The chickens have hatched, now to start counting.....

Guest Speaker - ✔ 
Venue - ✔
Growing Number of Auction Items - ✔


When things start to fall into place so easily, you begin to think "this is just too good to be true."  But I subscribe to the Randy Pausch school of thought

“Luck is where preparation meets opportunity. ” ― Randy Pausch, The Last Lecture

Guest Speaker - Over the past few weeks I've been emailing and texting with my guest speaker, who has been so encouraging and such an inspiration, I couldn't believe my luck to strike gold so easily.

Lets back up a little and I'll explain....  As you may recall in May I travelled to Wellington, to the Young Leaders Conference with a group of students from my school, this is where I heard Cassandra Treadwell, the founder of the So They Can charity speak about the work STC is doing in Kenya.

Jamie Fitzgerald

At the same conference was another brilliant speaker, Jamie Fitzgerald.   The audience loved Jamie, he regaled them with stories of his adventures, he was funny, witty, inspiring to name but a few, a modern day Kiwi version of Indiana Jones, and for reasons unbeknown to me I made contact with him via LinkedIn, and he replied.  We emailed, he was supportive, and before long he had generously agreed to help me get to Kenya, and he agreed to come and share some stories at my Silent Auction, and be my guest speaker.... He asked for dates, I had a few in mind, I shared them with him, and he came back with a date that fitted perfectly...how lucky am I ????  And so tomorrow we are catching up for a drink and to share some ideas and have a chat.

Old St Michaels Church

Venue - I've been starting to get a little panicky over the venue, I've approached a number of different local establishments, but nobody has been particularly forth coming, then in the same strange "twist of fate" way, that so many other parts of this puzzle have fallen into place, I got a venue, and one so lovely I couldn't have wished for better.  Long story short, right by my house is the brilliant local facility the Corbans Art Estate .

Inside the Old St Michaels Church

Corban's are hugely supportive of schools and the local community and the other day one of their staff just happened to put a call through to my work.  It was this random conversation that led to me speaking with their events co-ordinator and low and behold they have kindly given me the use of one of their prime facilities for free, nada, zip, zilch...

Auction Items - The auction items are rolling in quite nicely now, but of course the more the better.  I know that sounds greedy, but I don't want this to seem like some "half pie in the sky" event that people are going to feel obligated to come to, I want my guests to leave my auction thinking it was a good evening in support of a worthy cause and one they too benefited from it.

And to top of a brilliant day, I had been doing some research re: flights to Nairobi, and came across one that was almost $400.00 cheaper than any other I had found, reason being, a nasty long stop over in Abu Dhabi, but beggars can't be choosers, a four hundred dollar saving isn't to be sneezed at.  On the weekend I had spoken with a lovely young woman at STA Travel , and she said if I could find it online, she would match it, and book it for me, and she came through, with a discount of another fifty dollars.  Currently my account doesn't quite have the necessary funds in it to cover the cost of these flights, but I'm hoping after the Sausage Sizzle on Saturday, and the Quiz Night next Tuesday I will have enough, otherwise, I will have to do some juggling and just make it happen.... but I'm certainly not missing out on that flight.

As always I'm feeling so very blessed, and can't believe my good fortune.

Asante
Jacq
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