The topic of Service at the Spiritual Awakenings group in Bernardsville, NJ

For anybody that's new or to, to, to this meeting, basically what we're doing is we're representing

a a workshop that we did at the Wilson House last March called From Service to Surrender. Basically the premise of the workshop was

to kind of kind of go through the process

of what happens when we, when we start working with someone. You know, we,

I think we've all been to workshops, especially people in this meeting have been to workshops where they teach you how to go through the steps. We wanted to, we wanted to take it to the next, the next level and put on a seminar about how to take other people through the steps, about how to pass on the experience after you've, after you've had it yourself. And so we started with some history.

We moved from from from some history into the 12th steps

and

and then we concentrated very heavily on the 12, the 12th step.

We had four sessions on the 12th step. One was first year sponsorship men,

one was first year sponsorship women. Done by two people that really knew what they were talking about.

There was one on wet drunk work, you know how to work with somebody who's who's still, you know, still caught up in in the insanity of active alcoholism. And the other is third legacy service. Now when, when, when we first envisioned this, the first person that came to mind to present third legacy service was my friend here, Rob.

Rob has been active in in general service for a very, very long time

and has been has probably been your DCM and you didn't even know it.

He's done about everything that you can do in the service structure.

He's he's very, very proficient at at explaining it. And we're very, very privileged to have him here tonight to give a talk on some of the things that you know, some of some of the things that you can experience

in the third legacy service in the service structure and some of the things that has has benefited him and others from this process. I'm going to go ahead and turn it over to my friend Rob. Thanks, Chris. My name is Rob and I'm a grateful, happy alcoholic. I'm also just for the for the sake of the record, I'm a member of the Somerset Hills group that meets Friday nights at 8:00 in Basking Ridge, NJ.

My sobriety date is April 26th of 1988

and I currently have the pleasure of serving the Fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous as the Chairman of the Cooperation with the Professional Community Committee in Northern New Jersey Area 44.

I had

when I first got involved in service, it was simply because it was something that I thought I hadn't done and might like to experience. My sponsor was not involved in service. None of my friends were then or for the most part are now involved in service. It was something that it was kind of

a call that that that I sort of heard somewhere. I was at a meeting and I saw a poster on a wall

and it was just one of these memorable little passages. And it says when God calls, don't look over your shoulder to see who's following. And I always interpreted that to mean that when I, when I, when my course appears clear to me that I should simply follow it and not worry about who else is coming along with me. So when I was about, I had done my my step work and I had been a, you know, I had made hundreds of gallons of coffee.

I had gone I've been group secretary. I had

been treasured a couple different groups. I had chaired a lot of meetings.

I was booked Booker, still in the Booker. I have been a Booker for 15 years, but I had done all that stuff that was available to me at the group level and enjoyed it and continue to to enjoy it.

But I realized that I had heard a lot about this stuff that was happening out beyond the reaches of the group, which I knew nothing about.

And so at about four years sober, I volunteered to be the GSR of my Home group at the time, and I attended my first district meeting. Now, if this none of this makes sense to you, hopefully by the end of the evening it will. And that started me off on my exposure to the opportunities for service beyond the group level.

And I've pretty much stayed involved right along. I There have been times when I thought, Gee, if I had about enough of this, I'm going to take a break.

And

like Al Pacino, just when I thought I was out, they pulled me back in. You know, I get a phone call from somebody and I don't say no,

I want to take a minute. When I was getting involved early on in service, there were there were a lot of things were different 15 years ago. The fellowship, at least in this immediate area, was different. We weren't talking about working the steps from the book. We were barely working them off the wall

and not many people were talking about service. So when I started to move in this direction, people were calling me senator, a senator.

You know, when I tried to encourage other people to get involved, because as I became involved in, in service, I saw that there were a lot of unfulfilled

positions. And I was trying to encourage other people to get involved. And they were saying I, I can't, I don't like that political stuff. I can't get involved in that. I'm not interested,

which I thought was a shame because when I pursued what their level of understanding was about these things they weren't interested in, I found out they didn't know anything about it and it was it was contempt performed prior to investigation. I don't want to get off on a negative note here, but let me just read a couple of thoughts to you. There's a tradition checklist that's available on the GSO website, and

the questions in this checklist are also kind of built around

sort of trying to personalize the traditions, which if you read them, seem to apply more to the group than to the individual.

