Coaching Day 2

By Bruce Zagel, Friday 29 May

My, how time flies when you're having fun! Already two days into the Church Reconciler Training week. 24 participants from all over Australia have come to Collaroy, just north of Sydney, to prepare for establishing Reconciliation Ministries in local churches. Their enthusiasm, graciousness, enjoyment of one another, and especially their joy in the Gospel makes this time both exhilarating thoroughly enjoyable.

The participants include gifted pastors, teachers, laymen and laywomen. They have quickly embraced the training and Ted, Kathy, and Bruce are feeling blessed to be here.

The retreat center is about a five minute walk down the hill to the Pacific Ocean and we can see the ocean from the windows of the meeting room. The weather has been cool (low to mid-60's) and with no heat in the room both participants and leaders have occasionally had to don jackets to keep comfortable. No TV's in the sleeping rooms, which is great. The retreat center can host up to 500 at a time so meal schedules must be kept. This has been a bit of a challenge, but we haven't missed a meal yet (not that a couple of us wouldn't be hurt by missing a meal or two).

The first day and a half has been spent in personal peacemaking and conflict coaching. Tomorrow participants will experience two separate conflict coaching major role play events that give them a taste of what coaching people in conflict can be like. I'm anxious to see how they do. I'm confident they will do well, as this is a strong group.

Kathy and I have adapted to the time change fairly well. The night before last I wilted at about 8PM. Last night it was Kathy's turn. Tonight I think we're both feeling OK. I must confess I'm not looking forward to the readjustment when we return home.

After the training Kathy and I will be staying on for 9 days of site seeing around Sydney. We're getting some suggestions from the participants and expect to have a whole bag full of ideas before the week is out. Ted and Francis will continue on with coaching training and a meeting with the College of Presidents for the Lutheran Church of Australia to discuss "where do we go from here."

Our first day in Australia we got directions for using the City Rail system in Sydney and went down to the Sydney Opera House area for a few hours. The Opera House is bigger than it looks in photos and is quite impressive. The second day Qaidis Zids from the New South Wales District office took us up to Katoomba, about an hour west of Sydney, to see some of the Blue Mountain sites. The weather was like the Oregon coast in winter (lots of rain and low clouds) so we didn't see all we hoped to see that day. We hope to make it back up there during our holiday time on a better weather day.

No "Chuck" stories from Kathy and Bruce. Chuck hasn't made an appearance since Francis left us to be with Angela. Maybe Chuck just likes Francis better. Oh well, we soldier on.

Blessings to all keeping up with the blog. Stay tuned for further updates in the training in the days to come.