ECIC 5 - Partaharju, Finland

Middle in Nature - the fifth conference

The fifth European Christian Internet Conference was organized in Finland and hosted by Christian Association for Boys and Girls in Finland - PTK. It is the service organisation for The Evangelical Lutheran Church in Finland.

Participants gathered to the church house of ELCF in Helsinki and travelled by the conference bus 312 km to the conference location. The conference venue was Partaharju Centre, HQ of PTK, the training centre and the folk high school. Partaharju is located by the beautiful lake, Salvonen, in the middle of forest. High pine trees and the blue lake created the special athmosphere for this conference. New techology in the middle of nature.

The Cross Stone Church was place for prayers and services. It's a uniq openair church, "the highest church of the world". There are no roof between God and his children.

Participants also "hunted" their food during the short hike around Partaharju forest. Their took also part in the field trip to Rantasalmi and Järvisydän Leisure Centre. Participanst was able to row long church boats, have a real smoke sauna experiment and eat flamed salmon in the wooden tiipii. At the end of the trip small group of young local ladies studied finnish folk dances in light night of Finnish lake area.

During the conference the ECIC association was founded. Four members of Steering Committee, Ian Morrison, Carla Vermin-Andersson, Gabor Bogdanuyi and Juha Kinanen, undersighed the charter of ECIC Association and the network was moved to the next phase.

Also the programme had more content oriented issues than during previous conferences.