Dear G. M.,

Thank you for your message.

We had a monthly planning and update meeting on Friday evening. G gave me information to read out about the local personnel contact role as he was unable to attend. People were quite receptive (I certainly did not expect anything else), but had a couple of questions for G. Because we have been so busy with the South Pacific Event and Ira's visit, quite a lot of agenda items had built up. Consequently, we have arranged to meet again next Friday evening, and will finish off any loose threads. This includes finalising any details to do with people's understanding and acceptance of the Local Personnel Contact role.

People certainly don't have any problem about G. being in this role, but because we have addressed service opportunities from within the region and rarely has anything been appointed from outside of the region, there has been a hiccup for people in coming to terms with part of the role description. This is just the part where the local personnel contact organises service for people on the local level. I am posting something to the local contacts mailbox on FC tonight (hopefully) and so won't go into more detail here. I will send it to you through FC too. Hopefully this will explain why there has been concern - people are thinking that the local strategies that are working so well are going to be overridden by something not as effective which is being introduced from outside and isolated from appreciating the local situation. Anyway, rather than ponder on this, I'd prefer to wait till we meet again this week, and see how things work out.

People are very cohesive here and have sincere respect for the integrity of meetings and for each other. So I am sure all will go well.

(I enjoy the marvels of technology. Fancy being able to chat about this beautiful world we have been invited into with someone on the other side of a continent. We are such lucky little vegemites in so many ways.)

Cheers and kind regards,

A.