RW (Noble) Brother Anthony Ward,
Assistant Rabban
DDGM District 1
In the last issue of the Communicator, you were introduced to Shriners International and the Emirate Shrine Temple, your Shrine Center that covers Europe. This month we would like to report on fun and fellowship!
It has been a busy start to the year for Emirat, we had our annual meeting in January and installed a new Potentate, Ill Sir Frank Ullmann, and inducted a new Noble into the Divan, Noble Cameron Davis as Oriental Guide. Some of us had the opportunity to visit Shriners International in Tampa, Florida to attend leadership seminars. The seminars have the overarching theme of having fun, helping kids and training us to be leaders not only in the Shrine, but Masonry as well. It is not only good for the Shrine, but Blue Lodges are using this model as well for leadership and membership.
Our Hellenic Shrine Club, based in Greece, recently hosted our first ceremonial of the year in Athens! It was a wonderful event, and we had the pleasure of inducting 20 new Nobles into Emirat Shrine!
We were fortunate that this ceremonial coincided with May 1, which is a vacation day in most countries, so we were able to extend our visit to see some of the sights, including the Acropolis. One of the most popular days in high season, thousands of people flock to the Acropolis every day!
During our guided tour, we quickly realized that Athens is one of those places where you must be careful about building anything because you might unearth a 3000-year-old temple or other historical artifact. You can really see the history everywhere, and it goes much deeper than just the Acropolis. The Roman Agora, the Ancient Agora, Hadrian’s Arch and so on! The ruins scattered all over the city make the trip an experience and a history lesson at the same time.
We also had the opportunity to visit the Grand Lodge of Greece with our Grand Master Luis Baez-Delgado and Grand Secretary Paul Curran, Past Grand Master. We were able to learn about the history of Freemasonry in Greece, as well as fellowship with the Brethren, and talk about some common challenges facing the Craft today. We were warmly welcomed by the Grand Secretary and other Grand Lodge Officers and given a guided tour of the building, what a stupendous edifice.
And what would this article be without giving you the opportunity to attend one of our ceremonials? They are not only open to Emirat members and their ladies, but to anyone who wants to learn more about our work and if nothing else, have a nice evening of fun and fellowship. Our next ceremonal will be held in May. By the time this is published, registration will have closed, so the next opportunity will be May 26-28 in Romania! I know that might be far for some so we have one more opportunity this year in Germany, November 10-12 in Stuttgart! If you would like to attend, please email me or contact our recorder Ill Sir Paul Curran at pgmacgl@me.com
