Minutes from Friday, November 7, 2025
Sunrise Toastmasters
This week’s meeting started with a warm welcome from our President, Toastmaster Abdulrahman Albazie who reviewed some recent club business and defined the intent of our new weekly speaking role, One World Many Voices, as a means to communicate and raise awareness of events personally significant to the speaker in their community and serve as a means to emphasize the global representation of Sunrise Toastmasters membership. He then turned it over to Toastmaster Matthew Choate, who spoke on the importance of the USDA National Forest Services the significance in his life, and love for the George Washington National Forest near his home. He went on to note that the Forest Service has lost thousands of jobs under the current administration, and the impact of it . The scope of the Forest Service is not limited to maintenance of these green spaces for recreation but also included fighting major forest fires, one of which had been very close to his home. The meeting was returned to Abdulrahman who concluded with reminders such as use of the bias flag as a tool toward becoming more conscientious speakers, before introducing our Toastmaster of the Day, Toastmaster Kerstin Haase. Kerstin had selectedthe word of the day, “straight-forwardly” defined as behaving and speaking in an open, honest, and direct manner. She encouraged all to incorporate this word into their day.
Toastmaster Summer Murphy introduced our first speaker, Toastmaster Tim Murphy who spoke on the topic “Digital Nomading- 3 months, 7 countries, 11 states, and 1 backpack.” Tim spoke about his approach to life using the CHEF acronym: Community, Health, Education, and Finance. Community encompassed the important people in his life, more than any specific place. He applied Health maintenance during his travels through swimming, requiring him to purchase a swim cap in Ireland and “appropriate” swimwear in Nice, France. Education has continued through use of Duo Lingo, both in learning the Spanish language to support living full time in Mexico and during international travels. Lastly Finance, realizing that the Murphys ability to work remotely was able to support their ability to work and travel, but also the pleasant surprise that home exchange had been economically beneficial in terms of cost savings as well. CHEF is a great recipe for life.
Toastmaster Norris Bass introduced our second speaker, giving his ice breaker speech, Toastmaster Md Adnan who shared how his move across cities and countries, his natural curiosity and restlessness shapes his sense of belonging and brought him to Sunrise Toastmasters. He had grown up near the Bay of Bengal, water that was always moving and described how this metaphorically represented himself. He pointed out that while he had lived in many places and had many different jobs, these life changes were due to an unending curiosity and not due to unhappiness. Every new place has taught him something about himself. Adnan noted that he was feeling restless again and this had helped lead him to Sunrise Toastmasters which he views as a new shoreline in his life, as a tool to be resilient and address his fear of public speaking. He encouraged us to let restlessness be our guide to addressing personal challenges in our lives. Well done Adnan!!
Table Topics was led by Toastmaster Bettina Ross, and questions focused on our word of the day. These ranged from which public figure do you think communicates most straight-forwardly to what question do you ask when making a significant purchase / investment to whether too much directness can damage trust instead of building it. We were able to hear from Toastmasters Robert Shepherd, Melissa Dutmers, Dave Burr, Abdulrahman, Gulnera Askerova, Savvy Murphy, and Yuko Honda.
We then moved onto the Breakfast of Champions, speech and meeting evaluations. Toastmaster Chang Yu served as our General Evaluator, turning it over to Summer to complete Speaker 1 evaluation and then to Norris to complete Speaker 2 evaluation. Toastmaster Sophie Wu and Toastmaster Abdullah Hussein filled the Timer and Grammarian roles.
Food for thought:
Is it true? Is it helpful? Is it kind?
Straight-forward doesn’t mean being a jerk; compassion comes with it.
Our hearts travel before our feet do.
Words could leave me, like boats disappearing into the fog.
Roles for Friday, November 13 are as follows:
One World Many Voices: Chang
Toastmaster: Anu
Speaker 1: Tina Joe
Speaker 2: Tina Joe
Table Topics: Lucrecia
Gen Evaluator: Tim
Evaluator 1: Dave
Evaluator 2: Dave
Timer: Matthew
Grammarian: Tom
