When I came to SA in 2006, we were holding the meetings in the building of a foundation where a fellow member worked, but soon after it closed and we had to move. For about a year we were meeting in a park, sometimes in the rain, sometimes in the sun. Then we moved to the garage of another foundation, which also closed its doors soon thereafter.

At that time our local fellowship had two groups. In the other group, a fellow with years of being in SA decided that it was very difficult for him to state his length of sobriety so he began to say in each meeting that he had 24 hours, and he eventually left. This had a negative effect on the others and they all began to relapse and that group closed after two years. Out of this we learned how important it is for everyone to say our sobriety date instead of being vague about it.

For about five months we held our meetings in the cafeteria of a big department store where we had to speak in low voices to protect our anonymity. In a back room, we had a board that we hung on the wall, writing there what we considered most important of what we read, looking to hold that message in our hearts. This board helped our meetings a lot in the sense of being very literature-focused. We also used a dictionary to better understand the meaning of each paragraph.

After several years, we decided by group conscience that only those who had more than seven days of sobriety could speak at the meeting. This helped the meetings to emphasize sobriety and recovery. On one occasion, someone who was coming from another 12-Step program said, “How is it possible that someone who has an urge to speak is not allowed to speak?” But we stuck to it as that policy had been helping our group maintain a positive sobriety.

A last tool that has helped us a lot to build strong meetings is to organize recovery events with long-term sober people from abroad. In our group in Bogota, the Conventions in Colombia were born. The first was in our city, with last year being the ninth Convention. Over the years, we have been visited by several old-timers: David T., Priscila C., Arsenio from Mexico, Marco from the Netherlands, José from Buffalo, NY, Nelson from Venezuela, and Brendan from Ireland, to name a few. We are still a small group in numbers but with great servers and strength in recovery.

Members are part of the Committee for Prisons, IT Committee, Intergroup, Translation Committee and we walk together towards our happy destiny.