Wednesday, October 5th was a beautiful fall day for the Wagner Rotary Club to meet. President Rachel Woods welcomed everyone. Our only guest was Christina Ymker who is employed by Amanda Bechen and is one of our Wagner/ Lake Andes EMT’s. Thank you for your service, Christina!

President Rachel offered a prayer in the absence of any clergy at the meeting. Rotarian Gerrit Juffer upped his musical game by bringing a Blue Tooth with beautiful accompaniment for the “R-O-T-A-R-Y Spells Rotary “song. We sounded like a heavenly choir! Gerrit was given a round of applause and we can’t wait to see what he brings next week. I think he mentioned something about a band!!

Rotarian Ken Cotton’s Membership Minute addressed Global networking Groups: The interests and hobbies of Rotarians are as diverse as the membership itself. Global Networking Groups offer a way for Rotarians to share their common interests with other members worldwide. Two types of groups fall under this umbrella: Rotary Fellowships, which center around recreational or vocational interests and Rotarian Action Groups which focus on specific issues. Rotary Fellowships represent an abundance of recreational and vocational pursuits, such as tennis, music, quilting, accounting, law enforcement, and pharmacology.

Rotarian Action Groups typically carry out service projects and activities concerned with a specific issue such as providing dental services to developing countries and mobilizing Rotarians to provide global leadership in the fight against HIV/AIDS.

Sergeant at Arms Jordan Weber was ready and waiting as usual. $2 went to Bill Frei who was suffering from bean dust; $2 to Jerry Henke who was glad he woke up that morning; $2 to Joe Stedronsky for talking about chipping teeth on eating chicken; $5 to Jeff Doom for forgetting to take his razor on vacation and another $3 for blaming his wife for it; $17.00 to Bryan Slaba for seventeen bottles of wine on his vacation; $2 to Linda Soukup for blaming her computer for autocorrecting her article; $2 for a donation to Gerrit Juffer for hiring a band next week; $2 to Jerry Henke for his phone ringing and the tone was a quacking duck. Happy Fines came from Craig Krsnak $5 for his Husker team winning a game, $5 from Jerry Henke for watching the Space X launch and descent; $2 from Gerrit Juffer for finally getting to go to the New York Yacht Club.

Ken Cotton held the lucky ticket number and found only a two of Diamonds in the new card deck.

Sec/Treasurer Craig Krsnak announced the attendance team for this quarter a done deal even though there are two more weeks. Jordan Weber’s team has 21 misses with three absent for the day. Jamie Soukup’s team only had one absence and sixteen misses. Steak Day is in two weeks on October 19th. Football book winners were Bill Hollman sold by Joe Stedronsky and Rosie Juffer sold by Gerrit Juffer. The question arose “Who is Rosie Juffer”. Answer: Gerrit’s dog.

Rotarian Jordan Weber introduced his program which was Rotarians Bill and Patty Frei. The Frei’s recently attended the District #5610 annual conference and they attended some of the smaller information sessions. Their favorite was The School of St. Jude. No, that isn’t the Hospital St. Jude. This is a school that was established in 2002 in Tanzania, Africa that is fighting poverty through Education. The school was founded with only three students the first year. Only the poorest students are accepted.

Over 45 million Africans live in poverty on less than $2 per day. They live in huts, shacks, anything they can cobble together to call a home. Recruiters visit all families in their location and only choose those who are the poorest. If your roof has grass or any kind of permanent roofing, you don’t have a chance for your child to be selected. They also determine which children are naturally gifted and would benefit the most from an education.

There is an organization called American Friends of the School of St. Jude. There are now three buildings on the campus, and they have 1,800 students in primary and secondary education classes. Students are boarded at the school in a safe and supportive environment, or they are bussed in daily.

They now have 300 local staff, and all the teachers are Tanzanians. In 2015 they had their first high school graduate who had been a twelve-year student. 142 of their students have graduated from a university.

Thirty Rotarians from District 5610 flew to Tanzania for a week. They all became sponsors for a student. Rotary is having a $25000 Challenge Grant. $5,000 was raised at the Sioux City Convention immediately. They had a silent auction, gifts and artwork were for sale also. It costs $2,640 to sponsor one child.

Each Rotary Club in the district has been challenged to raise $100.00. If you are interested, you can learn more by going to www. schoolofstjude.org Bill Frei reported on one of the sessions he attended about Polio. Rotary worldwide has always been working to try to eradicate polio from the earth. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has raised about 150 million a year. This past year there were two breakouts of polio in the Middle East and one confirmed case in New York recently.

Bill stated that the number one obstacle to eradicating polio is that there are some countries who will not allow Rotary in to give vaccine. They do not believe in it or any other vaccines. Superstitions and the lack of medical knowledge also contribute to the resistance to being vaccinated.

Bill passed around a picture of an iron lung that they saw in a museum in Sioux City. An interesting discussion began about the beginning of polio, when people started being vaccinated in the United States and knowing someone who had polio? When were you vaccinated for polio?