Libertyville Sunrise Rotary Bulletin April 19, 2023

 

Written by Patrick Hart

 

President Pinsel presided this week, and we opened our meeting with a pledge and a prayer.

 

 

Tom Gore’s daughter in law got her official green card, even though someone messed up on their effort and gave her a green card of the wrong color.

 

Patricia Bleck went to the mom’s weekend at the University of Illinois in Urbana, where her daughter is a student.  They rented electric bicycles while they were there and rode to the Japanese Gardens

 

David Potts is also traveling these days and has recently returned from a jaunt to South Carolina where he played golf and visited some plantations.

 

 

 

 

 

Then Tom Zengeler bragged about going to visit his daughter who was successfully defending her one-hundred-thirty-nine- page doctoral dissertation in immunology.

 

 

ANNOUNCEMENTS:

Make sure to congratulate Scott Adams for his fifth anniversary as a Rotarian.

 

Ron Lapin announced that our club’s weekly golf league will be this coming Monday. And as if this event was not exciting enough already, he pointed out that participants will receive a makeup.

 

 

 

 

Pat Hart reminded everyone about what a good time they can have just by coming to the highway cleanup at 7:00 a.m.  on April 29.   This will also count for a makeup.

 

Next week we have invited some of our fund raiser sponsors to our breakfast meeting, so make sure to show and make them feel appreciated.

 

Tom Zengeler was in charge of fun & frolics this week, and deciding to take advantage of all he had learned by tutoring his daughter on immunology for the last eight years, he decided to present us with a trivia quiz on the subject.  Did you know that one out of nine Americans over 65 are subject to Alzheimer Disease.  Considering how little most of our members seemed to know on the matter, I am considering asking Tom, if he will give me credit for correctly spelling immunology in the bulletin.

 

 

Our speaker this week was Becky Frese a community engagement manager at Habitat for Humanity of Lake County.  Habitat for Humanity is all over the United States and operates in some foreign countries as well.  The organization helps individuals of lesser means acquire home ownership. The organization builds most of the houses it provides itself, although sometimes rather than building from scratch they will rehab an older home.

 

In Lake County the organization has built over two hundred homes, and they are currently working on six.

 

Habitat for Humanity does not give away homes.  Rather they help people buy homes, and they consider the families who benefit from their program to be partners in the process.  Before someone can acquire a home from them, they have to go through a homeowner training course. where they learn numerous skills on how to care for and budget for owning a house.  The new owners will have to take out a mortgage to pay for their house, and the organization tries to ensure that no one will have to contribute more than thirty percent of their income toward housing.  

 

The partners are also required to work a number of hours as a partial payment for their homes.  Much of this time is spent helping to build their dwellings, and such tasks have the additional benefit of enabling the people to learn skills that will prove helpful, as they attempt to maintain their houses in the future.  Or the prospective property owner might work in the organizations retail store located in Gurnee.

 

Habitat for Humanity heavily relies on other volunteers as well, both to assist in building houses and in operating their store.  Over the course of their existence the organization has had over 70,000 volunteers, including a couple of crews of Sunrise Rotarians, who a few years back put in a day of service at one of their building sites.

    

 

This week we had a big winner in the raffle, with Elliot Pinsel winning both the daily pot of $29.00 and then drawing the ace of spades to win the $264.00 progressive prize. Apparently he was overwhelmed with fear though about how this new found wealth might change his happy life, and he gave it all to Habitat for Humanity.

 

 

"No one has ever become poor by giving." Anne Frank