But these questions were originally published in the Grapevine in conjunction with a series on the 12 traditions that began in November 1969 and ran through September 1971. While again, they were originally intended to primarily for individual use, many groups have since found them as a basis for wider discussion. And they posed questions like this. And I'm not going to, I'm not going to go through all of these. And the questions are intended to provoke

some thought.

And again, I won't even tell you in conjunction with what tradition these questions are asked, but they're interesting questions and they sort of set the tone for should I be getting involved in service And why aren't I getting involved in service?

Do I put down some AAA activities as if I is if I were superior for not participating in this or that aspect of a A? Am I informed about a A as a whole? Do I support in every way I can A A as a whole or just the parts I understand and approve of? Do I criticize or do I trust and support my group officers, A A committees and office workers? Although I have been sober for a few years, am I still willing to serve my turn at a A chores,

a group discussion? So I sound off about matters on which I have no experience and little knowledge.

Do I insist that there are only a few right ways of doing things in a A? Does my group always consider the welfare of the rest of a a of nearby groups of loners in Alaska, of internationalists miles from port? Of a group in Rome or El Salvador? Do I always bear in mind that to those? Well, let me get back to that one.

Do I resist formal aspects of a A because I fear them as authoritative? Do I ever give the impression that there is only

that? That there is really an AAA opinion on antibuse tranquilizers, Doctors, psychiatrists, churches, hospitals, jails, alcohol,

the federal government legalizing marijuana, vitamins, and al Anon and alotine? Can I honestly share my personal experience concerning any of these without giving the impression that I'm stating

a opinion and going back to what I almost read a moment ago? Do I always bear in mind that to those outside who, who know I am an AAA and may to some extent represent the entire beloved fellowship,

the questions really are are kind of that's what I sensed way back when that there were a lot of people who were who weren't interested, who who criticized it, who didn't know what it was about but didn't think it was part of their recovery. And I said,

you know, I'm going to go try it. And I have since found a lot of good reasons for wanting to try it. Somebody, could somebody read this first page of this for me? So I'm not doing all the talking here tonight. Would you mind just reading this? This is taken from the service manual. And it pretty much explains what the third legacy is about and why it's important to us. Marty. Marty. Hi, Marty. Good morning.

The message is the basic service that the A A public gives.

This is our principal and the main reason for our business. Therefore a A is more to that instead of principles because society connection. You must carry the message else we ourselves can either wither and those who haven't been dealing with truth may die. Hence an A A service is anything whatever that helps us to reach a fellow sufferer. Ranging all the way from the 12th set itself to a 10th 10th phone form and a cup of coffee

into a as general service law as the national and international action

in some form of all these services is our third legacy of service services include many places hospital cooperation and interpret Wallace being in Tampa's books and good publicity from almost every description. A corporate committee's delegates, trustees and conferences. And not to be forgotten, they need monetary money contributions from within the scholarship. Thanks very much.

My point is, and hopefully this will be the last time I try to make it tonight, is that the service work that I got involved in, not necessarily face to face 12 step work, which I still participate in, but the service committee work that I got involved in was, was absolutely necessary to the health and welfare of the Fellowship. And I, and I,

I'm certain that down the road it, it benefits some alcoholic that I'm never going to meet.

Just to put things in context. And again, I, I'm sure most of you know this and I'm not going to belabor this because I trust that you do. But the first map in here sort of puts, puts us in, in context where we are north of area 44 is part of, of a, of, of the North American,

a, a region. This region is managed by the General Service office in New York. It includes all of the United States and Canada. And there are 8 regions. We are in the Northeast region. And I just kind of broke out a little map there to show you what, what that Northeast region is about. It's 18 service areas in 11 states. Yeah, I'm just going to kind of flip through this quickly. I just kind of want you to understand who we are and where where we live sort of

those regions are then broken down into areas.

One of those 91 areas, there are 91 areas and the GSO region

we're area 44. On the next map it shows you what area 44 is. It's all the northern counties,

all the northern counties in New Jersey, down as far as Ocean and Monmouth counties.

