District Governor Mike Chapman

District Governor Mike Chapman was in Citrus County this week visiting the
six Rotary Clubs. Our Club’s Board of Directors met with him on Monday evening.
He reviewed how well the club was doing and listened to input from some of the
board members. He had some suggestions and asked for some additional
information.  On Wednesday Mike was at the weekly breakfast meeting and gave
a talk on his expectations of the District/Clubs for the Rotary year 2016-2017. He
shared some of Rotary experiences and answered member’s questions. He stressed
what a great opportunity the Rotary Convention in Atlanta will be for members.
The District Conference will be at a Tampa Airport hotel and you can fly right after
the conference to the convention in Atlanta.
Mike presented a PHF+5 to Ken Swade and PHF+1’s to Bill Buckner and
Roger Carlson.  Karen Anderson was there to accept a $500 check to the
Citrus Cultural Alliance for providing the picture for the 2016 Rotary calendar.
Karen will also help provide a picture for the 2017 Rotary calendar.
This was the first week of the August Membership Month. Members should try
to bring a friend/guest to the third week of the month which is “Bring a Friend to
Rotary Week”.  Check out the shoes in the pictures below.

Roger presented club t shirt to Mike Chapman.

Mike & Roger exchanging banners.

Roger presented check and coffee cup to Karen Anderson.

Citrus County Blessings

Grace Hengesbach , Executive Director of Citrus County Blessings joined us
to plan how the club members can volunteer to help silence weekend hunger
for the children in Citrus County schools. She needs help picking up food from
the Food Panty and unloading the food and then packing the food for the
children. One of the packing locations is located close by in Hernando
at the Historic Hernando School site. Grace has provided a schedule when
work is done at the packing locations. Deliver  and unloading of food is on the
third Wednesday of each month of the school year starting on August 17, 2016.
Prior to our evening social meeting on August 10th at 5:00pm members will
meet at John Ceparano’s office in Inverness to develop a plan for our support
of Citrus County Blessings. Roger & Grace are  in the picture, below.

Our last meeting of the Rotary year had a great speaker, State Representative
Jimmy T Smith. He filled in the club members with what happened in this year’s
legislative session in Tallahassee. It was very interesting hearing the changes
to laws that he was involved with trying to pass. Some of the changes he was
supporting passed and some didn’t. Jimmy said that a typical new law will take
up to 5 years to be passed. One of the changes dealt with improving the
employment prospects for discharged service men & women. At this time
it is difficult to translate the service skill to a equivalent civilian skill due
to a difference in how they are defined. He has been meeting with DBPR to try
to have military training & experience applied to criteria for DBPR licensed
activities. It has not been easy and some progress has been made but it will take
a lot longer to make major improvements for veterans.
Several members brought in men’s clothes for the Family Resource Center
as Ginger West had requested last week. The picture below shows the clothes
in the back of the vehicle before carrying them into the Center.

      Jimmy T Smith & Roger                       Men’s Clothes

At the meeting checks were presented to three local non-profits.
Ginger West head of the Family Resource Center was asked how else we can help
said she could use some men’s clothes. Please bring any unneeded t shirts, shorts
& jeans/levi’s to next week’s meeting on June 29th that will be taken to the Family
Resource Center.  Ginger provides help to a lot of hopeless people. If you have a
bicycle not being used, she also needs bicycles for them. Grace Hengesbach head
of Citrus County Blessings and George Schmalstad head of Filter Youth were
at the meeting, too. Grace could use some help on the 3rd Wednesday of the month
at 7:30am to pickup food from the food bank and take it to a location to be packed
for children to eat at home on the weekend. George could use some help in the
future to clear land and prepare it for the Filter Youth Program.
These would be some good service projects for the club.

                                             Grace, Ginger, George & Roger