A Message from International Director David Stoufer

NEWS AND VIEWS FROM ID DAVE
Iowa's International Director Dave "Santa" Stoufer

Greetings Iowa Lions, Lionesses and Leos.

It had been a fun Convention filled with stories of hard working Lions and more than a little laughter. At the final business session while they were looking for the person with the voting results I was asked to fill in for a few minutes. As I tried to think of what I could say, I had a flash of inspiration. I asked everyone to sing along with me to a song most of them had grown up with.

I sang, "now it's time to say goodbye to friends and family, M-I-C: see you real soon; K-E-Y: Why? Because we love you! M-O-U-S-E." They joined in and so we sang it again. It was fun and yet it was a serious sort of a moment, too. We felt like family or at least very good friends as we all went our separate ways that day.

By the time you will be reading this Rachel and I will be in Bangkok, Thailand at the International Convention. There, after what seems like two very short years, we will leave office and a new group of International Directors will be elected to replace those of us who began our terms in Boston.

I remember a club president who said in introducing me after he had left his glasses at home and couldn't read the paper with my information on it, "Our speaker tonight is Lion Dave Stoufer, and he's been a lot of places and done a lot of things."

Wow! What an understatement! Rachel and I have certainly been a lot of places and done a lot of things! What a ride! What an experience! What an honor to represent the Iowa Lions, Lioness and Leos in the world.

We have thought a lot about what we were doing as we did it. We have given each place we visited our very best. We have thought about how our behavior would affect the perception our hosts would have of Iowa Lionisim. We have acted and interacted keeping in mind that you might hear about our visit from someone and that we wanted to make you proud.

And we have had fun! It's necessary for me to have fun and we have laughed till we cried. And, there have been times that we cried in other ways too, sharing tears of sadness with those we were visiting. There have been some very special people.

We both have presented seminars, question and answer sessions and made more after dinner speeches than you can shake a microphone at. I say "we" because Rachel was there presenting and participating in the Q & A as well. In fact, not too long ago in Amherst, Nova Scotia when I came down with food poisoning Rachel with minimum preparation time made the keynote speech. She took the microphone and walked the room speaking with minimal notes to some three hundred Lions. As you might expect they loved her, and so do I!

So, thank you Iowa Lions, Lioness and Leos! Thank you for the years in which you helped us hone our skills. Thanks for the invitations to speak at your clubs and conventions. You have made us who we are as we travel the world. We think you've done pretty well and we love you for it.

We are coming home and home is Iowa Lions. We have missed you! And we are looking forward very much to seeing you all again! If you want to hear, we want to tell you all about our adventures. You have been a part of them in our minds and hearts and you have been the reasons that we went.

So, now I will paraphrase the song that the lovely Mouseketeer Annette sang just to me each afternoon in my youth: ''Now it's time to say HELLO to friends and family, M-I-C: see you real soon; K-E- Y: Why? Because we love you!"

-- ID Dave & PDG Rachel

David Stoufer's Personal Biography.