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After our invocation and singing (thank you Josh for not having us march to When The Saints Go Marching In), Hal Leland introduced his grandson, Matthew Jacobson, who is about to go off to medical school in Grand Forks; Matthew graduated from Concordia College in 2016, last visited our club in 2012 when he graduated from Kennedy and, in the weekend prior to our meeting, turned in a tremendous performance at Fergus' triathlon. Steve Andrews introduced his wife, Menghui Yan. We also had two visiting Rotarians from the Fergus Falls Sunrise Club, Guy Olson and Carolyn Glesne. Keith Olson reported the peaches are still hanging on the trees so that now we expect they won't arrive until sometime the week of August 21st. This gives us more time to sell these delectable, day-brightening, delightful fruits whether done up in a dessert or digested on their own. Every member is asked to sell ten of the 22 pound lugs at $30.00 per lug. Katie Johnson led off Fines & Brags, reporting that her daughter Sophia is a close friend of one of our speakers today, Emma Fitzgibbones, and the two are taking over for Sophia's brother in spearheading the Underwood Interact Club's blood drive scheduled for August 15th -- more blood donors are needed! Keith Olson threw in a couple dollars to honor his wife Kim's birthday and because he had to leave the meeting early (as did Mike Smith -- not for Kim's birthday but for leaving early). Lori Larson celebrated a milestone birthday the prior Monday and Steve Leitte contributed because he was happy to have made it through a first, good month as Club President, commenting on the success of the Duck Derby and thanking everyone who helped out with it. Katie then introduced three students from Underwood that attended this years Rotary Youth Leadership Award ("RYLA") camp in Crookston. They were Carrie Schmidt, a senior, and Isabel Dahl and Emma Fitzgibbons, both juniors. All of them worked together in assembling a PowerPoint presentation to give us, with Emma leading off, followed by Carrie and then Isabel. The students were broken into families so no one initially knew each other; the facilitators for each family probed their thoughts by asking "why" a lot. Every family did one of two service projects, either working at the local food bank or delivering flowers to those who could use a day-brightener. Each person also had to prepare a mission statement and all families had to come up with a chant for their group -- referred to as a "Yell-Off." "BaFa BaFa" was a learning device employed to highlight the difficulty of people communicating when their cultures were completely different and unknown to each other. One of the groups was described as very friendly and liking to touch each other with hugs, where the women were important and the men treated as property to be protected. The other group was described as traders but could only communicate using their one syllable, non-sense words. Each of the presenters talked about important lessons they learned, including: be interested, not interesting; listen to listen, not to reply; seek first to understand, then to be understood, and choose your attitude (referencing a video they saw of workers at the Pike Place Fish Market in Seattle preparing to take on their work day each morning). There were 146 campers, only 27 of which were boys. Other highlights of the Camp were the great speakers, including Dick Beardsley on "Overcoming Adversity," and the first day project of each family building a Lego man, one piece contributed by each family member at a time, in a twenty-five minute period. The Interact Club in Underwood had about 20 members last year but this year they are expecting around 47, allowing seventh and eighth graders to be involved in some of their projects for the first time. Carolyn Glesne should also be acknowledged for her contributions in making this great program possible Thank you! |
