Quick Look!

Upcoming Meetings

July Meeting

Date & Time: Sunday July 8 at 5 PM
Where: Taj Mahal, Tukta Thai, or New New Buffet [see Events]
Cost: Approx. $10.00 plus drink, tax, and tip

Program: Small Group Dinners in Ethnic Restaurants - getting to know you
Reserve: Contact Dora at edstahl@swbell.net by July 2.

August Meeting

Date & Time: Sunday August 12 at 5 PM [flyer to be mailed in July; see Events]]
Where: Ropa Vieja Restaurant, Belt Line & Josey in Carrollton, TX
Cost: Approx. $15.00 plus drink, tax, & gratuity

Program: Colombian Outbound Presentation - Ray Enstam and Mary Williams 
and Pam Varney-Terrell with information on the incoming exchange

"Summertime and the living is easy!!" Well maybe! I imagine that many of you have plans to travel or host friends and family. Or recuperate from an outbound or personal travel. Or migrate to your summer home. Or work, like some of us still do. In any case, spread the word about FF in general and FFD in particular. I will give the July meeting hosts some FFD business cards that you can pickup to distribute [there’s room to write in your name]. If you want some, contact me.

A BIG round of Thank You’s to Tommy & Telena Wright, Jerry & Jackie Bluhm, Lee & Marilynn Cowley, and Lee & Mary Latham for opening their homes for the June small group dinners. Thirty-five FFD members [including these hosts] attended and shared great conversations and delicious food [the brisket, sides, and desert at the Bluhm's were great, as were the conversations with Jerry, Jackie,Pat, Betty, and Lilliana].

Please plan now to attend the July small group dinners – learn more about your fellow members and let us know your ideas for FF Dallas. [see Events, deadline Mon July 2] 

On June 1, I traveled to FF Ft. Worth's quarterly meeting to present my perspective and photos from the FF USA to Cuba mission that Paula and I went on in Feb 2005 [the presentation we gave last summer]. Several members had been to Cuba long ago and were very interested in life there today. Several wanted to know when FF was going again; unfortunately, the US Dept of State has denied FF's application for another set of licenses. It was also good to see how another club runs their meetings. With the positive feedback on Gary Paramore's presentation to them on Chiapas and mine, they've also asked Peggy Benton & Ken Walker to give a presentation on either of the FFI exchange/mission [to Jordan or Morocco] they’ve been on. 

Lastly, Ed Edgren forwarded me a great speech that George Brown gave at the FF Mid Atlantic Regional Conference back in April. His topic was "Crossing Barriers." With mountain climbing as a comparison, he talked about FFI's mission - "making friends across the barriers that separate people."Rather than just travel or making friends on our exchanges, we should incorporate crossing barriers - cultural, political, economic, stereotypical, or knowledge. When we cross these barriers, we'll experience the other side and find that there are many peoples, experiences, and gifts out there waiting for us. He challenges the FF clubs to "cross barriers" by incorporating into our exchanges cultural understanding, educational development, humanitarian projects, and religious understanding w/ Islamic peoples. A great read. See it in the Articles section on our website.

In friendship,
edward perez

Ways and Means - FFD Shuttle

Henny Houston recently left for a two week trip to Amsterdam and other parts of Europe. She had a ride to DFW but didn’t have one for when she returned with her grandson in early July. So, she contacted edward perez and, armed with the list of FFD Shuttle drivers, scheduled a return ride from DFW. It's easy, it's fun, and you can learn from & share with other FFD members. Contact edward perez to get the list and schedule your ride [$30 each way, $40 each way from Plano and points north] 

Membership

Brud Kisner reported that the club now has a total of 122 members (42 individuals, 74 family members, and six associate members). He also reported that he is writing biographies of all members who have joined in the last eight months. These bios, including photos are being published in the Newsletter.

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FF Gifts for Sale

Looking for a Special Gift? Pam Varney-Terrell is taking orders for the .925 Sterling Silver “Kennedy Half Dollar Coin Pendants” (includes the 24” SS Chain) at a cost of $35.00 each. These are the same pendants that were presented to each of the recent Canadian and Romanian Ambassadors and were very well received! They make excellent gifts for family and friends and are a real bargain at this price. 

We plan to continue giving these as our ‘club gift’ to all inbound ambassadors, so to avoid duplication we do request they not be used as inbound/outbound host gifts. To place your order; contact Pam to purchase one. The sale of the pendants is a fundraising effort to offset the costs of Ambassador gift/tote bags and will be an ongoing project. 

Ray Enstam has pens available for $3.00 and pen sets for $10.00. They will be available at the July meeting. They make great gifts for hosts on our outbounds. FFD will use them as gifts for speakers at our meetings.

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Yearbook Update/Membership 

Mary Williams is asking if there are any updates for the Yearbook. Also, she needs a list of all new members to be incorporated in the insert sheet when we do the updates in July. Send changes to Brud Kisner, Membership chair. 

In order for members of Friendship Force of Dallas to get to know each other better, we will start a new feature telling about new, or fairly new, members. See Member News below introducing Gerda Kreyer and Jim Rutherford.

Exchange Director Information

Ed Edgren has created an information packet which includes everything an ED needs to know to have a successful exchange (13 pages). He created the packet for his own use as Romania ED and will make this packet available to future EDs.

