President's Message - April 18, 2014

As Mike pointed out last week I was with my family on spring break.  Since returning I have been asked by several people “How was spring break?” and my response tended to be “the kids had a great time.”  Don’t get me wrong, I had a lot of fun but we set the trip up for the kids to enjoy their spring break.  We gave them the options for the activities and they chose them. We just went along to be with them but we ended up having a great time. 

So much of what we do in Rotary is like that.  If you were to sit down and look at your available vacation time for next year most people wouldn’t set aside a week to dig a well in a foreign country or take a vacation day to stock the shelves at a food pantry.  I think as Rotarians after a while we see the other side of these activities where we set out to take care of somebody else and in turn we wind up gaining as much or more of what we put into it.  Just ask the group that recently went to Honduras.  Several of them said they had so much fun they would go back tomorrow.  I don’t remember the last time I had a shovel in my hand and said “this is going to be fun” but I have sat down after spending an entire day with a shovel or hauling bricks and pushing a wheel barrel on a habitat project and said this is pretty cool.  We just changed somebody's life.
 
So, in the spirit of giving our club will be running the registration desk next week at the District 6900 Convention in Destin Florida.  Many of us will be working the desk, processing registrations, answering questions and giving directions.  Yes it is work but I am confident that when the 26 of us return and get asked “how was the convention” I think  the responses will all be the same, “everyone had a great time.” 
 
See you Friday.
 
Yours in Rotary,
 
Dan