touch and relating to our Colombian brothers and sisters, staying in communication with one another and with our families, friends and supporting partners in the U.S., taking some time for ourselves will be a blessing and a challenge. To some of you who may do this type of retreat regularly, that may sound like a simple task. However, we made a commitment to make it happen, as for some of us this will be a new experience.
It will probably take all of us working together to make sure that it does happen, which is a good thing. We should work together to spend some time apart, by ourselves, where according to Henri Nouwen in his book, “The Way of the Heart”, “Solitude is the place of the great struggle and the great encounter – the struggle against the compulsions of the false self, and the encounter with the loving God who offers himself as the substance of the new self.” (p. 14)
