March Meeting

March Meeting Minutes
Date: 3/28/10
Time: 2p
Location: Blessed Sacrament Youth Center
Coordinated by: Painters

Attendees: Ken & Veola Burchett, Tom & Cathy Cherry, Jack Hale, JP & Karina Larkin, Nate & Crystal Painter, Frank & JoAnna Pedroza


May and September Senior Couple Openings

• Cherrys will do May
• Burchetts will do September
• Frank to update website

Goals and Visions - Retreat House / 2-Day Weekend

- The community is still committed to doing the September and November weekends at the Episcopal Retreat Center and doing them as 2 day weekends.

- There are concerns about the presenting teams being rushed on Saturday morning to get there, set up, and be ready in time and to stay on schedule. I think we all agree that having a retreat house setting is valuable, but we need to decide if sacrificing Friday night is worth it. It is not cost effective to do a 3 day weekend at this particular retreat house.

- Frank & JoAnna to meet with Ken to go over the real costs of the weekend to see how the retreat house compares.

- Veola has an upcoming meeting with Bishop Wester regarding marriage issues and will see what she can do to get a priest on these 2 weekends specifically.

- Frank & JoAnna to review the 2-day weekend schedule from another community and make adjustments to fit the flow that we usually use. This will be sent out to the community for review and feedback.

- Frank & JoAnna to talk to Mike at Wriggles about those 2 weekends and will see what he may offer as breakfast options.

- Registration system will need to be updated with new info as we get closer and make the final decision to move forward on this.

- Frank & JoAnna to get clarification from retreat center on pricing, schedule, and number of rooms.

- Presenting teams will do some sort of report or evaluation after the weekends to be presented to the community.

- There was a question about whether or not we should do some kind of survey/evaluation for the couples on the retreat weekends. Maybe a similar survey for the couples on the hotel weekends that we could compare? Please give this some thought so that we can discuss at a future meeting.

- Here are some pics of the retreat center for anyone who hasn't seen them: http://picasaweb.google.com/fmpdmb/EpiscopalRetreatCenter


Recruiting

- We discussed that the community needs to turn outward, “two-by-two”, in order for the community to grow. In other words, recruiting really needs to be a shared responsibility and one that we, as couples, need to focus more on.

- We have been very blessed to have the Lazinskis taking on the role of host couple. Thank you, Lazinskis!! It has been so nice to know that they have been on top of it. However, we decided as a community at this meeting that this is really a “recruiting” opportunity area. We will be emailing out a weekend signup list where all of the couples in the community can volunteer to host a weekend. The goal would be to invite another couple to come with you. This would be either a couple that you know who might be interested in learning more about our ministry or an engaged couple that you have connected with on a previous weekend that may have been interested in hosting, etc. By signing up for the weekends now, it will give us all adequate time to plan ahead for childcare, etc and coordinate with another couple to come with you.

- Time and Talent Sheets: We discussed implementing a new way of keeping track of time and talent sheet information. JoAnna will now be collecting the time and talent sheets and managing the information. The goal would be to distribute information to the community so that we can all be involved with following up with couples that are interested in getting involved. As we have seen, this is too important and too big of a task for only one couple to be responsible for. It has to be a community effort.

- Another thing we discussed was splitting the weekend list between the senior and junior couple and calling the couples a week before the weekend to confirm, give details and answer questions.

• Burchett's/Painter's are going to try this on the April weekend.

Caterer

- Dietary Restrictions: although this has not been a major concern in the past (only 37 dietary restriction entries in the registration system since 2003), it was a concern on the March weekend and we wanted to address it.

• Frank will change the registration system so that there is a drop down menu for dietary restrictions where couples can choose: 1 vegetarian or 2 vegans or 1 lactose intolerant, etc. rather than having a free text field where the couples are free to list all the foods that they would rather not eat.
• Frank & JoAnna will talk with Mike at Wriggles about menu options for each type of restriction so that going forward we can have a consistent food item so that Jim and Allison can just tell Mike “4 vegetarians and 2 lactose intolerants” and he’ll know exactly what to bring.
• It is up to the presenting teams to communicate the food information to the attending couples to be sure that the dietary restriction people get the food that was meant for them. Again, this is an rare occurrence and something that the presenting teams should be able to handle.
• Jim & Allison to include dietary restrictions on the weekend lists. This may already be there.

- We have a couple that attended a previous weekend whose father owns a restaurant/catering business and has offered us a discount. We would like to take advantage of the offer so we will try to arrange to have them provide some food for our next meeting so that we can try them out and see what we think. If the food is good and prices are comparable, this could give us a backup/alternate caterer. Our intention is not to replace Wriggles, but only to have other options if needed.


2010 Meeting Schedule

- We passed around a schedule and people signed up to coordinate meetings for 2010. Watch for a separate email with dates and coordinators. There is still one meeting that needs a coordinator


New Web Domain

- Frank has requested we get a new web domain so that rather than the web site living at engagedencounterutah.org (which is kind of long and harder to remember) we have something like utahcee.org OR utahee.org. In addition to the shorter, simpler domain, this would allow for shorter, simple email addresses (currently, the local coordinating email is localcoordinators@engagedencounterutah.org – quite the mouth full)

- Cost for this should be minimal (~$10 per year)

- The plan would be to maintain the current domain since it’s included in the hosting package we have with Homestead. We would just be adding an addition domain. This means that both the old and new domains would go to the same site.

- Frank to handle this.


2010 National Convention

- Just a reminder that the national convention will be 10/01/10 – 10/03/10 in Seattle. We’re trying to get an idea of who might be interested in going so we will know how much the community can help out with the cost. The hotel will be $105 per night and the registration fee is $250 per couple. Please let us know if you are interested at all in going.

- Here’s a link to the convention web site: http://www.ceeseattle.org/convention