On April 26, 27, and 28th, the Northwest region met at Camp Kwomais in Surrey, British Columbia for the Celebrate Recovery SA/S-Anon retreat sponsored by the Victoria, B.C. intergroup. The camp overlooks the beautiful Puget Sound. The accommodations were rustic, and snoring abounded, but the fellowship was excellent.
The conference last September was excellent. Mike D. from upstate NY kicked off the day with a great talk on the importance of working the Twelve Steps. The theme of the convention was: “The Importance of Working the 12 Steps — the Original Approach.” That meant we got back to the basics of the original program of AA by using the 12 Steps, the 10 points of Chapter 5 in the Big Book, and the 4 Absolutes of the Oxford Group, where Bill, Bob, and Ebby got sober.
I have just returned from SA U.K.’s Spring Convention, held at The Grail, Pinner, fired with a deep sense of the True Connection — the title of the event. Thirty sober SAs attended, men and women, including one S-Anon and visitors from Ireland, Germany and the U.S. Our sessions seemed to develop naturally through the Steps to the Traditions, giving a tremendous boost to my own personal recovery with a strong sense of what its whole purpose is: to carry the message.
In a ski-lodge on the side of a snow capped Mt. Kosciusko, Australia’s highest mountain, the first Australian SA Conference was held over the last weekend of April. … Members attended from Melbourne, Sydney, Canberra, and Northern New South Wales. Greetings to the conference were received on tape from a loner in Brisbane and by letter from a member in prison.
The tenth European SA convention was held October 19-21 in Germany. Many of the attendees signed the beautiful card that was sent to the States (enclosed). Thank you, all our brothers and sisters in Europe, for this blessed gesture of love and solidarity!
Two American SAs flew to Germany to attend the German SA Conference this June. We arrived four hours late and missed our German host at the airport. After two obsessive and fearful hours, our powerlessness was rewarded by a phone connection with Kornelius, an SA, who directed us to the Thursday meeting in Mainz.
It was a very good convention. I thought the highlight of the convention was the two meetings on the Traditions where people wrote about the Unity Tradition and what worked against it and what worked for unity.…
I just can’t wait to tell you and all the SA members what a wonderful Marathon meeting we had on August first. It was a joint session with S-Anon, Rochester, and two of the meetings were joint. God was with us to be sure.
“It was a great conference…the oldtimers meeting was inspiring. It was also comforting to me to see how much solid sobriety we have… It was relaxing to be in such a group.”
Forty-seven attended, mostly from the Chicago and Milwaukee areas, but also including members from as far away as Minnesota, Indiana, Iowa, and California. St. Luke’s Lutheran Church was an ideal setting. (Mt. Prospect is the only city we know of where church names are added to city street signs. Wish we knew the history behind that.) Several SAA members attended, and we had marvelous rapport and unity with them.