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Newsletter

Doris Langford would like everyone to know that her chemo is finished and the PET scan shows no cancer. She would like to thank everyone for their cards, visits, phone calls, gifts, shopping trips, and prayers. She owes a special thanks to Judy, Pam, Paula, Myrna, Zia, Mary S, and Ray. She is now working on gaining enough strength to be able to drive her own car. Bob would also like to express his thanks for all of the support and help he was given by so many people.

New members
A few more of our newest members are Gerda Kreyer and Jim Rutherford. Gerda was born near Berlin. She and her family escaped to West Berlin in 1949, where they lived in a refugee camp. When Gerda was in her teens, some American GIs gave a Christmas party, and Gerda married one of the GIs. How’s that for a new Prince Charming story? They came to the US. and lived in many locations, as military families usually do. 

Gerda then worked ten years for the army in Fort Benning, Georgia, and for 20 years as a Federal Agent in the Office of The Inspector General in Dallas. She has taught German in the Goethe Center in Dallas. In June, Gerda will go on her first outbound with the Dallas club to Bogota, Columbia.

Gerda’s husband, Jim Rutherford, is a mechanical engineer. He started with Texas Precision in Houston, designing and manufacturing equipment and systems for oil exploration and drilling companies. In the 1982 oil bust, he moved to Chaparral Steel Co. in Midlothian as manager of design, maintenance, and technology.

At this time, the PC was born, and Jim used his mechanical skills in repairing PCs for people in and out of the company. This led to building and repairing computers for customers all over the country. He runs his present company, Eagle Pro Computer, Inc., from his home. He does everything you can imagine with computers, including new, repair, software, and digital picture editing. 

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Jeff graduates !! 

A Big CONGRATULATIONS to Jeff Cornell on completing all course work to receive a Bachelors of Science in Finance from University of Texas at Dallas. He recently started work at Baker and McKenzie [the world's largest law firm; more than 80% of its lawyers practice outside the US, come from 60 countries, and speak more than 75 languages] and will be heading to SMU law school in the fall.

Inbound Upcoming

Put the Inbound exchange from Lima and Tarapoto, Peru, September 15-22, 2007 on your calendar! Anyone willing to be a home host or day host should contact Pam Varney-Terrell as soon as possible. If you would like to host a small group dinner, contact Barbara Jones or Ruth Barrow. See the tentative schedule on the Exchanges page. This schedule is based on the 20 or so ambassadors getting the flights they want and may change.

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2007 Exchanges

The inbounds that we have had this year so far were groups from Medicine Hat, Alberta, Canada and Sibiu and Brazov, Romania. There is no use reminding everyone of the fun we had. See Photos for Medicine Hat and Romania.

FF Romanian Inbound - April 2007

Jacquielynn Floyd of the Dallas Morning News had a web log entry about her meeting with Marius Stoianovici, Corina Bratoveanu, and Dumitru Toma during the Romanian Inbound in April as follows:

April 3, 2007
Foreign affairs
Jacquielynn Floyd

I had a pleasant morning of shop talk with two journalists who are visiting from Brasov, Romania. We had a lively and compelling visit about issues of interest in our profession everywhere: open records, public corruption, print-vs.-Internet, balancing hard news and features. They're visiting as guests of Friendship Force of Dallas, part of an international group that promotes goodwill through home stay visits - kind of a foreign-exchange program for grown-ups.

One of the journalists, who worked for three decades under the heavy hand of the Communist government, mentioned that he was on duty in Bucharest the day of the JFK assassination. He rushed to the library to find all he could about this "Dallas, Texas," he said - and found nothing. As far as the Romanian government was concerned, Dallas in 1963 was so inconsequential that it didn't even appear on their maps of the U.S.

I asked him what places were on the maps he found: "New York, of course. And places where writers and other famous people were born." Ouch.

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Outbound to Bogota, Columbia, June 4 through 11, 2007

The ambassadors have now returned from a trip to Bogota, Columbia. Bogota is a wonderful host club and everyone had a marvelous time. There were a total of 24 ambassadors, including 8 from Dallas, 12 from other parts of Texas, and the rest from places as far away as Hawaii, California, and New York. Most of the ambassadors followed up with a 3-day extension in the coastal city of Cartagena.  Pictured in this photo are (back): Jim Bourn, Ray Enstam, Brud Kisner, John Whaley, Elanore Decker (San Antonio); (front): Wendy Whaley, Gerda Kreyer, Lillie White and Mary Williams. 

A presentation on this trip is planned for the August meeting of our club - see Events.

Some photos from the exchange are posted here: Photos Bogota, Photos Columbian Families, Photos Day Trips, Photos Cartagena

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2008 Exchanges

Gary Paramore has agreed to be inbound ED for Bundaberg, Australia, May 2008.

Ray Enstam will be outbound ED to Turialba, Costa Rica in November, 2008. Ray has already received e-mails expressing interest in this exchange. This will be a joint exchange with Austin.

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Other FFI Exchanges

Visit Slovenia as part of FFI’s "Discover" program. Folks in Slovenia have shown an interest in world peace and friendship but do not yet have active Friendship Force Clubs. Part of our mission is to help introduce the people to the concept of the Friendship Force [similar to Ed Edgren's trip to Romania two yrs ago] .
Cost: $3425.00 [includes air from Chicago] 

When: Depart U.S. on Sep 19, 2007 and return Oct 4, 2007.

Contact: Donald Johnston in St. Louis, MO for additional information or to reserve your space.

See our website (Exchanges, Other Clubs) for information on other exchanges or visit the Friendship Force International site:  http://www.friendshipforce.org. Follow the “Find an Exchange” link on the left side of their homepage.