Our club was well represented at the District 5050 Conference in Seattle both by our club members and by our very active Interact Club.  It is the first time that District 5050 has ventured outside of the geographic area of our district to host a conference.

 

The conference kicked off Friday afternoon with a parade of just a portion of the flags from nations where Rotary clubs are located.  Flag bearers included members of our Interact Club.  Our Interact Club is the first to attend a District 5050 conference. 

 

The morning before the conference officially opened, Rotarians and Interactors took a bus to tour the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.  Self directed interactive exhibits. 

 

 

 

A surprise at Friday afternoon session was an invite for our Interact Club members to tell Rotarians about Interact and why they joined.

 

The conference featured many great speakers, including the R.I. President's representative, Greg Yank.  Greg will be installed as an R.I. Director with a term starting July 1.  Greg reminded us all that being invited to become a Rotarian is a gift. He and other speakers, Tony Sharma from Slough, England, and Apoorva Mallya, Senior program Officer on the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation's Polio Team, updated us on our fight to end polio.  Only 5 cases thus far in 2017 only in isolated areas of Afganistan and Pakistan, where fighting and political unrest makes vaccinating all the children very difficult and dangerous.

 

George Lewis, "The Water Man", with the Florence, Oregon Club, showed us his energy for international water projects with ideas on how to raise funds.  He will help any club with a project.  Some of the other topics covered by speakers included organ donation (Donor Anil Sivivatsa from India who has a goal of recruiting 1 million donors), educating women in Africa (Maness Samuel from Malawi, Africa), heart surgeries for children from 3rd world countries (Dr., Nischal Pendey of a small village in India who was able to complete his medical training thanks to a Rotary Scholarship), and personal experiences being deployed for Shelter Box (Dave Nichols of West Seattle Rotary).

 

 

 

Motivational speakers included HK Derryberry and Jim Bradford.  HK was born blind and premature as a result of an accident that that killed his mother.  With cerebral palsy and countless other medical problems, he was abandoned by his father at age 5.  His life was totally improved when a Rotarian, Jim Bradford, fortuitously stopped at a restaurant where HK's grandmother, who was raising him, worked and took HK there to spend hours while she worked.  It was learned that HK is among a handful of persons with the gift of a Highly Superior Autobiographical Memory.  He has almost total recall of every minute of his life starting at age 3 1/2.  HK has been featured on the NBC Nightly News and other shows.  In 2016 Jim Bradford released a book "The Awakening of HK Derryberry; My Unlikely Friendship With the Boy That Remembers Everything", a best seller on Amazon with profits funding a trust fund for HK.

 

The last morning we heard the inspirational story from Richard Peters, a retired Navy Seal, who was working as a contractor in Libya when he was imprisoned for being a suspected spy by Muammar Gaddafi.  He told us of the hardships he faced and how his faith carried him through with miracle after miracle including his escape just 9 days before his scheduled execution.  His story is told in his book "Man-of-War."

 

Here is a photo of our contingent at the conference including the members of our AHS Interact Club (for other photos see the album and our Face Book Page):

 

 

Something different for next year's conference.  It's going to be a 4 day cruise on the Holland America Eurodam.  When District Governor Elect Lindagene Coyle was diagnosed with cancer she vowed to take a cruise each year for the rest of her life.  Even though she is in remission she has kept her promise and next year's conference is proof of that.  It will be May 8-12, departing Seattle with stops in Victoria and Vancouver B.C. before returning to Seattle.

 

 

Think about booking this trip.  It is all inclusive (alcohol not included) price which makes the cruise very comparable to staying at a hotel for the conference.  To book, call Valerie Tibbetts at (360) 299-9390.