So we have 91 areas in North America

within. We are one of those 91 areas. We are Northern Jersey Area 44

and within Area 44 there are 41 districts. We are one of those districts and the last map is our district, District 18.

So if anybody ever asks you what area you when you say Area 44, Northern New Jersey and what's your district? District 18 if you live in one of the communities on this map.

By the way, if you attend a group, or if your Home group doesn't have a GSR, and your Home group exists in District 18,

the district meeting is indicated on this last map.

It meets the second Monday of every month in Berkeley Heights and your group should be represented there.

Felt all pretty clear. I just kind of wanted to give you a sense of where we were in the world. Any questions at this point?

Right. As you know, I'm not going to give you a history lesson. I'm not an expert on anything. I'm just a guy who has some years of experience doing service work. And that's really what I'm, what I'm here to try to point you towards is there are opportunities for you to get involved if you care to. And I'm going to try to give you a brief overview of what some of those are. At the area convention this past weekend, we gave a workshop on on just the CPC committee, which took 45 minutes. So

by necessity, I'm obviously not going to cover all this material. More of this is just background material for you to read through it at your

leisure. But the General Service office in New York is set up in such a way that they have certain desks to assert address certain needs of the fellowship. One being archives, literature, public information, cooperation with the professional community, correctional facilities, treatment facilities. You've probably heard all of these mentioned down through the years. What we've attempted to do at the area level and what they do at all area levels is, is try to mirror what the General Service office has set up in New York

in this more finite geographic region.

Again, I don't want to belabor and turn this into a GSO lesson. I want to get down to the nitty gritty and what actually we can get involved in here in Area 44. So let's move ahead to General Service Area 44 and let me tell you a little bit about some of the standing committees, how they're set up and what they do.

Each standing committee has a has a chairperson. I am currently the chairperson of the Cooperation with the Professional Community Committee.

Part of my job is to see to it that each of our 41 districts has someone who comes forward and joins our committee to see to it that our CPC work is done in their district.

Umm, that holds true for all of these committees. Technically, all these committees should have a chairperson and 41 district representative. I can assure you there is a lot of unfilled positions open, including CPC and District 18. If anybody would like to get involved in that, I'd love to, to have some help. Let me tell you a little bit about what, what some of these committees do. And again, you can read this, I'm I'm going to give you just kind of a top line

public information response to requests from the general public

and also reaches out to the general public trying to explain. For example, they'll get a call from a school, a school wants someone to come in and speak to a student body about Alcoholics Anonymous because they, they think that that would be helpful to the student body. Someone from the Pi committee that who has, who has been, I don't want to say trained, but they do go through an informal training to go in and speak to this group to tell them about Alcoholics Anonymous, not to tell their personal stories, but

tell them what AAA is, what it isn't, what we do, what we don't do to explain anonymity, self support,

to explain the different types of meetings and all that stuff. You would be amazed at the lack of understanding of a A in in the world, especially even with, with student counselors. They, they just are clueless about who we are and how we work. The public information committee also works with the IDRC departments where they go in, where they people have gotten DWI and now they have to go to special classes. Part of that special class is for people from a A to come in and say, we're not here to tell you that,

alcoholic. But if you think you have a drinking problem and you would like to pursue recovery through the channels of Alcoholics Anonymous, let us tell you what we are and how you can find us and what to expect.

There are public service announcements that are placed on the radio. Different areas do different things depending on the makeup of of any committee at a given time. Depending on the skills, the initiatives, the interest of the members, different things get done. At one point in Area 44, our Pi committee

had bus cards printed up and started putting them in New Jersey Transit buses and they basically said

got a drinking problem, want to stop? We can help. And then it had the AAA 800 number at the general Service office.

The Pi Committee goes around the libraries. The most frequently stolen book from any library is the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous. No one wants to check it out. They'd rather put it under their coat and walk out with it. But the Pi Committee does things like place the Big Book in in libraries.

The CPC committee is very similar to Pi in terms of what they're trying to do. They're trying to educate

a certain audience about what a A is. That audience happens to be professionals.

We talked to doctors, lawyers, judges, probation officers, nurses,

clergy, counselors of all different types. You again would be amazed. People, they have no idea, absolutely no idea what a A is. You say, well, we'll go to a A, We got a drinking problem. Go to a A. If you said, well, what? What is a A? What will they do? Where will they do it? How? How do we do it? When do we do it? They don't know.

