this is how it starts:

6:30 am: wretched alarm goes off. I call Jessica to make sure she's in the same boat.

7:23 am: walked into Fireside room at Pepperdine University. This is the clubhouse for Malibu rotary club's weekly meeting. Lifebread is today's speaking program and I'm all jittery. Today marks the first time I've presented Lifebread without Dusty around. I rush to put together a PowerPoint and make sure the dvd will play on the projector. We DO NOT want to wing this. Jessica looks nice.

8:09 am: Meeting is called to order. Only a handful of members this morning. Invocation, flag salute, announcements.

8:15 am: Lifebread is up. We spend the next half hour summarizing the work we do, the work we're going to do (June/July) and showing the documentary. Afterwards, Jessica and I field some pretty detailed questions involving how much an individual oven costs, how much a year's worth of a bakery project costs, and so on and so forth.

9:00 am: Last conversations wrapping up. Rotarians have given us some good pointers and encouragement about where to go from here:

1. put together a cost breakdown

2. maybe begin the practice of putting name plates on each oven/sign/bakery

3. connect with international Rotary Clubs in Uganda and Kenya. If we connect with a local club, it can multiply the amount that the Malibu club can donate toward a bakery project. Lots of work, I'm told, but something this chapter is interested in pursuing.

--- cecily (cecily@lifebread.org)