Bingo: Nov. 15- Team Three
Breakfast: Nov. 16- Rick Gowdy, Bryan Chapman, and Jim Green
Program- Colin Wright- Jefferson City Fire Department talking about the tornado earlier this year
Monday, Nov. 11th from 6:00-9:00 a.m. is our annual Veteran's Day breakfast, led by Lena Long and assisted by the Southern Boone FFA students. It wasn't listed in the paper, so make sure you get the message out to all the Veterans and spouses that you know of.
The Optimist Board meets this Thursday, starting at 7:15 p.m.
We are devastated to note the passing of Jacob Zagorac, who was an active Optimist member. Services were held in Jefferson City on Thursday. Jacob’s obituary is available here.
We had 134 players at Bingo on Friday and were blessed to have Jason Martin and John Dougan show up to help in the kitchen.
Speaking of Bingo, our cleaning lady and her husband are no longer available to help clean tables on Friday night. If you know of anyone who is willing to work once a week to earn some spending money, please contact Barrett Glascock. Otherwise, Bingo teams will be required to cover this duty after Bingo gets over. Any of the older members remember what a challenge this was in the past, so recruit any young people that might be interested.
An incredible breakfast was served this morning by Lena Long, Barrett Glascock, Shawn Steelman, and visitor Aron Long.
Our speaker this morning was Sara Echternach, with Heart of Missouri CASA (Court Appointed Special Advocates) www.homcasa.org. CASA is a program to give children in the foster care program an advocate to watch over their best interest. The Heart of Missouri CASA attempts to cover around 600 children in the foster care program in Boone and Callaway counties.
The program was started in Seattle, Washington forty years ago when a gentleman realized that children in the foster care system didn't have a voice of their own in the system. CASA provides a consistent person during the time that the child is in the foster care system, which sometimes involves years.
The CASA advocate meets with the child twice each month, many times at school over lunch so that they don't affect the child's schedule. The CASA advocate also meets with the Family Support team, which may include case workers, guardian ad litem, foster parents, and possibly parents. The major differences between the guardian ad litem and the CASA advocate is that the guardian is a trained lawyer who is paid and has several children to care for and the advocate is a volunteer with thirty hours of training for a limited number of children, usually all from one family, and a supervisor.
The requirements to serve as an advocate include you must be 18 years of age or older, participate in a thirty hour training (half in person and the other half online), and be willing to commit to remaining involved for at least two years. The next training is scheduled for Jan. 13, 2020. Please call 573-442-4670 for more information.
When Sara had finished answering the numerous questions, she drew for the Attendance drawing. Jim Green helped at Bingo last night, but didn't make it for breakfast this morning, which allowed Lester Gilpin the opportunity to say, "It pays to attend!" when his name was drawn second.
Letitia DenHartog
