I’ve had the misfortune of being involved in the planning and organising of a couple that failed to reach their potential, because they did not try to match the needs of the local people with the skills and expectations of the incoming team.

We had one group come all the way from America, and our bishop insisted that they must trot around from one middle-class suburban parish to the other, reading scientific papers on the environment. No one on the team knew anything about the environment, so they had to hastily read about it on the plane coming over. It would have been much easier to find local experts on the environment, and saved the expense.

On the other hand, there were township communities where a bunch of kids would really have appreciated a VBS and the team could have had fun using their skills to help plan and run it, working with local leaders, and there could have been mutual learning for the mission team, the kids and the local leaders. We eventually managed to persuade the bishop to do that with a later team, but the overseas agency had taken the precaution of sending people who might be more experienced in reading “scientific papers” and so quite a lot of what they said went way over the heads of the kids.

It is important to ask “what are the skills of the incoming team” and then to ask “where and how can we best use those skills”, so a more productive time can be had by all.

One also needs to think about the logistics – where will the team stay? Will they need to travel to the place where they are ministering? How will they get there and how long will it take?

I’ve also seen teams exhausted by having to spend half the day travelling.

So careful planning is crucial to success.

AP in HS? I can’t even process that.

Any Mairin news?

Love you all.