What
shall we
do
TODAY?

The President's Corner

Season Greetings Newcomers. By the time you receive this newsletter, you are probably deeply involved in the festivities of Christmas and Hanukkah and looking forward to the coming New Year. Looking back in retrospect at the Newcomers Club for 2008, it looks like we had a pretty successful year. We started off the year with a fantastic 2008 Gala that was very successful. The hard working Ladies Out to Lunch Bunch had many great lunches and very interesting presentations. For the outdoors enthusiasts, if you weren't playing tennis or golf, you were hiking, skiing, snowshoeing or geocaching. If you weren't outdoors, you were probably enjoying needlecraft, playing bridge, pinochle, or bunco with a great group of friends or maybe reading and passing the latest bestselling books and novels.

Those potluck socials, a great place to interact with new and old friends, while having some great food, were great monthly events. If it was gourmet food that you were looking for, the Dinner Club was the place to be. This group really put on some great dinner events.

Those special events were really something. If you weren't tasting wine from around the world or wandering through Redstone Castle, you may have been practicing your falsetto at the opera in Salt Lake City.

The armchair theater, what a way to experience and share travel adventures all of your friends. Boy, did we have some excellent presentations. We don't want to forget the fantastic Pig Roast that occurred on Labor Day. The high winds and pending rain had us worried for a while, but Mother Nature stepped in and allowed us to have a very successful event.

Wow! After looking back at everything we did and accomplished over the year, it just reaffirms what we already know − that we have a really great club and wonderful group of people. I would like to send out my appreciation to all of the newcomers that worked so hard to make this a special and successful year. Even though 2008 was a really good year for the Newcomers club, let’s see if we can make 2009 even better.

Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah and Happy New Year Rex Brucker, President

You have joined the club—now go one step farther!

One of the things I have always enjoyed about Newcomers is meeting the people new to the area.  One of the best ways to do that is attend the coffee and participate in the many club activities.  As a new person I cannot stress how much easier it is to meet people than by getting involved in some kind of activity by helping to do it.  You will have assistance from those who have done it before you from checklists to notebooks full of tips on what works and what does not.  You will meet people as they call to reserve a spot, or write you a check to cover the cost of the event, or just put their name on a list at the meetings.  The club cannot function without people taking charge of the things we do.

The Gala is an example.  Reg Price, Kathy Malvern, and Pam Snider created a step by step notebook of what to do when.  Rex Brucker and the past committee set up the dates, reserved the band, discussed the menu with Two Rivers Convention Center and now we need a few people to wrap up the details, take names, and collect funds or we won’t have a party in January.  By doing this now, you will not be on the hook for multiple years of service!  There are enough people in this group to rotate the jobs and committees around so we don’t burn out our members who have stepped forward in the past.  We all appreciate jobs well done, but don’t need to keep loading the people who do volunteer over and over again.

Give it a try—it really works as a way to meet the members of the club.  The positions we need right now include:  Gala committee, 1st VP, 2nd VP, second pinochle group, and anything else in activities that you want to do that is different from the list of activities or at another time than what is currently planned.  As the NIKE slogan says—JUST DO IT!  Contact any of the current board members listed on the back of the newsletter.                  Past President, Carol Todd