Beijing Experiences...

Hi All,

It’s been a while since I’ve blogged and a LOT has happened. The past two weeks have been packed with new experiences, challenges and many blessings with about 12 days in Beijing and a few days of recuperation!

This trip to Beijing was one of those trips where you’ll remember for a long time. From a work and personal level, I would say this is one of the most significant milestones since coming out here to Asia. It probably isn’t a coincidence that the trip happened almost exactly six months since I first landed here in the Far East at that meeting in Bangkok. A great reminder of why we were called to be here and to not let time pass by without pressing on!

The purpose of the trip was summed up with last minute pre-launch preparations, launching of our “Tool” in the Far East with representatives from almost every country in the Area, a weekend of spending time with co-workers and old friends and a few extra days of L&D meetings (my other job) including developing our Taiwan L&D team.

I’m bursting with thoughts spinning through my mind about the last two weeks. I’ll take a cue from work where I’m writing a series of short “promotional” articles about the new Tool to be released a bit at a time to everyone. So… stay tuned for a series on Beijing.

I will start and sum up the experience by saying that the initial “passion” and “diversity” that we observed in Beijing the first time we set foot here on our STM trip 1 1/2 years ago stays alive with us today. I really feel like the thoughts of Paul when he said he was trying to be “all things to all people”. A Partner in Toronto used to say – learn to work hard and play hard… well… we certainly did that in Beijing. A typical day started with 6:45am breakfast with some team members at the hotel and get to the office to do some last minute changes before the 8:30am start of our launch learning program. We would push the participants (and us) hard until upwards of 6:30pm (towards the end of the first week we went from taking out the 80 participants to a sit-down lunch to ordering in Subway for a 30 minute lunch)! After the course, we would have small or large group dinners from 7:00pm to 9:00pm at some of Beijing’s best restaurants and then typically different crowds of people would break out and do additional activities from 9:00pm until … well.. I think my record was 2:00am, but I heard our Korean delegates were up until 5:00am!

Its packed experiences like this... lots of opportunities to talk, complain, listen, challenge, etc.. that you really get to know people. I feel like there have been breakthrough in relationships with many people. I’ll write a bit more about some of the highlights, but these breakthroughs include reconciliation of some working relationships, networking with new friends, discovery of strategically placed Christians, opening up of very interesting conversations about our spiritual walks and insights into people.

Stay tuned for more to come…