It is hard to believe that I have been an MDRT member for over 30 years. Wow! Being an MDRT member has been one of the highlights of my life. Indeed, MDRT has changed my life for good — and not only for the better, but forever.

Even before I was a member, MDRT was impacting me for good. I began my career as an agent in 1977, before many of you were even a twinkle in your parents’ eyes. After two years as an agent, I was promoted to sales manager. In three years, I recruited 12 agents. All but one quit, and they fired me.

For months, I went to every agency in South Florida, and no one would hire me. I remember one manager saying to me, “Don, I don’t know an easy way to say this other than to tell you: You will never make it in the life insurance business!” It was devastating. But finally an investment company looking to break into the life insurance business asked me if I would consider moving north. I was thinking New Jersey or somewhere else far away, but they said, “No, Stuart, Florida.” I grew up in Fort Lauderdale, but I had never even heard of Stuart, this place 90 miles north of us. But as Mayo, the character in “An Officer and a Gentleman,” said, “I got nowhere else to go!”

Since moving was not an option, it meant that every day I drove 90 miles north and 90 miles south.

It was the best thing that ever happened to me.

Five days a week, 90 miles north, 90 miles south, I was schooled by the leaders who have graced this stage. I’d get in my car and pop in a C90 cassette tape (remember those?) and listen to one tape 90 miles north and another 90 miles south, every day. I was quick to listen and even quicker to apply what I heard. By the end of the six months, listening to virtually any recording I could get my hands on, we went from just barely paying our bills to leading the company in production. I think it is safe to say that MDRT recordings changed my life for good.

I will never forget my first MDRT Annual Meeting in New Orleans. I sat in the worst seats in the house — about as far away as you could get. All I wanted to do was absorb as much information as was humanly possible. I went to everything Main Platform and carefully selected the breakouts. Most important, meeting the very people on those tapes was amazing!

Ben Feldman was there, as was his son Marvin, who is now a great friend. Woody Woodson, Frank Friedler, Ron Barbaro and Sid Friedman — these were people I met at that first meeting in New Orleans. These are names many of you may not know, but they are a huge part of the history of MDRT. Meeting the best and brightest at MDRT changed my life for good.

One of the most impactful meetings was a chance encounter with a true visionary. The MDRT Foundation was in its infancy in those days, but Karen Tucker had a dream. She believed MDRT, through the Foundation, could impact the world for good. She believed the MDRT Foundation, funded exclusively by the generosity of our members, could give away millions of dollars a year to causes championed by our members, around the world, and do it into perpetuity.

She had me at hello! And that’s when the MDRT Foundation began to change my life for good.

In the same way a church is not a building but the people, MDRT is you! Over the last 30 years, my wife, Grace, and I have been given refrigerator rights from people all over the world.

I can hear some of you saying, “Don, what the heck are refrigerator rights?” When you come into a house and help yourself to what is in the fridge, you have refrigerator rights. In other words, you are part of the family, the inner circle. On numerous occasions, often far from home, I have had the distinct pleasure of staying with an MDRT colleague and taking advantage of our refrigerator rights. What a privilege! I am sure there must be another association like this one, but I have no idea what it might be.

Bruce Etherington is a man who changed the entire trajectory of my life and my career. Every Monday as I drove 90 miles north, Bruce’s talk given at the 1977 Annual Meeting in Atlanta would be my tape of choice to start the week. I played it in the cassette deck until it finally would not play. I am convinced I knew that talk better than he did. At my first Annual Meeting, I was determined to meet him, but it never happened. He claims he was there, but providentially our paths never crossed.

Incredibly, a couple of years later, we met at a conference in Rome. I was going through a professional turmoil at the time. It was a poorly kept secret that our firm was up for sale. Advisors were leaving, and my position was tenuous at best. Enter this chance meeting with my audio mentor. The advice Bruce gave me in Rome that weekend changed my life for good. The advice led to the firm I founded shortly thereafter. A short time later, MDRT was held in Bruce’s hometown of Toronto. He invited me to his house to meet several of his MDRT friends from around the world. That meeting led to my being invited to speak hundreds of times around the world about what I had learned driving 90 miles north and 90 miles south. But the best part of our longstanding relationship has been the hours we have spent just hanging out together and the knowledge that we both have refrigerator rights!

