April 2023

It took me a long time to understand and fully appreciate the uniqueness and wholeness of our AA structure.  Many people have shared they feel the same.  I hope oodles of members come to the upcoming Area 78 Assembly being held at the Edmonton Inn on April 14 – 16 to learn lots more.  EVERYONE has a voice.  Join your favorite committee to share your thoughts.

Every year, all members are asked to look at the AA Annual Meeting (Conference) Agenda Items to:

a.     Review the work done over the year by GSO staff and Trustees.   

b.     Discuss certain topics needing more input from the membership.   

c.     Consider new requests sent by members, groups, districts, areas, or committees. 

Sample Agenda Items for members’ discussion & share at the Assembly’s Committee meeting:

 

All the following options for reviewing the Conference Agenda Items are on our website. Being confidential for AA members only, they are password protected:

  1. The Agenda Items: List of 85 Items on the Conference – asking for members’ input.
  2. Background information: lots of pages of all the background on each of the items – one document or individually by Committee (Agenda Items + Background).
  3. Summaries (Summaries): condensed summary of each agenda item by Committee.

Contact your DCM or Cliff H. eservices.72@area78.org for password to open the docs.

I can’t tell you what a feeling it is to understand our AA Structure and give your thoughts and direction for Alcoholics Anonymous in Canada/US.

 

Additionally, three letters were sent by the Acting Chair for the General Service Board (GSB) which I forwarded to our DCMs:

  1. Advising the resignation of the GSB Chair, at the request of the Board
  2. Advising the resignation of Josh E, Past Class B Trustee
  3. Advising an explanation on the request for the resignation of the GSB Chair.

Another letter was forwarded to DCMs from Josh E, Past Class B Trustee explaining his decision.

I do believe there will be some discussion at the 73rd General Service Conference on this matter.

All AA members are invited to the online Delegate’s Corner to learn about / discuss Agenda Items, or to ask questions about our structure or the Conference:  Click to  Join the Meeting

7:00 – 8:00 pm on March 28, April 4 & 11 And after the Conference: May 9, 16 & 23.

 

With Love and Service,

Tami

Your Delegate 💜

If the link doesn’t work, click here: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/7085555414?pwd=NC85SXhNdUZWZEpvVWRkT09vNWl6dz09

March 2023

Many thanks to all the wonderful folks who put on an amazing WRAASA (Western Region A.A. Service Assembly) Feb 24-26 in Edmonton. Members from Manitoba (Area 80), Saskatchewan (Area 91), BC (Area 79) and our own from Alberta, NWT, parts of BC, NV and SK (Area 78) came to share and learn more about our 3rd Legacy, Service. An inspiring and motivating time for ALL!

One of the displays by our Grapevine/LaViña, Committee Chair, Ed S. at WRAASA

Area 79 will be hosting our Regional Forum – May 2024 in Vernon, BC.

Come to meet the staff from your General Service Office and Boards. Learn more! Celebrate AA and recovery!

March and April are busy months for our Pre–Conference Assembly – April 14 – 16, 2023 at the Edmonton Inn. The Assembly is when our Area’s membership gathers to discuss the upcoming agenda for all the ways our General Service office carry the message to address the agenda items.

The many Agenda Items are posted on the Area 78 website. I invite you to participate in the whole of AA. My role is to carry our members’ thoughts and wishes to the Conference.

There will be Delegate’s Corner offered online Wednesday, Mar 22 and Tuesdays Mar 7 – April 11 and May 9 – 23 @ 7:00 – 8:00 pm for any questions, comments, or discussions about the Agenda Items, the Conference, General Service, or about the Area.

Will be on zoom ID 708 555 5414 password: area78

Link: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/7085555414 (Passcode: area78) With Love and Service,

Tami

Your Delegate 💜

February2023

Oh, how brightly you shine!!
Quick announcements (more at the end):

1. WRAASA (Western Region A.A. Service Assembly) is an entire weekend of inspiration and motivation
for ALL MEMBERS! See you there J https://wraasa.org
Feb 24-26, 2023, at the Edmonton Inn

2. Our Pre-Conference Assembly this year is April 14 – 16, 2023 at the Edmonton Inn.
a. Our ‘March’ Assembly is in APRIL
b. The membership is quickly gearing up to address the agenda items. What interests you??
c. Submitting an agenda item for the 2024 Conference is Sept 15th

We are one body and one mind moving toward solutions and unity within our Area 78 community. The only difference between you and me is our current role, merely a temporary one. You are wise in the ways of AA, in the ways of being sober and reaching out your hand. And you are here, reading this!

