WorldHope Corps

New York, Sunday, September 11, 2011.  How to observe the 10th Anniversary of 9/11?  Since I'm only an hour from Manhattan, I decided to take a train into the city and join my friend of 40 years, Rev. David Best, former pastor of the Lamb's and now Director of Towel and Basin ministries, to spent the the day together.  We met for a memorial service at his church--St. Mark's United Methodist Church--an historically significant,140 year old church in Harlem.  After lunch, we began our tour of Ground Zero (where we met facinating people from conspiracy wackadoodles to European vistors who felt deeply moved to visit NYC on this auspicious day.   We enjoyed the incredibly positive and spiritual energy in St. Paul's Chapel--spared by the destruction all around, and became a refuge for rescue works and sanctuary for many in the chaos. We stood outside St. Peter's Church where the famous 9/11 Cross  stood for ten years before being transferred to the 9/11 Memoria...

Ethiopian coffee may be the best in the world.  As least this is what I thought last week in Addis Ababa during our 5-day stop over in Ethiopia on the way back from our mission in Malawi.   Here's a family photo (minus Rachel who stayed home to work) at a traditional Ethiopian resturant in the capital city.  We were fascinated by an ancient culture and religious dynasty where many streams converge: Jews, Christians and Muslims seem to get along and share daily life and commerce; the Ethiopian (Coptic) Orthodox Church claims to have (and guard) the Lost Ark of the Covenant and a piece of the True Cross of Christ; the Cradle of Civilization (we saw where 'Lucy' and other remains of homo sapiens live in the national museum); the organic and roasted coffee bean product was first produced; and where Rasta Ferians claim to follow the Royal Line of Judah in their loyalty to the line of Rulers of Ethiopia extending back to the marriage of Solomon and the Queen of Sheba. ...

Roissy en France is a pretty and prosperous traditional French village 13 miles from the center of Paris and 3 miles or so from Charles de Gaulle Airport.  What are we doing here tonight at Hotel  Campanile  in Roissy? We got up early this morning to catch our flight from Madrid to Newark via Paris.  You can imagine how sad it was for Rebecca, Rachel and I to leave Megan by herself in the hotel room in Madrid to find her way back to her host family home in Tres Cantos today, but we did, grateful for the four days we got to spend together in the city. (Thank goodness for global phones these days to stay in touch). After boarding the plane, the the flight was delayed, and we missed our connection in Paris by 10 minutes.   AirFrance put us up overnight at a nearby hotel with meal vouchers for dinner and tomorrow's breakfast.  So here we are at an airport hotel discussing whether to take a metro into the city to dine on the Left Bank, or stay in our...

Two days in the city that never sleeps.   Here are some some sights we visited from 10am to late in the night on Friday and Saturday:  Royal Palace, tour of old city, downtown Madrid at midnight, Hotel on Puerto del Sol, visiting Tres Cantos, outside of Madrid, where Megan is living for the year. From our hotel balony

We are now staying at the Europa Hotel at Puerto del Sol, downtown Madrid.  The view from our balacony is splendid, and we love it here.  Toured the immediate neighborhood and enjoyed he market.  Planning to see a the Flamenco Show tonight at Torres Bermejas, and a walking tour of the old city tomorrow morning  with a knowledegable guide. Here are some photos (not all my own) but will post more later:

After 5 days in Holland , we are spending Thanksgiving weekend in Tres Canto , Spain —about 20 minutes outside of Madrid .  Our daughter, Megan, is here for 10 months on a High School Rotary Exchange Program, and we are glad to see her after four months away from home.   Rachel was able to join us from San Diego , and we had a wonderful dinner with Megan´s host family tonight.   Tomorrow we will have Thanksgiving with other American Rotary students in Spain , and are indeed thankful for our good life.   We wish everyone a fabulous Day of Gratitude for all God´s blessings... Megan´s host parents: Pelar and Migel Thanksgiving in Tres Cantos Tres Cantos Water Tower Sierras at Tres Cantos The view from Tres Cantos

Traveled by train friom Rotterdam to Alkmaar to have lunch with Jim and Nancy Forest What fun it was to visit our friend Jim Forrest in Alkmaar--an wonderfully old city known for making cheese, about an hour from Amsterdam.  Both Jim and  his wife are  American journalists who have lived in the Netherlands for over 25 years.

Uterecht flower market outside church where Nouwen Event Takes Place. Rebecca remembers Henri in the church before she lectures on "Living Your Mission" Laurent Nouwen and son Raphael prepare arrangement of Sun Flowers for Annual Event (One of Henri's favorite paintings was Van Gogh's "Sun Flowers")

Rotterdam:  Here for a week in Holland, then Spain to spend Thanksgiving with our daughter Megan,  Rebecca and I along with our oldest daughter, Rachel, are being hosted by Laurent Nouwen (Henri´s brother) at his house in Rotterdam. Laurent, who looks a lot like Henri, is a marvelous host.  He loves classical music, modern art, good wine, old cheese, a roaring fire, and honest conversation.  I find in him a compelling man of practical wisdom, with keen insight and stimulating ideas.  We certainly have gained a friend this week. Laurent, at 65, is energetic and passionate about his mission in Ukraine which his brother suggested before he died in 1996.   He retired from his 30 year law practice to run the Henri Nouwen Foundation which supports a number of projects in Ukraine and South Africa.   It also hosts an annual lecture event to which we have been invited to speak on Saturday night in Utrecht. We also plan to visit  the church w...

