Minutes from Friday, August 22, 2025
Sunrise Toastmasters
This week’s meeting started with a warm welcome from our President, Toastmaster Abdulrahman Albazie and a discussion of research and observation that he had noted regarding the Black Lives Matter movement, including increased awareness, youth engagement in racial justice protests, and significant increase in company led Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion programs. This led us into our moment of silence in recognition of the Black Lives Matter movement and the ongoing struggle for racial equality. The introduction was concluded with reminders such as use of the bias flag as a tool toward becoming more conscientious speakers before turning the meeting over to our Toastmaster of the Day, Toastmaster Matthew Choate. Matthew introduced the word of the day, tenacity, meaning to be determined and persistent despite obstacles that may be encountered.
Toastmaster Dave Burr introduced our first speaker, Abdulrahman who spoke on the topic “Stumbling Blocks to Stepping Stones.” He started out by stating we are all on a journey and are faced with roadblocks which leave us with the choice of turning back or facing the challenge. We encounter these in all walks of life and require us to be strong and honest with ourselves, avoid shifting blame when things do not go as smoothly as we would like. He stressed the need to admit our own weaknesses which ultimately allows us to learn from our mistakes in order to grow, learn, and thrive.
Toastmaster Norris Bass introduced our second speaker, Toastmaster Bettina Ross whose topic was “Turning Vision into Reality” and her excitement in launching her business “Simply Bettina.” Tina Joe noted the importance of having a master plan with defined, measurable, and achievable goals that also are time bound. Essentially, defining a due date by which you plan to achieve these goals. Simply Bettina will be a means to help other learn from previous failure, prepare, review, and adapt as they face challenges with the goal of helping to build bridges to success for those who need it the most.
Table Topics was led by Toastmaster Stiles Burr, and focused our word of the day. Toastmaster Tim Murphy shared a recent setback on the Murphys trip to Ireland, in which they missed their flight due to circumstances beyond their control and reminding themselves to always make the best of a bad situation. Toastmaster Kendra Hiatt stated she remains resilient when faced with challenges by trying to keep the end goal in mind and making sure she continues to take care of herself even when she feels like she’s having to run the world. Dave recalled a time when he faced difficulties as a camp counselor on a overnight hiking trip with 12 kids and were caught in the pouring rain. He sacrificed his dry sleeping bag for 3 of his charges because he did not want them to become disillusioned with the experience. Toastmaster Summer Murphy shared one of the best pieces of advice she had received that helped her to deal with adversity was her father’s oft repeated, “this too shall pass” and that she had shared this with a distraught fellow traveler during the Murphys recent travel challenge. Toastmaster Yuko Honda shared sound advice for achieving success that she had received from her English instructor was to repeat “I can do it, I can do it, I can do it!” Toastmaster Savannah Murphy shared a time in which difficulty to led to a positive outcome. Savvy was well prepared to be Speaker at a then in-person Sunrise Toastmasters meeting all to find a lack of needed hardware for presentation that morning! After dealing with a moment of panic, they pivoted to a new topic “You have to take care of yourself” in order to fill the Speaker role, and shared lessons learned in the need to sleep, eat, and drink.
We then moved onto the Breakfast of Champions, speech and meeting evaluations. Toastmaster Anu Parvatheni served as our General Evaluator, turning it over to Dave to complete Speaker 1 evaluation and then to Norris to complete Speaker 2 evaluation. Tim and Kendra filled the roles of Timer and Grammarian.
So much food for thought:
Don’t forget to take care of yourself.
Be kind.
I am the architect of my life.
A vision without strategy is just an illusion.
Mistakes are a part of life, use them as stepping stones instead of stumbling blocks.
Roles for Friday, are as follows:
Toastmaster: Kerstin
Speaker 1: Lucrecia
Speaker 2: Chang
Table Topics: Norris
Gen Evaluator: Abdulrahman
Evaluator 1: Savvy
Evaluator 2: Anu
Timer: Tina Joe
Grammarian: Melissa