They don't know,

I should say, most of them don't know anything and and the rest know very, very little. It's shocking. And these are people who claim to be alcoholism counselors. We run into them all the time.

The CPC committee attends on a fairly regular basis, maybe 6-7 times a year. We go down to Atlantic City in cooperation with our our area in South Jersey, Area 45 and we attend conventions of principles and, and superintendents,

Catholic educators, drug court professionals. There's a whole wide variety of different conferences held by professional organizations and we're invited to come in and set up an information table and simply be available to answer questions about Alcoholics Anonymous. Again, it's through those venues where where we just were asked questions and we say and you're a what

and you and you don't, you don't you never heard this before, but also creates a lot of opportunities at a smaller local level that you know you find that.

In Mars and Sussex County there is a drug court program and through our participation at a conference down in Somerset a month or two ago, we got an invitation to come up to Morris County and meet with the drug court judge. And the drug court administrator and the prosecutor were curious about a a meetings and how they worked and said could we actually go to an, a, a meeting? We said absolutely yes, you can. We have a program for escorting professionals to, to meetings.

We've actually written guidelines to give to our committee members to help them. I mean, because taking, even if you're taking them to an open meeting, if they come in with a tape recorder and, and, and they're writing and taking notes through the whole meeting, they're going to unnerve some members of Alcoholics Anonymous. So we have some guidelines that we give people escorting professionals to meetings that says, meet them before the meeting. Explain the meeting protocol, explain that they do not share, they simply introduce themselves. Hi, my name's John and I'm visiting.

Don't take notes, don't ask questions, don't put money in the basket. We're self supporting. We don't want your money

and it's a program that's been working out very well. But again, that participation in that conference led to this contact in a more local level. And now we're pursuing that and

we have more opportunities than we have people to to, to fulfill them. So again, these are all opportunities to help carry the message because that professional who understands Alcoholics Anonymous better is, I think better equipped to take the prospective a A member and say, look, I think we should go to a A and this is what a A can do for you. And this is what you'll find when you get there.

And I have a phone number and I know about a website. I don't know if you know, but our area has a website

N northern NJ, northern New Jersey, aa.org. We can go on that thing. Hit meeting Finder, put in a town, hit search. It'll give you every single meeting in that town Sunday through Saturday, the time the place. You can even add in a photograph of your of your meeting location directions to your meeting. Again, this has to be supplied by the group,

but it's a really, really wonderful website and we spent a lot of time trying to push these professionals to that website because they what they always used to ask for is meeting books. You got any meeting books, whether it was the treatment facilities committee, the correctional facilities committee, all these people wanted meeting books to give to their patients, prospects, inmates, whatever on their release. They know that. Well, once we're done with them, we got to give them to you and we don't know how to get you.

We'll go on to the website and you can get a complete list of all the meetings and, and any zip code you want or any town you want.

It's really, it's a wonderful job done by our website committee. Again, more volunteers, more service opportunity. The treatment facilities committee. I, I participate and chaired this committee a number of years ago during the period of time when, when everybody remembers that the 28 day program. So I mean, we knew people who said, yeah, I've been to 1428 day programs

until the insurance companies wised up and said, you know what, you get one shot at this, you get it or you don't get it. But we're, we're not going to just keep sending you back to,

to, you know, for treatment. But they built up treatment facilities. They started putting one on every corner

back in the, I want to say seventies, 80s. And then that changed and they started folding up and they were getting few and far between

and they are fewer even now. But at that point they were going through that transition and our job as a committee was to reach out to these treatment facilities. And the big issue then was they had substance abuse programs in the treatment facilities and they were taking everybody and saying go to a A.

We were saying, well, that's fine, but as long as they have a drinking problem and a desire to stop,

if they're not Alcoholics, you understand that they can't become members of AA and that they shouldn't be attending closed meetings. And we don't say that Bill Wilson said that. And and that's, that's kind of in our literature, our conference approved literature. And they were saying, well, but a drug is a drug is a drug. I mean, it's all the same. It's all about the feelings. And we said, you know, that that may be true in the, in the context of your treatment program here in this facility, but it's not true

based on on a as position on that. Now, we as individuals may have different opinions and I'm not here to arouse any, you know,

unhappy feelings, but read your a a literature and and it's pretty clear as to what it says and what our position as a fellowship is on that.

