Mesa West Rotary Club will be hosting Carlos Luque, a Rotary Youth Exchange Student from Ecuador for the 2018-19 academic year. The original information the club was given about Carlos' arrival indicated he would arrive at 3:59 PM on Saturday, July 28.
A message was sent to club members on the day of Carlos planned arrival updating the flight number and changing the arrival time to 6:40 PM. A later message to our membership indicated his flight was delayed a bit with an estimated arrival time of 7:10 PM.
When Carlos' plane finally landed and Carlos walked past airport security, he was met by a welcoming entourage of fifteen. With Rotarians and their families living busy lives, to have fifteen in the welcome party when Carlos finally walked past security, was an impressive feat.
Carlos is shown with his first host family in the top photo (l-r) Amanda Rosenberg, Carlos, Frank, Sammy, and Jack Rosenberg.
Included in the welcoming group photo, are (l-r) Daryl Bethea, Frank Rosenberg, Sammy Rosenberg, Jack Rosenberg, Amanda Rosenberg, Colleen Coons, Dan Coons, John Pennypacker, Donna Goetzenberger, Carlos, Ryan Del'Ollio (ROTEX Mesa West Sponsored), Cooper Newman (ROTEX), Caleb Lowe (ROTEX) Hannah Lazere (2017-18 Rebound-ROTEX), Marla Lazere (RYE Committee) , and Kelly Gilmore (RYE Inbound Chair).
ROTEX are former exchange students who volunteer to help the Youth Exchange Committee to plan and execute activities with inbound and/or outbound students. They are there to help share some of their experience as an exchange student with students who are starting (or about to start) their exchange experience. ROTEX are a vital resource to help our program grow! They are the Rotary Youth Exchange Experts!
Now that Carlos has arrived and is beginning to get settled, Mesa West Rotarians who hope to get better acquainted and share a unique experience with him should make arrangements to be added to his calendar before it gets impossibly full. Remember, what seems ordinary to you will be a new and unique experience for him, so don't hesitate to invite Carlos to share time with you.
It takes a brave and adventurous young person to leave all that is familiar, including friends and family, to spend a year in a different culture where very few people are bilingual. Most inbound students find that, even though they have studied English, it is difficult to understand conversations at first. Talking louder is not helpful, but slowing down, keeping your message simple, and making eye contact to verify understanding, or notice confusion early, can be very useful. Carlos will quickly adapt, and get used to our local speech habits, but his early days will likely be a bit stressful.
Remembering the way he was welcomed will be a precious memory for Carlos of a great beginning to his Rotary Youth Exchange year-long adventure.
Jim Schmidt opened the meeting with an awful joke. Ron Thompson promised to fine him. He was obviously under the influence of drugs – courtesy of his dentist.
Ray Smith led us in a rousing rendition of “In the Good Old Summertime”. In her presentation, our speaker from Ghana found the verbiage particularly amusing considering our current weather in AZ.
Lucinda offered a Rotary gift bag of items from Rotary International HQs. Daryl Bethea was the lucky winner and was even happier when he didn’t have to pay for it.
Our guests included Sandra Franco, AG from Westwood Interact Club. Jeremy R was the guest of Tim Troy. And just for good measure Frank Rosenberg’s daughter, Sammy, volunteered to taste the chocolate pie and pronounced it delicious.
On a very sad, but also happy note, Matthew Rotty announced he and his family are moving to Prescott where he starts work on Monday with Keller - Williams. This has been a long-time quest and has finally come through for him. We wish him well and will forward all good wishes for his new Rotary Club in Prescott.
SHOW ME THE MONEY
Kristin Klein’s ticket was drawn and all she had to do was pick the Ace of Clubs out of three cards. The small pot was $217 with the mega pot at $2313. The pictures say it all - anticipation and disappointment!
During happy dollars, Warren Williamson offer a suggestion for the food survey – eliminate anything that Greg O would not eat!!!!!
Don LaBarge still crying over his downed tree, and how his gate and trailer got tangled up. The poor man really wanted to win the pot this week.
