President's Message

Only 11 sleeps until Christmas. You must have been really switched off not to know that Christmas is coming.

 

Thanks to everyone who did their bit at the Howick Santa Parade feeding sausages to the masses now that is what I call public service!

 

This week we enjoyed our annual club Christmas celebration. It is a special time when we are joined by family and friends and we feel loved and secure. It is also timely to recognise that not everyone experiences all the good things that we have. Our collection for the food bank was our way to reach out to a few of those people. Thank you all for your donations of food and cash. Hopefully it brings some smiles and warmth to someone.

 

Our evening wasn’t just about fellowship. As I said at the time we received the best present a Rotary club can, a new member. It was my privilege to welcome Sarah Bloxham to our club. I know she will be made very welcome and will make a significant contribution to our “making a difference” in the future.

 

 

It was also time to acknowledge two people who have made an enormous contribution over many years with Paul Harris Awards. Lynne Green has supported Gavin over his many years of service (and I heard a comment that that was worthy of a medal in it’s own right) however what is less well known is that she has done much more. She has hosted 11 or 12 exchange students and treated them as her sons and daughters over many years. That is an enormous effort and we are very grateful. As is customary we invited Gavin to join us as her spouse for the presentation, and wasn’t he proud of her. What he didn’t know was that he was there to be awarded a Sapphire pin to go with his previous PHF as our mark of respect and gratitude of his many, ongoing services to our community through Howick Rotary. Two wonderful examples of “Service before Self.”

 

Thanks to all involved for a wonderful night.

 

Next Tuesday we have our final meeting for 2018. It is also our AGM where we formally close off the 2017-18 Rotary Year and receive annual reports from the directors of that year. After that we will be asked to vote on the proposed changes previously discussed to our club program. These are included in this Keyway and I ask you to have your say and vote. If for some reason you cannot be present please send a proxy vote to Ian Fox. What we are voting on is a six month trial and we will revisit the subject at the end of my term.

 

See you on Tuesday.