Welcome to the New Year – the 1^st year of the 2^nd decade of this millennium!  I hope everyone had a wonderful holiday season and found time to spend with family and friends.  It is indeed an honor to have been installed as Master of Wisdom Lodge #202 to serve along with our other outstanding officers for 2010.  There were many people helping behind the scenes to make Installation night a success – from the start of preparation until the last guest departed.  I would like to thank Most Worshipful Larry Adamson, PGM, Worshipful Stu Wright, PM, and Worshipful Gerard Shirikjian, PM for agreeing to serve as the installing officers for the evening.  The Foothill Chapter of the Order of DeMolay did an outstanding job presented the flag of our nation.  Our ladies did their usual outstanding job in helping with flowers and table decorations that added a beautiful touch to the evening along with heavenly entertainment during the dinner from harpist Charissa Barger.  Finally, I would like to congratulate Worshipful Paul Rosenberger, PM on his successful year and thank him for stepping in as Junior Warden for 2010.

We will continue with many of the traditional events of the Lodge and introduce some new ones.  Keep a look out for a Past Master’s 3^rd degree and dinner.  I would like to see some of our outstanding ritualists do the degree work.  If possible I would like to see if we could hold this event on a Saturday near the summertime to afford some of our members who cannot attend events after dark to be part of this event.  We will be putting on some informal social functions throughout the year – ideas are starting to come in and I welcome any suggestion for consideration.  For development of our younger members we would like to have periodic Saturday morning mentoring sessions with breakfast for attendees.  In order to better understand our Youth Orders, we will look at attending a couple meetings of each order throughout the year.  We would like to start going out into the community with the Child ID program to establish better visibility for the Lodge.  Finally, we will strengthen our outreach to our members and widows who are not able to get out as much anymore as well as our newer members who are not active to ensure we are meeting our obligation as a Lodge to our membership.

The activities are many and the possibilities are endless.  Your officers have volunteered to be part of committees to put these thoughts into action.  We solicit your support and ideas should you find any of these activities of particular interest to you or if there is some activity that you would like to see occur.  This Lodge is for the whole Wisdom Lodge family.  Next month you will see a short biography of each member of the officer line.  I believe it is important that we know about each other and this will be one step.  I would like for the remaining months in the year to highlight one newer member and one member who has been Mason for many years – bridging the gap between the generations of this outstanding Lodge.