Together we do this work to keep A.A. alive and well.There are deepening levels of our evolution as we give of ourselves to others. In AA language, we
call this Service, and refer to it as our Third Legacy in our recovery journey. THIS is the work of ‘general service’. It IS the reason we have Districts and an Area.

Since the General Service structure started in 1951, YOU, the membership has been guiding and determining the direction of A.A. Many thought that having the membership make all the decisions wouldn’t work. But for the last 73 years it has been stupendous. Area 78’s first Delegate was George Dunaway. George served on Panel 2 for 1952 & 1953. Come be a part of history. There are deepening levels of our evolution as we give of ourselves to others.

Thank you for allowing me to serve. My understanding is clear that the Area Committee Officers are to take direction from you, the membership of Alcoholics Anonymous. Your thoughts come through your GSRs to your DCM, to the Area, and on to the Conference in NYC. None of us govern, but we are all leaders (refer to Concept 9), working together by sharing our experiences, our strengths, and much hope for one another. The Area’s job is like the Trustees and subsequently, the staff at the General Service Office, who take their direction from the Conference members’ advisory actions (decisions) and committee considerations (suggestions) and all the discussions that happen over the annual week-long meeting.

We rely on you to raise issues, open discussion, make suggestions or motions at your business, district, or Area meetings so we can all listen to the differing ideas that lead to the decisions. Then we get busy working on those solutions as our Area moves forward with our primary purpose,
while supporting one another with love, tolerance, kindness, and acceptance.

Why do we need a Conference?
Well, Bill Wilson’s dear friend and confident, Bernard Smith (fondly referred to as Bern), non-alcoholic, was our GSB Chair for many years. He was ‘a principal architect’ in creating our Conference Structure. He answered this question in his opening remarks at the 1954 meeting. An excerpt of it for today:

“…We need it to ensure that changes within A.A. come only as a response to the needs and the wants of all A.A., and not of only a few. We need it to ensure that the doors of the halls of A.A. never
have locks on them, so that all people for all time who have an alcoholic problem may enter these halls unasked and feel welcome. We need it to ensure that Alcoholics Anonymous never asks of anyone who needs us what his or her race is, what his or her creed is, what his or her social position is.” (Bern’s very moving, spiritual talk can be found in the Service Manual pg 40).

We are open to all who need and want us. This is true! So, I ask you, “Do we believe all who need and want to be sober ARE in our rooms? Could any be missing? Are we attractive, welcoming, inclusive, and available to those who may be missing – unsure, scared, or confused about us? With this in mind, we prepare for the 73rd General Service Conference.

An update on my activities: January was busy! I was flat out with Area meetings, ConferenceDelegate Chair meetings, Western Regional meetings including WRAASA, speaking at groups, districts and events, and lots of Conference preparations.

The dashboard, our conference communications tool, opened Jan 10th. Lots to ‘find’, then read! All the new Panel 73rd Delegates are elected. In our Western Canada Region, we have new Delegates Rio D, Area 79, BC/Yukon and Lori R, Area 91, SK. Honestly, ours is the best of all 8 regions.

January 26 – 31 has me in New York for the January Board Meetings. I had a challenge concerning the 1-year term as the Conference Delegate Chair. The past Delegate Chair (and the 4 before her) confirmed the term is Jan to Dec – made sense to me. However, conversations with the Trustees and GSO folks since August indicated they thought I knew things I didn’t and expected things I wasn’t to do yet. The term for Conference Committee Chairs, Trustees and Directors runs conference to conference (April to April). All will be corrected this year. Ben N, Alt Delegate Chair/Mailman and I will serve January to end of April. See! ‘STUFF’ happens everywhere. And just cuz it’s always been done that way, doesn’t mean it has to, or that it’s right. Ben and I will offer regular online Delegates-only discussion meetings till then.

