"Fellowship"
Boy, do I miss my family.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m having a great time here. And I’m certainly not hug-deprived – I can barely walk two steps inside the gates of one of our orphan homes, so eager are the kids to latch on to my legs, arms, back, neck and torso. But, you know. It’s not the same as being home with one’s own family. So, by the time I leave on the 25th, I’ll be more than ready to get back to the States.
My time here hasn’t been all hugs and dancing. I’ve spent most of my days in meetings with staff, directors and ministry partners. When I’m not in meetings, I’m usually working on things with exciting names like, “operational principles,” “philosophical foundations,” “best-practices implementation standards” and “statements of ecumenical consensus.”
A couple of days ago, however, I spent the entire afternoon lounging around on a bamboo cabana beside a lake with our directors and their wives. We ate snails sold to us by little old ladies in long, wooden boats. We sipped Coke and orange Fanta – a favorite here in Cambodia – and I think I may have even fallen asleep. “Fellowship,” we call it in Christianese. It was very nice.
Tonight, it’s another dance party. I’m buying some special food and drinks, and we’re going to try to replicate the revelry we enjoyed in Battambang.
Before then, however, I have a 3-hour meeting wherein I’ll bandy about terms like “organizational aspirations” and “Institutional financial vehicles.”
Later, I’ll look them up to see what I was talking about.