We welcomed our Norwegian Rotary Exchange student, Maria Klakegg, to her first U.S. Rotary club meeting. Maria was joined by her host parents, John and Dana Johnson. Nicole Ulrich provided a video of the club welcoming Maria at the airport. Maria, Dana and John are shown below
Co-President Cindy Carlson noted that the club bylaws are being revised and that the revision team, spearheaded by President –elect Dennis Connolly, welcomes input from the club.
The District’s Fast for Hope Nicaragua project is on hold or perhaps even dead as a result of the turmoil there.
Mark your calendars now for our next Harvest Pack Event, scheduled for December 11. We will be meeting with the Lions club to jointly plan the event.
The Community Support Center (CSC) could use new or gently used household items for their clients who are working to remain in their homes. CSC is located in the Faith Christian Reformed Church at 1600 Silver Lake Rd in New Brighton.
Mary Stewart updated us on CPY saying that, due to budget constraints, the summer program had to be shortened from 10 weeks to 7 weeks but the additional time was helpful as they planned their school year program.
Several Packers, Gophers and Vikings fans were inspired enough by their teams wins to cough up a happy buck. Amy Janecek was happy for a successful Irondale Block Party last Friday. Nicole Ulrich was happy to be on the way to getting two specially adapted bicycles designed to allow seniors to experience the thrill of a bike ride while in their wheel chairs.
Our scheduled presenter today was H2O for Life Director Patty Hall, who was unfortunately unable to appear. While we were waiting to see if Patty could make it, Maria Klakegg provided some information about herself. She has been busy experiencing all that the Twin Cities has to offer and looks forward to new experiences, making life-long friends, eating at every fast food restaurant and also playing tennis at Irondale. Maria will offer a more complete picture of her life when she speaks to the club in October.
Nils Friberg graciously volunteered to sub for the absent speaker by completing the retirement presentation which time prevented him from finishing a few weeks ago. Nils’ retirement from teaching at Bethel Seminary in 2001 was, in many ways, the beginning of a series of new opportunities for service. Soon after retirement he became the Pastor of Congregational care at GracePoint Church and just a year later became their Stephen Ministry Leader; a position he still holds today. In 2011, he and his wife Peggy discovered Wycliffe Associates, a non-profit organization striving to translate the Bible into as many languages a possible. Nils already was multilingual so he was a natural to provide language support for translators and Peggy had 40 years of experience teaching the visually impaired. Wycliffe Associates is also closely aligned to their faith orientation. Nils describes this work as extremely fulfilling and energizing and it must be because Nils is a pretty spry 83 years old! In fact, he just celebrated that 83rd birthday recently so Cindy ambushed him with the dreaded birthday hat…a dubious reward for filling in as our speaker with no notice! See the photo below.
