ARGENTINA

Hello my lovelies

I have been enjoying the emails and photographs from your Mumma.  And I can see on the board that a message from you Liliane was sent to the conference.  Love it!  

Papa and I were very interested to see that Andrew (Twiggy) Forrest was there and we loved the photograph he was in with your Mumma.  Do you think his nickname is Twiggy because his surname is Forrest?  For other readers of the blog the excerpt below is from Greer and describes Mr Forrest's role in the conference.

"I also attended this Inter-Faith Event hosted by Andrew Forrest which brought together about eight religious leaders from Argentina to promise to work with their communities to help them understand that before God they are free, made in his image and should live and work in dignity. Andrew Forrest’s vision is that if the religious leaders (the main centers of education and thought in most countries) help people understand their true nature and dignity, then this will help to create a momentum of people demanding of their leaders to better regulate business and employment conditions..."

I just Googled Twiggy and he has a very interesting story about how he came to have a relationship with God.  

Andrew Forrest   (1961 – )  mining magnate
Forrest publicly pledged this year to give away most of his fortune.   He revealed the biggest inspiration for his giving: the Bible. Forrest’s devout Christianity is unusual for a prominent Australian entrepreneur.

Forrest publicly pledged this year to give away most of his fortune – recently estimated by Forbes magazine at $5.7 billion – to charity. It’s a promise that could make him Australia’s greatest philanthropist. He revealed the biggest inspiration for his giving: the Bible. Forrest’s devout Christianity is unusual for a prominent Australian entrepreneur, perhaps especially so for one who thrives on risk and adopts a win-at-all-costs approach to business. But none of Forrest’s friends doubts his piety. They have experienced enough Forrest- led prayer sessions, or caught him sneaking a quick read of his Bible during enough hectic overseas business trips, to understand that belief in God appears to guide his every waking hour.

Admirable, but his way of finding God seems disturbingly trivial:

Forrest “found” God as a nine-year-old boy in the sandhills near Minderoo, the family property. He grew up in a family of Anglicans, but the Forrests were not overtly religious. Late one afternoon, Andrew was riding his motorbike miles from the homestead when he decided to throw the key to the machine away in the dunes to see if he could find it again. He related the anecdote last year: “One of the reasons I became a Christian and am still a Christian now is because after about three or four hours of fruitless search among the spinifex and the hot sand for this key which I was probably never going to find, I tried everything, every physical thing to find the key. And eventually, when I had given up all hope … I prayed. And when I came up from praying, there was the key between a little petrol overflow hose and the carburettor on the motorbike. “Now there’s not a snowflake’s chance in hell that I threw it there; I threw it over my shoulder. So I just thought, ‘OK, that’s cool, we’re showing off a little here, God. That’s a very obvious sign, I won’t ever test you again’ – and I haven’t.”

And, a final photograph of Twiggy with the religious leaders.

Love Nanxxx