Dinner in Wilmington, NC Local resident, Marilyn Meares, invited several of us over to her house for dinner tonight to discuss how best to work together to find a more cost-effective way to drill boreholes and install pumps that won’t break down so easily in the interest of safe, local and sustainable community wells. Jock Brandis and Jeff Rose of The Fully Belly Project, and Jesse Stowell and Jen (Marilyn's adult children who are into wind technologies), Chappy, my wife Rebecca, and myself…all have at least one thing in common: we want to provide appropriate well-digging technology for Malawi. This was our discussion during dinner. Chappy and Marilyn agreed to develop a business plan for the implementation of a locally run enterprise whose end goal would be to increase the number of wells and provide employment and training opportunities for many. Jess and Jen offered to do some research on how to fabricate the equipment necessary to construct hand operated, cable percussion, we...

Monday in Wilmington, NC After breakfast at Chappy’s favorite coffee house, a walk around town, and lunch with the local United Methodist pastor who was interested in expanding his church’s mission in Africa, we visited The Full Belly Project—a nonprofit group that designs and distributes simple technology for income-generating agricultural devices to improve life in developing countries. www.fullbellyproject.org Founder Jock Brandis is the inventor of the Universal Peanut Sheller which was featured on CNN after it won the Civic Ventures 2008 Purpose Prize of $100,000. Jock gave us a tour his facilities and we watched how his team are literally engineering answers to problems in food production, sanitation and potable water supply specifically for application in third world situations. For example, Full Belly developed a simple hand washing station that uses very little water but would do so much to curb the spread of disease within the villages. It is constructed of an old truck...

Sunday in Wilmington, NC Since it is Spring Break for Megan and Holy Week break from classes for Rebecca and me, we decided to all go ‘shaloming” in Western North Carolina where I need to visit four of our newly trained shalom teams, and check on the production of a well-digging kit and peanut sheller for Malawi. Why not make it a family road trip? So we planned a trip from Wilmington on the East coast to Asheville in Western NC. First Stop: Wilmington, NC We flew from Newark to Wilmington where Chappy Valente (a long-time friend who traveled to Malawi with me last year) met us at the airport. Chappy lives and works as a artist (see his “Road to Mzuzu” painting in my October 1, 2008 blog post) and has a deep desire to return to Malawi to develop a well-digging business. Downtown Wilmington near the River is a gorgeous 19th century American reconstruction period town. And Wrightville Beach is a great place to walk for miles on clean sand, in cool water, under a warm sun, with no cro...

San Diego: Family gathered. Celebrated Mom's 80th birthday!

Fort Worth, Texas: I attended a terrific conference this weekend on the theme of Micah 6:8--"God has revealed what is required us: to seek justice, love kindness and walk humbly with your God." The highlight for me was hearing Shane Claiborne talk to social justice types who specialize in confronting sytemic social ills on a political level, and say prophetically: "If you want to confront poverty, you have to know the names of poor people..." Here's a link to summary in United Methodist Reporter, and pasted below: Energized for justice: Living Faith conference celebrates UM ministries Bill Fentum, Nov 9, 2007 UMR PHOTO BY BILL FENTUM A banner at the Living Faith, Seeking Justice conference showed support for Step It Up 2007’s National Day of Climate Action, Nov. 3. By Bill Fentum Staff Writer FORT WORTH, Texas—It’s easy to give in to despair on the front lines of social-justice ministry. Supporting workers’ rights, immigration reform or environmental concer...

San Francisco, Labor Day, 2007 We were there! michael, Rachel and Megan San Francisco, Labor Day, 1967

Our last day in Korea was spent at Panmunjeom in the Demilitarized Zone separating North and South Korea was deeply moving. Our gracious hosts, Rev. and Mrs. Jong Soo Kim, spent the day with us and showed us the many sites along the border. Near the Bridge of No Return I noticed a photograph of an old man weeping for his northern homeland. It gave me a sense of the suffering of displacement and longing for reunification. Most interesting was decorated gate across Freedom Bride, and how close one can get to the border. I asked our hosts, “If I crossed here, would I be shot?” “Yes,” Rev. Kim told me. “And if a North Korean tried to cross here, would he be shot?” Again, the answer was “Yes.” The Joint Security Area conference room is the only place where North Koreans and South Koreans can come and make peace. Our final stop along the way was the Odusan Unification Observatory at the northern most end of the western battle line dividing North and South Korea at the Im-jin River. ...

Kim Jin Kook, a graduate students at Methodist Theological School in Seoul, is serving as our technologist at the retreat. In addition to running the multimedia equippment used for presentations, he captured these pictures of the ministerial leaders participating in the spiritual direction retreat at Elim House: