Thank you Maureen for hosting our meeting in your lovely home. We all enjoyed the warmth of friendship along with a good meal and thought-provoking discussion.
Take one self-focused, self-centered ultra marathoner and add in one determined little dog. You get a heart-warming, true story of strangers coming together in a foreign land for the good of this one lucky little pooch. Gobi proved to be strong and resilient and certainly was attracted to the person who most needed companionship. Dion was ultra-focused on his goal of being on the podium or winning this race and he wasn't planning on letting anything get in his way. This ultra marathoner had ultra tunnel vision. But he had a concern about Gobi and opened his heart. Bringing a dog home to the UK from China is no simple matter but fate worked in Gobi's favor. Dion made a promise to Gobi of safety and security because Dion never had these growing up. He was amazed at the outpouring of help and happiness by so many strangers because Gobi put a smile on people's faces. Dion also learned that "working as a team, rather than a bunch of individuals, wasn't nearly as bad as I used to think it would be." He learned to count on other people and realized that his areas of weakness were covered by other's strengths. "I didn't have to shoulder the work all on my own. I could lean on the others, and they could take it. They didn't let me down. And I didn't fail them either." We all learned a bit about China and found that people all around the world are similar to us.
Our next book, "Upstream" by Mary Oliver, is a short book so we set the date of March 9th, 5:30pm at Claudia's home for our next meeting. Looking forward to seeing you there.
