A personal feed back 

Learing Tour to Mindanao,
23. - 26.07.2008 

The tour was well organized
and good structured. John Rudy and the people from the Mindanao Peace
Institute gave us a good introduction into the situation and the peace
projects. It was so good to listen to the people in the projects describing
what their programs are about and whom they reached. The eyes of the
people where shining while telling us about their work. One could really
see how much they liked their work and how they believed in the idea
behind it. - In Pikit (Immaculate Conception Parish) I had the opportunity
to tell them how impressed I am of their commitment and the good and
necessary work they are doing with such a personnel involvement and
that I was really taken by their stories. They answered that we support
them by listening to them and by giving moral support to them and that
this would encourage them to keep on going. - This people are great,
they do a very good job!

It was good and encouraging
to see how Christians and Moslems work together, how they manage to
look for common rather than dividing aspects. The personal stories of
the past experiences they and there families went through and what made
them to work for peace rather than to keep on putting barriers up between
the different religions and parts of society showed how the seed of
the peace work grows.

It felt somehow strange when
we drove through the military base to meet the General. All the soldiers
around us - this is not a place I would usually go to. But listening
to the General and his ideas - the way he came to know the Mindanao
Peace Institute and how the people their had to deal with a General
taking part in the seminars and that both sides had to learn - was
a great thing which shows how much can be benefited when both sides
rethink their own point of view.

Coming to know the ‘Coffee
for Peace' project and listening to Daniel Panteja was the part of
the tour which impressed me most. He is an outstanding personality!
The way he tells about his work and the things he moves in his quite
modest way is something which I feel should be told/shown to many people.
- Beside the work of the project he shared his visions with us. One
of them was the wish that peace theology should be rethought. He felt
that there is a need of a more inclusive approach for a strong focus
for common aspects. - He mentioned that he was working with a Moslem
who described himself as a Mennonite Moslem and how impressed he is,
that rather conservative Christians got in contact with him, to learn
more about peace theology and programs. They have established a good
relationship and teamwork.

During the tour I could learn
a lot! It showed me how important it is to really listen to people and
to open up my mind towards other backgrounds, realizing (again) that
I am a learning person rather than someone who knows already what to
think and what to do. 

I want to thank the MCC for
giving me the opportunity to be part of an international group for the
Learing Tour. Sharing the impressions during the tour with people form
all over the world felt really good. I did enjoy being part of a world
community. All the participants are great people. We grew very closed
together. I did enjoy that we had time together to talk about our understanding
and time to share ‘unimportant' personal issues. This was not only
during the tour we grew even more closed together during the summit
in Manila. It felt so good.  

Appreciative Inquiry/ New
Wine, New Wineskines/ Global Summit in Manila, 28
- 30.07.2008 

I feel honoured to have been
invited to the summit. My professional background has its main focus
on development education inside Germany. In the past (some twenty years
ago) I had to opportunity to meet people working in MCC-Projects in
India and the MCC enabled me to spend some month with ‘United Mission
to Nepal'. Right now I am a member of the MCC WestEuropa e.V. Through
this membership and international MCC visitors I got some information
about resent MCC-Projects and the MCC as such.

The reading Ron Mathis send
me and talking to colleagues and friends who work on an international
level helped me to get a bit more information about MCC and international
development work.

It helped me a lot to arrive
in Manila together with the Learing Tour group. To discuss the experiences
from the summit with the people I had already come closed to was really
helpful to me..

After I had done the background
reading and exchanging with others I started to somehow develop my personal
vision of MCCs future. My dream was and still is that MCC becomes a
(more) global institution. The great opportunity to have a global Mennonite
community is something which should be (more) taken into account. We
should be (more) aware that the majority of Mennonites are not situated
in Europe and the North America but stay merely in Africa, Asia and
Latin America. Each individual from the Mennonite community should be
regarded as an equal part and should be listened to. I feel that a world
wide common discussion about peace theology and a paper of common understanding
could somehow be a starting point of a formation process of a global
common (Mennonite) identity. The Mennonite Church in Germany would certainly
benefit from such a discussion. - Being part of the Learing Tour group
helped me to experience a Mennonite wold community quite intensive. 

At the beginning of the summit
I did not dare to hope that my dream was shared by all participants
as the presentations from the eight working groups at the third day
of the summit showed. At the beginning of the summit I realized that
participant belonged to more or less three different groups (MWC, MCC,
Partners), each group stuck somehow together. It felt that each group
had somehow the feeling that they have to protect themselves from what
ever. The fact that participants from the different backgrounds were
represented in the eight working groups helped to become more closed
and to decrease the gap between the groups and to develop well working
group communities. Well, it did work out in our group and I had the
impression that it was the same in the other groups as well. The evening
discussions (mainly with the Learning Tour members) showed that this
process was experiences in a similar way by many others. 

The results of the summit are
encouraging for me and hopefully the participants as well. I think that
the summit helped to bring the different fractions (more closed) together.
For me the summit showed the richness the MCC (the MWC and the MCC-Partners)
can gain from. I am sure that the participants (the international community)
of the summit will follow up the whole review process, the summits that
follow and the results at the end of the process critically and hopefully.
It will be certainly a difficult task to bring all expectations together
and to tie them together to a policy and to implement that policy. But
I am sure that the international Mennonite community will support the
process and will contribute to the success of this effort. It will be
exciting to see the MCC growing through this process it goes through.

It was a impressing start of
a process - I personally hope, that the results do not lose their
significance as the process moves on.

Thank you very much for the
invitation to the summit I could learn a lot and I hope that my small
contribution during the summit was/is of any use to the MCC. 

Sigrun Landes-Brenner

Bonn 17/08/2008