The Solomon Islands with TSSF - Day five:

Saturday – day one of chapter!

Chapter was the real reason I came over. The ministers meeting last year set out guidelines of areas wanting to become provinces in their own right, and even if Melanesia does not become a Province, it seemed to me that these set up the kinds of things that Melanesia needed to address, in particular, leadership structures, formation procedures and finance.

So we began on Saturday by hearing the reports of the various office holders. Unfortunately it is election time in the Solomon’s so many of the area people were not able to come to Honiara due to either being committed to the election or needing to be home for the election we did not have any representative from Makira or Vanuatu, Makira being the more of a problem, and while we had people from Makira and Isabel, they were not the leaders of those areas. None the less, hearing the reports was really helpful. So was seeing the diagram Jimmy had put together of how the leadership worked. It was the first time I had seen it, and I realised that John Ama was supposed to be the “leader” in Melanesia as the Minster Provincials’ representative. But I had not seen him in that light and he had not acted in that way, so Melanesia had been fairly rudderless really, although Jimmy had tried hard to provide direction and to hold it all together.

I thougth the key thing about the reports was to not get into too much of either a blame game, or to wallow in what had gone wrong. The key thing was to find ways of making it work in the future. That was really helpful, and allowed people to move on.

So we spent a day working through what people wanted, and eventually created a new structure led by a new potion, a Regional Minister (to mirror the wider Province) and then the same roles as before, with the Formation Director becoming one of the team rather than the team leader, and all positions having reasonably clear job descriptions.

We also spent time reviewing the formation process. Again not all had worked here, and gain the focus was on seeing what was not working, and being clear about how people thought it should work in the future. The process will work something like:

Enquirers, aspirants to contact the area chaplain, who will work with them initially. The area novice counsellors will help postulants develop a rule of life and the area will decide when someone is ready to be noviced. The novice counsellor will work with the novice through the novice notes. When the area thinks the person is ready, that person, the area chaplain and the area novice counsellor will write to the chapter to request that they be elected to life profession. Before this can happen a novice needs to have:

Been a novice for at least two years

To have completed all the novice notes

To have reported regularly to the area chaplain

To have fulfilled the requirements of the area including attending meetings and contributing to the mission and finances of the area.

That was Saturdays work. We ate with the brothers that night. It was a good day’s work.

That night I tried to find the rugby on one of the three channels on the TV. I watched a programme about hiring bicycles in London, and was about to give up when they said something else was about to start when the rugby popped up. Great. And a good game. And a dumb Aussie winger getting yellow carded twice. Dumb!! My fear is that we have peaked too soon again. A slight distraction was a rat climbing up through the window behind the TV, coming in, seeing me, going out, coming back and running through the house to the kitchen. I went off to ensure my bedroom door was shut and missed Cowan going off, so was surprised to see Weepu masterminding events again.