FAQ's about the club

Hello everyone!

I'm Lynn and my first visit was at the Tuesday meeting in April. My wife, TJ, was there with me. We had such a wonderful time meeting all of you and some were so amazingly helpful like Teresa and Dave! (Forgive me if I misspell names!)

I joined as a member that night and TJ will be joining also before the next meeting. After we talked about our experiences, we had a couple of questions.

Is there always a "Show and Tell" as well as a "JALAF" competition so you can bring things you've acquired that fit that month's colors/types?

What does JALAF mean or stand for? From the best we could tell, the items in the competitions were ones that matches the April theme and had someone been worked on by a member. What counts for the competition? If you found a cool specimen and you tumbled it, would that count to enter?

Finally, we were so excited to win the raffle and get a start on our own brand new collections. We've already spend hours trying to figure out what kinds of might be in our new pieces! (So far, we haven't figured out much.) We were wondering about the raffle since the donations brought in are beneficial. Do you get the raffle-off items from member donations? Are there certain types of donations that are desirable? Most of what we won were slabs that seemed to be made up of several minerals. Sometimme would would like to have a chance to pay it forward and donate items to be raffled. Is there a raffle at every minute?

Sorry for so many questions, we are rather excited beginners at this! Thanks again for the experience and we look forward to more experiences!

Lynn and TJ Cloude

Lynn, great questions, thanks for asking!
I am going to jump in and answer a few things, starting with the Jewelry and Lapidary Arts Forum or JALAF. There is another forum topic about it, and I will go there and post the rules and guidelines today so you get a complete answer, but yes we do have a competition every month as well as time for show and tell. The show and tell does not have to match the theme, it can be anything you would like.

The Rock Raffle is headed up by one member every year, and it is up to that person to decide how to acquire the items that are raffled. The club has a lot of rock that can be used, sometimes the person in charge has a lot that they donate, and we always allow any club member to donate as well.

Welcome to the LGMS!

Thank you SO much for the answers and the update to the competition and show/tell info. I understand more now! Looking forward to the next meeting and the show! I have some family members who want to come to the show, too, so the tickets will come in handy!

Lynn