Minutes from Friday, August 29, 2025
Sunrise Toastmasters
This week’s meeting started with a warm welcome from our President, Toastmaster Abdulrahman Albazie. He had researched statistics regarding the Black Lives Matter movement and found that in general large segments of society, in the U.S. and internationally, support this movement. He found information that demonstrated this support was reflected across cultures and race, but did note when evaluating support in terms of age that it tended to lessen among older adults. 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 Kerstin Haase. Kerstin led us through a round of introductions for our guest Gulnera Askerova before introducing the word of the day “serendipity” defined as something wonderful that happens by chance.
Toastmaster Savannah Murphy introduced our first speaker, Toastmaster Lucrecia Abasto for her first speech with us “The Journey I Didn’t Plan.” Lucrecia shared her journey from growing up in a small town in Argentina to her present life in Germany. As a young woman she had worked with a leader who had returned from France with such a positive experience that he had encouraged her to search abroad when considering MBA programs and future career steps. She found this financially difficult simply due to the challenge of converting Argentinian pesos to other currencies and having enough money to take steps toward this. Through a serendipitous call, she learned of a MBA program in Germany which was also tied to a scholarship opportunity. She applied for both and was accepted, taking her on a life changing journey. She has now been in Germany for 8 years. Lucrecia concluded by noting it was important to have goals, and realize the path may be less direct than expected… but you can get there!
Toastmaster Anu Parvathaneni introduced our second speaker, Toastmaster Chang Yu who was also presenting his first speech with us, “Dreams, Detours, and Do-overs.” Chang took us from his life as a teen with dreams of playing guitar and making a life in music to last minute college applications & acceptance to college, followed by a transfer to the University of Wisconsin in Madison. Here he was able to form friendships through music and become part of a band, managing to hang on to earlier dreams, though they experienced rejections from the music world. He went on to follow his heart to San Francisco and received a “one way ticket home” to Virginia, leading him to spread his wings and spend 2 years in Korea as an English teacher. Chang then went into marketing and has been in this field ever since. Bringing things full circle, he experienced a serendipitous occurrence and received a phone call from his former band manager years later he and the band were able to complete a contract for 1 song as part of a compilation!
Table Topics was led by Toastmaster Norris Bass and focused on our word of the day. Toastmaster Matthew Choate shared the serendipitous ownership of Jasmine “the dog he didn’t want” and the joy she has brought into his life. Toastmaster Dave Burr described meeting his future wife while working as a manager at a Burger King and her presence as one of the trainees as a moment of serendipity in his life. Toastmaster Adnan felt that fate and serendipity were 2 different things, and shared the example of himself learning to play guitar through the serendipitous gift of a guitar that his son had received. Toastmaster Kendra Hiatt felt that you create the chance for serendipity in your daily life by being open to spotting unexpected opportunities and being willing to pivot from the planned pathway. Our returning guest Yuko Honda shared that music was a gift that led to something wonderful in her life. She has made lasting friendships through music as well as simply being able to use it as tool to lift her spirits. Chang described himself as a Korean American who grew up not liking Korean food until through a serendipitous invitation from a friend in Tennessee was invited to a Korean restaurant. He now loves Korean food and enjoys it several times a week.
We then moved onto the Breakfast of Champions, speech and meeting evaluations. Abdulrahman served as our General Evaluator, turning it over to Savvy to complete Speaker 1 evaluation and then to Anu to complete Speaker 2 evaluation. Toastmaster Bettina Ross and Toastmaster Melissa Dutmers filled the Timer and Grammarian roles.
Food for thought:
Timing really is everything.
I love how a meeting can come together.
Bravo to Lucrecia and Chang on 2 excellent ice breaker speeches!
Roles for Friday, September 5, 2025 are as follows:
Toastmaster: Savvy
Speaker 1: Kendra
Speaker 2: Melissa
Table Topics: Kenny
Gen Evaluator: Lucrecia
Evaluator 1: Dave
Evaluator 2: Tina Joe
Timer: Kim
Grammarian: Anu