If you don't have,

I don't want to. I've already said that anyway. That was a big issue with the treatment facilities and we spent a lot of time trying to make that clear to them. They did not want to hear it and,

but we can't enforce it. We just, we just inform. We started a lot of meetings and treatment facilities, facilities, staff cutbacks. We can't give as many programs. We, you know, we can't fill our our day quite the way we used to be able to do. We don't have the van to take them out to the meetings the way we used to take them out. Could you bring some meetings into us? And we started setting up meetings and facilities. My responsibilities initially were just here in District 18. I talked to Bonnie Bray. the VA

Overlook Hospital had an outpatient program then and now. There was another treatment program in Summit. There was one down in, in Plainfield, that Muhlenberg hospital that I got involved with in the course. There was Fair Oaks at the time and all these facilities wanted to know about a, a how do we, We had a, a Bridge the Gap program, which we had started, where we started to build a list of it was like 12 step contacts. But they were people who were willing to reach out to people being discharged from a treatment facility,

meet them when they arrived in their hometown and escort them to the nearest AA meeting and introduce them to AA members and help them get a big book and a meeting book and a sponsor and all that kind of good stuff. And it was a very effective program. It remains a very effective program, but it required a lot of organization and

it was just one more of the things that that that committee did. Again, the focus primarily on getting into the facility, making the facility aware of, of a A and, and the opportunities that we had to, to cooperate with them and then ultimately trying to help their patients who we saw as

at the very least prospective AAA members

Correctional Facilities committee.

Again, when I was

well, way back when, when I got involved in service, I was the Booker for the Pleasant Valley group that meets Thursday nights in in Pleasant Valley Park.

There was a group that

only had speakers come in once a month, but they wanted to speak outside a lot. So we were booking a lot of jails and a lot of rehabs, but but a lot of jails. And I really enjoyed those commitments And I, I don't, I can't tell you why I was never,

it's never really arrested. I was never really spent a night in jail. But I really liked going into those facilities and talking to those guys.

Actually, I went down to the Edna Mahan facility, which was women one night. That was an interesting

Hey cutie, come on over here.

What a night. I felt like a piece of meat. But

speaking in, in, in jails or setting up an organizing meetings in jails and prisons, state prisons, county jails,

is, is really, it's a, it's a tough, tough job.

We have some really good people at the, at the area level who've been sharing this committee for a while who have done a great job of making headway with the state. What we're trying to do is, is organize all the jails and all the prisons to have one screening criteria that you can go through. And if I'm screened to go into this facility, I can, I can automatically go into that facility that I get some sort of state issued ID card which I can flash at any one of these facilities and go in as a, an approved a, a member to lead a meeting.

Been very hard, but we've actually got a, A members who have tackled this and, and, and are still working towards trying to have this,

have this done.

But the objective being, I mean, you know, the statistics. I'm not here. Like I said, I'm not an expert, so I'm not going to quote statistics, but you know, a lot of the guys who are in jail are in jail because they they were drunk,

drunk committing crimes drunk buy and selling drugs. It's just was a big, big part of their their

problem.

There's a big need for a A in prisons. They also have a letter writing campaign where you can correspond with a guy in jail, which is a pretty neat thing to do. You don't have to give them your home address. You don't have to say, yeah, I live at 95 Highland Ave., Columbia, because I work all day. And as soon as you get out, you can take all my stuff.

You give them the group's PO Box or, or you give them a, you can give them another PO Box. But you can set up correspondence with a, with a, a guy who is an, a, A member. He may be behind the walls, but he's an, a, A member. And of course

with this guy and give him, give him something to look forward to. A lot of these guys have nobody.

