This week’s meeting kicked off with a warm welcome from our President, Abdulrahman, followed by the One World, Many Voices segment led by Toastmaster Tim. He shared insights on rising gas prices in Mexico and how global developments can impact daily life. He left us with a simple, reflective takeaway: “I wish the news was better.”
Following that segment, Abdulrahman briefly introduced the Bias Flag and explained its purpose, noting that we had members-only attendance this week. The Bias Flag is a tool our club uses to promote inclusive and mindful language throughout our meetings. He then recognized Toastmaster Tina Joe for her recent achievement of taking first place at the Toastmasters District 37 competition.
The meeting was then turned over to our Toastmaster of the Day, Kehinde (Kenny), who provided an overview of the meeting agenda and explained the roles involved to help everyone follow along. Kenny introduced the Word of the Day, fastidious, and demonstrated its use with the sentence, “He is so fastidious about his appearance that not a single hair is ever out of place.” With that, she guided us through a great meeting.
We had two speakers this week. Toastmaster Norris delivered a speech titled “The Ranch,” where he described his time spent helping around a ranch. He shared stories of using his skills to fix doors and work on plumbing, all while being supervised by Duncan, a horse.
Our second speaker, Toastmaster Melissa, presented a speech titled “Three Things I’ve Learned in My First Pathway.” Key takeaways from her talk included: feedback is contextual and requires knowing your audience; speaking is a spectrum rather than being simply “good” or “bad”; and repetition is where the magic happens. She left us with a powerful reminder: say what you care about so they know why you care.
Table Topics were led by Tina Joe, who asked participants to choose a number between 1 and 2000, then selected a corresponding question from the book 2000 Questions About Me. Questions included: Who influenced your life the most? Would you ever consider becoming a preacher? What would you do in a world war situation? Responses ranged from naming a sibling as a lifelong “phone-a-friend,” to gathering family together during difficult times while still finding moments of joy, to exploring the idea of preaching fundamental values through example rather than from an organized religion.
Next, we moved into our Breakfast of Champions segment for speech and meeting evaluations. Toastmaster Adnan led the evaluation team and provided thoughtful feedback, highlighting how well the overall meeting flowed. Speaker evaluations were delivered by Toastmasters Summer and Chang Yu, who emphasized strengths such as sending introductions early, clearly showing why the topic matters, and delivering a masterclass speech opener. Suggested areas for improvement included practicing with visual aids ahead of time to prevent technical hiccups. Toastmasters Syed and Abigayle kept us on track by timing speeches and tracking filler words.
The meeting adjourned right at 8:00 AM EST, and we’re already looking forward to next week’s meeting.
The next Sunrise Toastmasters meeting will be at 7 a.m. on April 24, EST. If you would like to join our meeting as a guest, contact us for the meeting link.
The roles for the next meeting are as follows:
Toastmaster: Tim Murphy
One World, Many Voices: Kerstin Haase
Speaker 1: Yuko Honda
Speaker 2: Gulnara Askerova
Table Topics: Syed Shah
General Evaluator: Lisa Garofola
Evaluator 1: Norris Bass
Evaluator 2: Melissa Dutmers
Timer: Open
Grammarian: Summer Murphy
