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The MID board met over the Columbus day weekend at St. Scholastica Monastery in Duluth, Minnesota.

Aside from the regular business of the board, we discussed several possible future projects. We are very excited about a proposal to dialogue with Muslims. Potenitlally this will be held in the fall of 2018 at St. John's monastery at Collegeville in Minnesota. There is a sizeable Somali Muslim population in the monastery's neighbourhood, and we anticipate inviting other guests from elsewhere in the country.

We also discussed possible new iterations of Nuns and Monks in the West. We thought it might be more convenient to hold these at the same time and in the same area so that the board could meet either before or after the dialogue events.

We had a special guest in the person of Fr. William Skudlarek. Fr. William updated us on the activities of DIM, our sister organization in Europe, and particularly about the DIMMID online publication, Dilatato Corde, and asked the board members to consider contributing their own stories of the influence of interreligious dialogue on their monastic lives.

Sr. Barbara Austin finished her third term as a board member and so will not be with us next year. We are very grateful for her many years of service to the board.

We invited several new monks and nuns to be members of the board. More details will follow.

This was our first meeting with our newly appointed executive director, Jean L. Thornbrugh, a Benedictine oblate, pictured below with Fr. Michael. She brings a wide experience to her new role, and we are excited to have her on board. We also thank Sr. Helene Mercier for her generous years of service as executive director.

We also wish to thank the community of St. Scholastica for its wonderful hospitality during our time there.

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