October 2017 Newsletter

From the Desk of DG Tom Polk

I saw this story recently. One day, as a small child, Tom came home from school and gave a paper to his mother. He said to her “Mom, my teacher gave this paper to me and told me only you are to read it. What does it say?”

Her eyes welled with tears as she read the letter out loud to her child…

“Your son is a genius. This school is too small for him and doesn’t have good enough teachers to train him. Please teach him yourself.”

Many years after his mother had died, one day he was going through a closet and he found the folded letter that his old teacher wrote his Mother that day. He opened it…

The message written on the letter was “Your son is mentally deficient. We cannot let him attend our school anymore. He is expelled.”

The young man – Thomas Edison, one of the greatest inventors of history.

Although the validity of this story has been questioned the message is the same. What would life be for that child if he had believed what was written. Would he had tried and continued to strive to be the best? Edison, they say, discovered over 10,000 ways not to make a light bulb. The creation of the light bulb took over ten years for him to discover the right combination. He believed he could do it.

So, do we as Lions Clubs, when something doesn’t work exactly correctly or isn’t a great success, just give up? Do we go out into our communities and say, “We really don’t do much as a club because we don’t have that many members and we are all old”.

We, as Lions, must stand up and try to make our clubs, our community and the world around us a better place to be. Think of this quote from Edward E. Hale:
I am only one, but I am one.

I cannot do everything, but I can do something. And I will not let what I cannot do interfere with what I can do.

We must serve with a purpose