President Bryan Slaba was back in the Presidential chair and rang the bell on October 6th to bring the meeting to order. He asked Rotarian Laurie Kidd to offer a prayer. Laurie gave thanks for the beautiful weather and asked for continued blessings upon the club members to do His will in all our dealings with others.

Laurie went right into our singing session with two old favorites: Home on the Range and Smile.

Rotarian Ken Cotton was up next with his weekly Membership Minute about the Four Avenues of Service. This is a term in Rotary referring to the four objects of Rotary: Club Service, Vocational Service, Community Service, and International Service. Club Service involves all the activities necessary for Rotarians to perform to make their club function successfully.

Vocational Service is a description of the opportunity each Rotarian must represent the dignity and utility of one’s vocation to the other members of the club.

Community Service pertains to those activities which Rotarians undertake to improve the quality of life in their community. It frequently involves assistance to youth, the aged, handicapped and others who look to Rotary as a source of hope for a better life.

The Fourth Avenue, International Service, describes the many programs and activities which Rotarians undertake to advance international understanding, goodwill, and peace. The projects are designed to meet humanitarian needs of people in many lands.

When a Rotarian understands and travels down the “Four Avenues of Service,” the Object of Rotary takes on even greater meaning.

Assistant Sergeant at Arms, Jeff Doom levied the following fines: $2 each to the absent farmers: Bill Frei, Jerry and Jordan Weber, and Jamie Soukup; $3 to Becky Brunsing for requesting cheesecake for dessert; $2 to Jerry Henke and Scott McAdaragh for complaining, $5 to Jeff for going to a wine tasting with his wife Happy Fines were received from Laurie Kidd for the excellent singing by the club members; $2 from Amanda Bechen for the month of October beginning; $10 from Craig Krsnak for winning a gun in a raffle.

Joe Stedronsky held the lucky ticket number, so he tried for the Queen of Hearts but pulled the two of Diamonds.

Secretary/Treasurer Craig Krsnak declared The Woods Team the winner of the attendance race for the first quarter and announced that both the Brunsing and Woods teams had four misses for this beginning of the second quarter. d

President Slaba reminded members that the Rotary will be serving the October 28th Fellowship Feast. There will be more updates in the future.

Rotarian Craig Krsnk introduced his program for the day which was Kris Monroe who is the District Park Supervisor for District 10. Kris might be new to the job which includes everything from North Point to Pease Creek and outlying areas; but she has roots in Lake Andes. Her father was originally from the Andes area, and she had visited and hunted in the area for many years. District ten lies from below the dam to North Wheeler and from Randall Creek to Whetstone. This includes eleven properties. The district came under new supervision with her as manager and her two assistants are also new to the job.

Kris came to this area from Lake Poinsett, where she had only one camping area to manage, in this district she has eleven. She gave the statistics for this past year of camping: North Point had 10,703; Randall Creek had 7,853, Pease Creek had 2,057, and the outlying areas had 2,614 for a total of 23,227 campers.

She reported that for the first year they worked at restoration of 150 acres burned in a wildfire and this is still in progress. They removed 28.9 acres of Cedars at North Point and are continuing this activity. They installed three new solar lights at the Spillway and St. Francis Beach. They are continuing to remove cedars throughout the park district and planted 120 trees throughout the district. That project has been completed.

Asset Management: They upgraded all district lights to LED and that is also in progress. Redecked two docks at North Point. Removed and replaced rotted wood on seven cabins at North Point and Randall Creek which has been completed. They replaced the fish cleaning table at North Point and replaced the parking lot at the North Point dump station and both of those projects are completed.

Regarding customer service, they held customer service training for all seasonal works and installed twelve electronic kiosks throughout the district. A project in progress right now is installing park entrance signage to make all parks uniform.

They still are repairing the bike trail from flood damage in years past and will be repairing the damage from the recent wildfire that swept through the area this past summer.

Kris gave an excellent and informative program. There was time for a question-and-answer session. She was asked what a typical camping night total might be, and she replied about four hundred. If you have noticed all the out of state vehicles that go through Wagner to the West, she replied that about 80 percent of the campers are from out of State and are from Nebraska and Iowa. Attendance overall is up 30 percent from last year and the year before.

Kris can be reached at her office at 38180 297th Street, Lake Andes, SD or 605-487-7046.

The meeting was adjourned with the recitation of our 4-Way Test.