Bellingham Kiwanis News Letter

The Ground Hog Day meeting (2/2/10) of the Kiwanis Club of Bellingham was called to order by President Jim Carney. Emily refused to lead the singing so Barbara Audley stepped up and did a fine job leading us in America. After the Pledge of Allegiance, Emily gave us a great Invocation.

Guests were introduced:

2 CKI (Circle K International) members, Erin Durch and Chris Woo who were the program were introduced as well as our guest with the best attendance, Bill Audley.

Announcements:

It was announced that there will not be a Board meeting tomorrow on Wednesday (2/3/10) because there was no agenda…..that make's sense. However there would be a meeting on Wednesday, February 17th at The Lighthouse Mission on Holly Street in Old Town at noon. This will be an update on the Agape House playground and lunch will be provided.

SIGN Donation:

Emily passed the new and improved SIGN (Surgical Implant Generation Network) collection jar (it's bigger and can hold more money!) for our monthly donations. Those of us who want to donate to the SIGN project for Haiti Earthquake victims can still do so by going on line at www.signhaiti.com . Emily also announced that the US Navy's hospital ship, USS Comfort, is now helping with the SIGN relief program in Haiti. Many US Orthopedists are doing rotating shifts in Haiti.

Rhonda Shaffer ran to shake CKI guest Chris Woo's hand after he volunteered to take her place at tonight's BINGO game. Chris has helped us in the past and makes a great banker! Thanks Chris. It was suggested from someone in the audience that Rhonda should give a BIG happy dollar for that!

Committees:

Marty Stauffer announced that the Community Service Committee meeting will be held next week on February 11th at noon at the Oriento Fine Chinese Cuisine Restaurant at 2500 Meridian Street.

Standing in for John Howe, Elizabeth Bennett reminded us of the Interclub next Thursday (2/11) at Anacortes. They will be leaving here at 10:30, so if you are interested please give her a call.

Happy Dollars:

Dick Zagelow was very happy that his daughter got him to skiing kicking and screaming because he ended up having a great time.

Greg Wegrich was happy about a conference he attended that was lead a state economists. It seems the best part of the program was the joke he told about getting a letter in the mail from his bank that he had an overdraft so he called them up so see whose fault it was…………! I think you sort of had to be there.

Jan was happy (?) to hear in the news about her home town in Idaho. It seems some local Baptists have been arrested for child kidnapping after trying to rescue some orphaned Haitian kids. Oooops!

Mike Yeend said the letter was Rich's fault. Also that he apologized for his not being able to get the club's newsletters out last month because of some time constraints. He tried to combine notes from a couple of meetings and wondered if we still wanted to receive them. There were a lot of "no's" from the audience.

Jim Carney was happy because he has 7 basketball games to referee and that he had to leave to go catch a ferry to Orcas Island to perform one of them.

Mike Onorato was amazed to hear that the Premier of Newfoundland had to come to the US to have heart surgery. Maybe he got tired of waiting………hmmmmmm!

Bruce Jorgensen announced that Ken Nuckolls was the "secret hand shaker " or knuckle puncher (which ever you prefer) so several of us had to cough up some hard cash because we missed him. Bruce also wanted to wish his wife a very Happy Birthday. Happy Birthday Shelley!!

Vaughn Hagen had a cautious dollar because his 2 Korean children (who share the same birthday only 4 years apart, went together to get a tattoo which was done in Korean. He had no clue what it said and wasn't sure he wanted to know. Dick Z offered to interpret for him.

Layne Johnson didn't really have a happy dollar, but he was just paying his I-forgot-my-name-tag fine.

Drawing:

Program:

Barbara then approached the microphone to introduce our guests from WWU's CKI Club, Erin Durch and Chris Woo. They presented a program on the trip some District CKI students made to Panama City and vicinity in July of last year. It is part of the PNW CKI Districts Global Service project. Along with the 4 Panamanian Kiwanis clubs and 3 CKI clubs, they did projects in a pre-school as well as a primary and secondary schools. The schools are fairly primitive and needed a lot of up grading to make it better for the local students. The group also found time to do some local sightseeing.

Erin is currently planning the next Global Service Project in Ecuador in June of this year. They are hoping to have 14 students from the District CKI help to complete needed repairs on school facilities. This planning will involve finding food and lodging as well as air fare for the CKI participants. The cost will be about $1800 per student and Erin hopes she can raise at least half of that for the students. She hopes that at least 3 from WWU will be able to participate.