I encourage all members to be part of the agenda discussions in your groups. Talk to your GSR or DCM to see about the committees and see where your heart lies in carrying the message to those who suffer. Which committee do you want to know more about? Make decisions for? Suggest materials about? Have an opinion about?

At the conference, 135 of us from all over Canada and US discuss these same items again to see what is best for AA as a whole body. You are welcome to come to the pre-conference Assembly April 14 – 16 at the Edmonton Inn. Join in the discussions, listen to other members from other districts across our Area share their thoughts and needs. Learn more and share your thoughts.

My role is to carry members’ thoughts to the Conference. I cannot if your voice is silent. Quick GSO update – check with your DCM for the detailed update from GSO – tons of stuff!!
– Contributions & literature sales were lower than expected/budgeted so redoing budget
– Jacketless Big Book is now being sold
– Mixed title ordering is continuing
– Box 4-5-9: picture of the White Bear meeting room in SK
– Online 7th Contributions to GSB – working on a solution to ensure groups are identified as
the contributor vs individual
– Sections of the Plain and Simple Language BB translation will be at the Conference to study
by voting members

 

With Love and Service,
Tami
Your Delegate 💜

January 2023

A new year dawns…yet, not so different than the day just before it 😂  Kinda like a birthday.  We don’t feel much different until in retrospect we see the growth, the overcoming of challenges and the gifts the year has offered.  Noodling about our upcoming ACM (Area Committee Meeting), I realized both alcoholism and recovery progress in a downward direction.  Alcoholism fueled by the ego and recovery fueled by our spirit.  One plummets us into self-centeredness while the other creates humility by serving others.  In a sense, we grow in being anonymous – of humbly doing from a place of grace.  The more we do, the more our Higher Power builds us into the person we can become if we are so bold as to abandon ourselves to this process.

The process is what our 73rd General Conference theme – “A.A.’s Three Legacies: Our Common Solution” – is all about.  It offers a focus for the year to reflect on how our three legacies are our common solution from a baffling, powerful and cunning disease.  I’ve often heard how our three legacies are like a three-legged stool.  If all legs are the same length, we are balanced.  If one is too long, we aren’t. If any are too short…same!  Before we can truly evolve, we must be sober.  Then, we need one another in a way to become, and stay connected. Then, we deepen into that humility, where our twelfth tradition bears its fruit where “anonymity is the spiritual foundation of all our Traditions, ever reminding us to place principles before personalities.”

All four Area meetings each year are open to all members of Alcoholics Anonymous.  Although the DCMs &/or GSRs make up the Area Committee, all of us are invited to go, learn, share, enjoy and grow our personal program by ensuring A.A. is here for our future – for our children, grandbabies, family and all the friends we are yet to meet.

With love in the Spirit, 💜

Tami L. delegate.72@area78.org

PS:  AREA NEWS

  • Area Committee Meeting (ACM) on January 20 & 21, 2023 in Calgary. Please come! https://area78aa.org/event/area-78-2023-area-committee-meeting/
  • Welcoming Susan G, newly appointed Treatment & Accessibilities Chair for the remaining of Panel 72
  • 72nd Conference Final Reports. Please note the reports are confidential because they are not anonymity protected.  Please shred if not wanted and please refrain from leaving it in any public spaces.  They are available at the Calgary & Edmonton Central Office and will also be available at the ACM in January.  Or you can contact me directly.
  • WRAASA (Western Regional AA Service Assembly) in Edmonton on February 24 – 26, 2023. Hope to see you there. To register https://wraasa.org/registration/
  • 7th Contributions report: in the 3rd quarter of 2022, 48 Groups (out of ~450) within 27 Districts contributed to our General Service Board. Many many thanks to those who were able to give.
    There were some contributions that didn’t have a group # associated but did say Area 78. If you need to find your Group #, please contact 72@area78.org.
    (PS: If it goes in without a group or area, it is included as an individual contribution – and  appreciated)

 

PPS:  News from our General Service Office (GSO)

 

And more…. https://www.aa.org/news-and-announcements