Sunday morning 11:15 am Rory King our leader for Big Brothers Big Sisters Bowl -a -Thon gets us ready to play our game in this crowd of enthusiastic bowlers.
Mike Lahanas is two lanes over more competitive than I have ever seen him trying to get his score as high as his team could possibly go. By the way, Mike is also a board member of Big Brother Big Sisters. Everyone is having a good time: Hot dogs, Popcorn, water, soft drinks with the main event to help this charity garner over $130,000 in donations for their cause. Rory is also the captain of another team of people from the Oddfellow organization. Since the Rotary team only had Noah Steirer we had to poach some other OddFellow members to participate.
This is what Emmaus Rotarians do on their weekends, evenings and days off. They participate to help others have a better life. This month I will try and concentrate on the "why we as Rotarians do what we do" and the reason behind it. Most of all we all are looking to make others lives better now and in the future. I believe you will learn more about some other women in the community this week that have accomplished just that. Look forward to next week's President's message to learn about them and the award we presented.
Thanks to the 47 Rotarians who completed the recent survey about the Trumpet newsletter. The data and the comments are very interesting and more consistent than I expected. The graphs of the first three questions and responses follow on another page for your review. I'll work through the comments in questions 4 and 5 for presentation at another time.
This Thursday is the last day for the toothpaste collection. We are committed to 125 tubes of toothpaste and to date we have collected 90 tubes. Please bring any toothpaste to this week's meeting.
Thank you for all of your support for the Angel Network
During our regular breakfast meeting on Thursday morning, March 7th, President Rick Zayaitz will auction off tickets to Allentown Symphony's A Midsummer Night's Dream, Sunday, March 17, 2019 at 3 p.m., Orchestra Section, Row B..face value of tickets is $72 each.... Bob Kraus has offered these tickets.
District Governor Elect Herb Klotz presents Emmaus Rotary with a citation for its participation in last Autumn's Yvette M. Palmer Purple Pinkie Race to Zero event. ERC raised $2,567 for Polio eradication .....
As Emmaus Rotary seeks new ways to help feed the hungry-- including planning for the summer as East Penn schools have 30% of students qualiying for free or reduced lunches-- remember our tried and true monthly food collection. THIS THURSDAY bring canned goods and staples to be collected at our regular morning meeting.
And if you are numbered among those who forgot to bring something from home, no problem...you can still contribute...drop a dollar bill or two in the rattan basket.
Thank you to all the Emmaus Rotarians who step up every month to support Bethel Bible Food PLUS Pantry, which is supported by other service organizations and ecumenically by area churches.
in Pennsylvania, 19% of children live in poverty. Their next meal is not assured especially on weekends, holidays and summers when there are no reduced or free school lunches.
Please remember to save all your Can Tabs & bring them to the Rotary meetings.
We did a great job collecting during 2018 and I am looking forward to see what we can do this year.
The Miracle League of the Lehigh Valley takes them to the Dupont Childrens' Hospital in Delaware and the proceeds pay the heat and electricity bills for the Ronald MacDonald House on the hospital campus.
During "new business", President-elect Steve Gould related some of the excitement he felt after attending PETS (President-elect Training) down in Valley Forge two weekends ago. He noted with chagrin that it has taken him this long to learn what a great international service organization Rotary is. He asked board members to consider that young people are attracted to the service opportunities Rotary provides and not to the "club" trapppings like singing and ceremonial acts like invocations,
Several board members expressed agreement and a willingness to consider changes to how we do things together as long as we were not "throwing the baby out with the bath water." (Please note: there are no changes currently being made!) There seemed to be some surprise that our opening invocation did not have to be a formal prayer and that a moment of silence could be requested.
So the question arose "how can we honor the diversity of faiths and beliefs represented in Rotary when offering an invocation?" Perhaps, my classification as “clergy” makes me uniquely qualified to answer. I have thought about this question from time to time as our club has had members who are Christian, Jewish, Muslim as well as agnostic, atheist, seeker, humanist, and “other”. Frankly, anyone at any time may find himself or herself lapsed or questioning the faith of family or personal history. Research also tells us that young people, who know themselves as spiritual people, do not want to be part of any institutional, historical, organized religion.
As I do not find this to be problematic for our club, I was surprised to read in the letters to the April 2018 the Rotarian magazine, one Jewish Rotarian who expressed his discomfort because “the invocation at my Rotary club meeting every week...invariably is given in the name of “Jesus Christ, our Lord.”” (“A club for all faiths”, page 6)
My answer, in a nutshell, is that our best practice is to offer our invocations the same way that porcupines make love: carefully!
Rotary International serves, grows and thrives because of the diversity of people and nations and traditions among its membership. We honor each other by taking time to prepare when it is our turn to begin our meeting with a prayer. Everyone should feel comfortable to pray from his or her own tradition and practice. There is no prior constraint unless it comes from consideration of the Four-Way Test: is it the TRUTH, FAIR to all concerned, will it build GOODWILL and BETTER FRIENDSHIPS, will it be BENEFICIAL to all who listen?
Our club has the honor of hosting the Rotary District 7430 conference this year because Cindy Hornaman, one of our past presidents, is the current District Governor. We are encouraging all of the Emmaus Rotarians to support her by attending our district conference.
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