Stan Carignan offered the prayer while Hal Leland led us in song. Guests included the sister of our speaker, Katie Meinhover, Kaley Sievert from The Daily Journal, and Ann Lundeen, Buzz's wife.
During our brag segment, Mary Pettit spoke about the upcoming Dance and Dessert performances by the Fergus Falls School of Dance on December 2 and 3. President Steve Leitte commended Stan Carignan and Habitat for Humanity, while Stan offered a report on recent doings by Habitat. Keith Olson reported on his wife retiring after 30 years and a successful goose hunt to Saskatchewan, although they missed Rod Ebersviller on the trip. Katie Johnson thanked John MacFarlane for all the benches and shelves for the greenhouse at the Community Garden and Dan Jonson for the hand sanitizer. Mike Smith paid for being late and leaving early.
Laurie Larson talked about the Four Way Test and we also heard about the upcoming Salvation Army bell ringing. Lois Josefson had rose tickets for distribution and also reported on he Rotary Oration Contest the last Saturday this coming January.
Buzz Lundeen introduced our speaker, Ted Meinhover, a graduate of Perham High School who attended the Rotary Youth Leadership Award (RYLA) Camp in Crookston while there. He first started studying Chinese at the Concordia Language Villages around 1996. He received a scholarship from Rotary to attend the University of Minnesota and then was offered a job with the United States Foreign Service. He has been located in Beijing for four years, in the Political Affairs office. The embassy has 400 Americans working at it, making it one of the four largest U.S. embassies in the world. Ted said that under current leader Xi Jinping, China seems to be undermining free market reforms that have taken place since Mao Zedong, manipulating what businesses succeed and shrinking the space for a civil society to what he described as "almost non-existent." There was time for a few questions after the presentation and the speaker complimented the club on the quality of those asked.
Ted's remarks were also reported in a front page story in the October 20th edition of The Daily Journal.