Their families have abandoned them. They're really alone in the world and some of them very serious about recovery. There's the jail box. You've all probably heard or seen jail boxes. Jail boxes are really easy to create. All you got to do is put a piece of paper on a box and say this is a jail box. And they collect money. They collect soft cover literature, old copies of the Grapevine, anything that you that they can gather up

and taken to these prisons and distribute to these guys. I mean, a 10 year old copy of the Grapevine is, is good reading. I mean, it's, it's really worthwhile. The Treatments of the Correctional Facilities Committee was one of the few committees a few years ago that was almost self supporting through their own

for the contributions that they raised through the jailbox. At one point the the Treat the Correction Facilities Committee I think raised almost $30,000

through jailbox contributions. Accordingly, they needed to take no money from the area treasury, which is your donations to support their activities. They were, they were taking massive amounts of, of soft cover literature into prisons. And if they were doing a great job, Mike P was the chairman of the time. He he was just doing a great job and the guys following his footsteps have have done an equally good job.

The literature committee, I always see these guys at area events that they'll be at area assemblies. You'll see them if you go to Booker's, you'll see them at days of sharing in different districts. If if you go to those and they're basically, they literally carry the message. Like I said, I say I call them the hardest working people in a a they carry boxes and boxes and boxes of soft and hard cover literature to all these events. They get up at the crack of dawn. They load up vans and cars and trucks and they drive in caravans and they

get there before any of the rest of us arrive. And they set up tables and they set up all this literature and it's just there and they sell it, you know, for, for whatever your individual or your group needs are.

They always need people. Now, is that glamorous? Is that something that that I want to do? Not particularly, but people every year volunteer to, to chair this committee and work on this committee. And I always go out of my way at the conventions and what not to walk in and shake their hand and thank them for the work they do because it's just miserable heavy. It's like being a mover,

you know, it's just like you've decided I'm going to be a mover for a A and just pick up boxes and carry them here and then pack them back up and put them in the car and drive them someplace else. But they're a great committee and they make this literature available to us. They're a wonderful group of people. Grapevine committee people do the same thing. Primarily their their job is to is to make Grapevine materials.

The there are calendars there, the the slogans, there are tapes and C DS,

just all kinds of wonderful Grapevine materials. There's a separate catalog, I don't know if you've ever seen it, but there's a Grapevine catalog like the literature catalog just filled with nifty A, a stuff. And it's not drunk junk. It's not coffee mugs and stuff. It's, it's, it's good conference approved stuff.

The Archives committee again, what, what the people are doing at our area level is very similar to what they're doing in, in the general service office in New York. They're they're trying to document our history

case. I mean, Bill, where did the big Book get written?

Where was the big Book written?

Yeah, big book written was written in, in in New Jersey. A lot of the earliest meetings were here in New Jersey.

The oldest meeting other than Akron was here in New Jersey wasn't it

can be the name of town by What's the Weather Montclair.

There are a lot of old timers in area 44 who sat in meetings with Bill Wilson. A lot of these people, they've tried to get to an interview and have them at least give some oral history on on tape of what they remember about the groups and who started this group and this group moved from there into here. And that may not interest some of you, but there are people like Bill, I think, who have a passion for, for knowing something about the, the, the history of a, a in the country and, and more specifically in, in New Jersey.

If you've been to any of the conventions, you've seen the beautiful displays. They put these things up on easels of like the Saturday Evening Post articles and just

invitations to A A dances from 1940 in, in West Orange and just great stuff.

They work very closely with the Intergroup office. Again, you have to have a pension for this type of work. I mean, obviously they're looking for people. If you, if you're like me and you don't mind going out and sitting across from a professional and talking to them about a, A

CPC works great for you. If you'd rather sit in the background and touch old things and preserve them and you know, you like dealing with non acid papers and, you know, preserving stuff and and sitting and recording old timers and documenting things archives is, is, is right up your alley.

These are the standing committees. These are the committees that pretty much mirror what's going on in the general service office in the New York. As a as ACPC chair, I could call New York and say

I need to talk to Eva Sanchez. She's the CPC person in New York. I've got a question about something going on in my area.

All these people have counterparts in New York that they can talk to to get shared experience.

There are, however, special committees.

How many people went to the convention last weekend? Any

some good? Well, the rest of you missed a really great convention. Try going next year. You might, you might really enjoy it.

But we have a whole committee of people who volunteer to organize and put on this event.

That committee breaks down into subcommittees. They have hospitality, they have the speaker, the Alkathon, the the Big Book marathon. They have all the topic workshops. There's just a lot of details that that have to be organized and, and people to organize them. They try to make opportunities available to each of the 41 districts. They say, you know, we, we're, we've got an Alpathon going on for this many hours.