Dan Coons reminded us that our exchange student, Carlos, from Ecuador arrives Saturday at PHX, terminal 4 at 3:59 pm.
GUEST SPEAKER
Debbie Koeneman introduced our speaker, Josephine Godwyll. She is pursuing her PHD at ASU in the School of Community Resources and Development.
Josephine’s early life in Ghana was tremendously influenced by her dad’s involvement with Rotary. She grew up in a small village and learned about the 4 – Way Test as a young girl. She still thinks about it today in her everyday actions and decisions.
As she became educated, she saw the need for rural areas and young people to learn about computers. At first, they only saw drawings of computers on a blackboard. She wanted to do more.
She founded a non-profit, Young at Heart and created DiggieClass training young people how to operate real computers – having never seen a real one previously. Through these classes they were able to create websites, research projects relative to them such as recycling scrap plastic, etc.
As a Geo-spatial engineer she was honored by the Ghana Institute of Engineers in the 2014 Engineering Excellence Awards for her research prowess and her passion for extending engineering principles into community development. She has been recognized as one of the top 3 young Africans championing a revolution in education on the continent. And was also chosen from over 40,000 applicants as 1 of 1000 young Africans who partook in President Obama’s Mandela Washington Fellowship program.
“I can only imagine what the next generation will be able to achieve and the problems they will be encouraged to solve using I.T. as a tool, but it all depends on encouraging creativity with digital tools at an early age” - Josephine Marie Godwyll
At the end of her presentation, Josephine expressed an interest in becoming a Rotarian. Lucinda General and John Pennypacker, both offered to help introduce her to a club close to ASU.
Carolyn Jones was born in Azusa, California and, except for a half-brother born some 20 years later, she was an only child. She spent her early years in Azusa, but at 10 years of age, moved with her parents to Manhattan, Kansas where she finished high school. For several of those years in Manhattan, the family lived on a farm just outside of town where she picked and canned vegetables, fed the chickens, gathered the eggs, rode a cow (believe it or not), watered the animals, played down at the river and, in general, had a great time. The farmhouse was lit with oil lamps (no electricity) and had no indoor plumbing, so you can imagine how they managed to cook, stay warm and bathe.
Carolyn married just out of high school, moved back to California and mothered 3 children, two girls and one boy. After an untimely divorce, she moved to Mesa with her children where she went to work for Henry & Horne. It was many years later when she met Wendell there at Henry & Horne. Wendell had also gone through a divorce. After a brief courtship, they were married. He had 6 children, so with her 3, they together now have 9 children, 41 grandchildren and 25 great grandchildren.
Carolyn has spent many years working, raising children and grandchildren, serving in her church and also in the community. She and Wendell served a year-and-a-half mission for their church in Farmington, New Mexico. They also have served a local church mission at the Red Mountain Institute. She joined Rotary just recently, but already was a Paul Harris Fellow as she had worked for years with Wendell in his Rotary service.
Carolyn has lived in four states and has traveled to some 20 foreign countries. She and Wendell have had many wonderful vacations. Perhaps the one she enjoyed the most was their cruise through the Baltic Sea where they started in England, then visited Germany, Estonia, Russia, Finland, Denmark, Sweden and Norway.
Her most rewarding volunteer service was the church service mission that she and Wendell did in Farmington.
Mesa West Rotary Club will be hosting Carlos Luque, a Rotary Youth Exchange Student from Ecuador for the 2018-19 academic year. The original information the club was given about Carlos' arrival indicated he would arrive at 3:59 PM on Saturday, July 28.
Carolyn Jones was born in Azusa, California and, except for a half-brother born some 20 years later, she was an only child. She spent her early years in Azusa, but at 10 years of age, moved with her parents to Manhattan, Kansas where she finished high school. For several of those years in Manhattan, the family lived on a farm just outside of town where she picked and canned vegetables, fed the chickens, gathered the eggs, rode a cow (believe it or not), watered the animals, played down at the river and, in general, had a great time. The farmhouse was lit with oil lamps (no electricity) and had no indoor plumbing, so you can imagine how they managed to cook, stay warm and bathe.
