Prez Jody opened the meeting with the Pledge of Allegiance.

Today’s Guests: Jim Gay, prospective new member; Danny Hervola, former Chief of Mendocino’s Fire Dept.; Jon Turnbull, today’s speaker; and Phil Jaego, First Equity.

Happy Dollars:

  • Guenter is happy to share his recent photos of a rare visitor, a mountain lion that killed a skunk and tried to bury it in his yard!
  • Donna is happy that she and Chris enjoyed their one month trip to Thailand.
  • Jeffry is happy to celebrate his wife Karen’s birthday.
  • Eula is super excited to be taking her family to the snow this weekend — it’ll be the first trip to snow for her youngest son.
  • John C. is happy that Pete is helping as membership chair, happy for new prospective members, and happy that his son is buying a good car and won’t need to be chaperoned anymore!
  • Pete is happy to have his car back after 3 months in the body shop after a big deer hit him…

Announcements:

Our club’s Charter Night will be held on Thursday, 2/25/16, from 6-9pm at the Hill House. $40/person. Please RSVP with Gary!

Pete announced that the organizing committee is working full speed on Casino Night, our major fundraiser, to be held on May 7, 2016. The theme is Monte Carlo (tuxedos and masks and martinis). We need to update website, put ads in paper, etc. Harold volunteered to take a look at the website, and Sean volunteered to take care of radio and print advertising for the event.

Jeffry made a plea from International Committee to get involved with their project to rebuild a secondary school in Vanuatu. April 2-12 and 9-19, 2016 are weeks that groups will go to work on construction. We could send people to help with construction. We have invitations… Talk to Jeffry if you’re interested and available.

Youth Services: Donna reported that the youth leadership conference will coincide with District Assembly, on April 9, 2016. Eula has been going to Interact meetings. They are having a dine-out to support their project to buy books for a school in Africa — the dine-out will be in March. Specific date forthcoming. Also, dictionaries have arrived, and Donna will personalize them for each 3rd grader, and get a group together to deliver them soon.

Community Service reported that a tree has been planted in Rotary Park to serve as our permanent Christmas tree. John P and Matt made a petanque court. The project to renovate the frisbee/disc golf course at the high school will pick up again now that the weather is getting better.

Jody recognized the extra mile that Matt O’Halloran went to plant the tree in Rotary Park. Jerry announced that two signs will go at entrances to Rotary Park, with the “o” being the Rotary wheel. As part of the the sister city program, there will be a group of Japanese drummers who will perform in Rotary Park in May 2016.

Dean announced that our contributions to Polio Plus this year have exceeded $3000, which is enough to vaccinate 12,000 children!

During our regular Rotary meeting next Thursday, we’ll vote on the proposed bylaws changes. We’re back to meeting 1st, 2nd, and 3rd Thursdays of each month, with a Board meeting the 4th Thursday of each month. Please RSVP for each week’s meeting.

Today’s Program:

John P introduced today’s speaker, Jon Turnbull. Jon has been very active over many years in faith-based emergency relief programs. Today he’ll speak about his trip to Nepal following their devastating earthquake in April 2015.

Jon says that he has been to Haiti 14 times with his disaster recovery work. He’s been also to Japan, Philippines, and sites in the US devastated by Hurricanes Katrina and Sandy, and other places, and he always sees Rotary present as well.

In Nepal’s 2015 earthquake, 8,000 people were killed, 40,000 were injured and many thousands more were made homeless. Jon and his team flew into Katmandu, and he had to tell immigration that he was going to Goka City to visit a site where his father’s WWII fighting partners came from. It’s illegal to proselytize in Nepal or to try to convert someone from one religion to another or to do relief work. His team’s job was to build a home for a family. Jon shared many photos from his trip.

He talked about the heavy military presence, the great food, the terrific elevations to always climb, the heat during the monsoon season, the kids (who walked 6.5 miles to school every day), their goats, the jungle and the (mean!) monkeys, the dancing leeches, and the astounding shades of green seen everywhere. Their last day in Katmandu was highlighted by the Festival of Women that happened to take place that day.

Jon spoke of how Christians are persecuted in Nepal. Also, women there are second class citizens. It was a great trip, but a difficult trip, and he’s not sure if he’ll go back again. Jon answered many questions from the audience. Thank you, Jon, for a great program!

Today’s Raffle Winners: John C. and Jim Gay.

Jody reminded us that even though we’re a small club, when you consider our impact combined with all the other Rotary clubs out there, we’re having a huge impact in the world.