We need one representative from each district to cover each of these hours. They throw that out to the GSR and say go back to your districts and, and find some people who want to come and share these, these alkathon meetings.

Logistically, there's a lot of work. They're they'll do a little wrap up meeting probably in a week from this this year's past convention and immediately start planning next year's convention. They've got to negotiate contracts with the hotels and

how much coffee are we going to get and how many rooms are we going to get? What are we paying? So if you're a meeting planner, if, if you, if you've done any kind of travel planning or, or anything like that, then you have an aptitude and a skill that would translate very nicely to helping the convention committee and helping to facilitate this wonderful event. Each year for the rest of the fellowship

films committee, there's just a little guy who sits. He's got a box full of films and he's got a projector. And if your group would like to watch, I, we did this one year years ago

in Myersville, We were a Friday night speaker meeting and we didn't have a speaker lined up for this one particular night. And I said, you know, there's a film and I think it was called like Bill's own story or something like that. And it was actually a, a, a, a film of Bill telling his story. And he's sitting out, he's at stepping stones and he's sitting outside and he's sitting out there with Lois. And it starts getting a little chilly and he tells Lois to go in and put a pot of coffee on. And

the next thing he's reconvening and he's sitting there at his kitchen table and Bill is telling his story. And it's almost verbatim what you read in his story in in the big book. But there's the guy, the the actual guy on film telling you his story. We brought in a big television set. We put it up on a stand in the front of the room. And instead of having a speaker that night, we had Bill Wilson come in and tell his story. And it was a neat thing to do. And we got that film through the films committee.

There are a lot of other good films and if you haven't seen them, just a thought. Or if you want to get involved in going around,

I was when I was in 4th grade, I was a projectionist. I was on the off committee

and I got to go around all the other classrooms and got me out of regular classes because I knew how to thread the film through the projector. And I got to go around and show movies for all the other kids when they had a movie scheduled.

And I enjoyed that. And I think I might still enjoy that. Maybe one of these days I'll end up on the film committee again, the Finance Committee, these again, if you're an accountant, you'd like to help out a, a get on that Finance Committee, man. We need somebody to keep that budget balanced. We need somebody to keep an eye on the money. We actually have some CDs. We have some money invested.

Essentially that's what they do. They help plan the area budget. They get budget submitted by all the standing committees, all the special committees,

We all have to prepare budgets at the beginning of the year and say, look, I think I'm going to spend 1500 bucks, OK, on what We have to document that. And they say OK, and they approve that and they come in and they submit a, a prospective budget, which then has to be revived or reviewed and approved by an area assembly. But the Finance Committee is responsible for making sure that that we don't run out of money. And a couple of years ago we almost did. We had a prudent reserve, I think it was $10,000 and we had eroded that prudent reserve down to about 3.

$1000 every year our expenses were exceeding our donations and we just kept taking the money out of the prudent Reserve until some people finally threw up their hands and said, look, we've got to get more money from the fellowship or we have to cut back on the services we're providing. If the fellowship is telling us by virtue of not giving us money that they don't feel that the work we're doing isn't vital, then we stop doing the work. I mean, you, you can speak with your pocketbook, you know, but the money started coming back in. The prudent reserve, I think has almost been completely restored.

I know intergroups budget is very solid and, and we're basically, we're taking care of our own. We're, we're doing the right thing. But the Finance Committee of the people who who keep an eye on that, like I said, if, if that interests you, that's a committee you could get involved with newsletter. There's one guy, Bill L actually, he may have a little bit of help, but Bill L has been doing this newsletter single handedly for as long as I've been coming around.

He has a graphics design business, but what he does is he solicits articles from all the standing committee chairs. We'd like to know what's going on in treatment, what's going on in corrections, what's going on in Pi.

He goes to all the area officers and asks them for contributions and he goes, any one of you, anyone sitting here tonight can write an article and submit it to this day on any topic that that you please relative to recovery or, or your experience in AA. But Bill is responsible for pulling all that information together, doing the layout, getting it to the printer, and basically turning out a beautiful, very informative and interesting newsletter every quarter. And like I said, this guy's been doing this for years and years.