Remembering The Mission

You haven’t heard from me a while because I spent the weekend in Hudson with our daughter and her family to celebrate Mother’s Day. I hope each of you Mother's had a great day. I know that I did.

I had a meeting to attend in our Mendota Heights ACS office yesterday (Tuesday). The office is only 1/2 drive from my daughter's. I took a day of vacation on Monday, so I could spend it with Dawn, she had the day off and the grandchildren are in school. I had a wonderful weekend with her and the family, and on Monday she, my son in law (who wasn’t flying that day) and I had a lovely lunch out at a restaurant overlooking the St. Croix River in downtown Hudson. Before the lunch, she and I shopped at Herberger’s, a store that we discovered has a large selection of women’s clothing, that she tells me “look good on me”. She said I shouldn’t shop anywhere but Herberger’s in Stillwater, so each time I visit her, we make a trip to Herberger’s. We don’t have one in Duluth, so it affords me the time in between visits to pay the credit card off before shopping again!

My son in law cooked a wonderful dinner for his Mom and Dad, Dawn and me in honor of Mother's Day. The kids and my husband got together and bought me a "kitchen aid", a piece of kitchen equipment I often thought I'd like to have, but never wanted to spend money on...so that was great.

It was good to have a day away from the office. Due to budget cuts and office closings in our region, the last two years have been much more hectic at my job than ever before, some days are really trying. Therefore, it was good to have all of us Administrative Support staff from our region together for a meeting yesterday. The CEO of our division was there to talk with us, and remind us how valuable we are to the organization and how much we are appreciated. I think that I speak for all of us in the region when I say that we needed that pep talk! She talked about our 2015 goals and how we are working as a team together toward those goals. Everything we do as an organization is toward reaching the following goals:

--50% reduction in age-adjusted cancer mortality rates by the year 2015.
--25 % reduction in age-adjusted cancer incidence rates by the Year 2015.
--Measurable improvement in the quality of life (physical, psychological,
social,and spiritual) from the time of diagnosis and for the balance
of life of all cancer survivors by the Year 2015.

Our nationwide leadership roles to accomplish these goals are in the areas of research, information, quality of life and prevention and detection.

It was good for me to be reminded of our mission and why I work for The American Cancer Society. It's a good organization with a good mission. (budget cuts and lean staff,rest assure that we are good stewards of your donor dollars!)