Yes, all of you have changed my life … for good.

In 2003, I was invited by the MDRT Foundation to go to China to build a playground for orphaned children. I was excited about helping the kids, but really hanging out with a bunch of MDRT friends was the main goal. I also assumed this would be a fun way to get a Chinese stamp in my passport.

A group of about 40 of us from all over the world met in Langfang, just south of Beijing, and our lives would never be the same. As I shared in Toronto in 2014, my wife, Grace, and I left China with a hole in our heart for the orphaned children there. Little did we know how this one trip would change so many lives forever.

These twin girls, Fu Ya Yun and Fu Ya Qiu [visual], were born on September 12, 2003, in the town of Jiaozuo in the Henan Province in central China. From birth, the twins had three strikes against them.

First, they had cleft lips and palates, which disfigured their faces and impaired their speech. Second, their parents were unable to pay for the extensive care they were going to need to survive. And third, and probably the biggest strike of all, due to the cleft, the children could not eat. It would only be a matter of time before the babies, who weighed only 2 kilos, would simply starve.

No parent should ever be faced with such a dichotomy.

In the wee hours of the morning on the 15th of September, their parents made a fateful decision. They wrapped the babies in a small blanket and placed them in a cardboard box. They tore off the corner of a brown paper bag and wrote a note. In English it read, “Dear caring people, we are poor and unable to provide for our twins. Please keep them. They were born the 12th of September 2003.”

Under the cover of darkness, early on the Monday morning after their birth, they placed the children at the gate of the local orphanage and scampered back into the darkness, never to see them again.

When the early morning shift change came, the premature children were found by the orphanage workers, but their fate had hardly improved. Like their mother, the caregivers had no way to feed them. Then, a miracle.

That very day, an Australian volunteer arrived at the orphanage. When she saw the caregivers struggling to feed the twins, she reached into her purse and pulled out two bottles specially designed for cleft children given to her by a doctor in Australia. Before long, the children were eating for the first time in their short lives.

Knowing the twins needed care the orphanage could not provide, she convinced the orphanage director to transfer the twins to a foster home north of Beijing run by an Australian doctor. There they received great care, but to have a reasonable chance of being adopted, those facial clefts needed to be closed.

When the twins were six months old, they heard that a fledgling American organization called Love Without Boundaries was sending surgeons to repair cleft children in Shantou, some 1,500 kilometers away. They contacted LWB, and within days, they were off to Shantou.

When Dr. John Padilla, a Beverly Hills plastic surgeon, saw the twins, he scooped them up and these shuāngbāotāi (“sham bow tie” or “twins”) became the first children to receive a cleft repair on a Love Without Boundaries medical mission.

What do you think of his work? [visual]

While all this was going on in China, we were home trying to figure out how to adopt from China. We had never been blessed with children. On three separate occasions, we had tried to adopt, only to have our hopes dashed when they all fell through. Call it fate, but even though my heart’s desire had always been to be a father, at age 47 that matter was settled. We were not going to have children of our own.

But God has a great sense of humor!

Less than a year after returning from China, we adopted the very twin girls you just met in the pictures. [visual]

Some of you met Sydney and Reagan in Toronto in 2014 when they were 10. They are now 16.

They are driving, excelling in high school both scholastically and athletically, and when they wear heels, they are as tall as me. It is crazy! They are certainly keeping their dad on his toes.

Oh yeah, MDRT has, without question, changed our family … for good!

When we returned to the U.S. after adopting Sydney and Reagan, I looked up Love Without Boundaries. We decided to send a contribution to help other orphaned children receive the care they needed and be adopted as well. This led to raising even more money to help even more kids. Ultimately, that led to a place on their board and eventually the chairmanship of the Foundation.

Over the years, our MDRT Foundation has given LWB amazing financial support. In fact, every time we have come with a need, the MDRT Foundation has opened its heart and checkbook to help us.

The last time I spoke to you in Toronto, LWB was working exclusively in China. However, today, our reach is truly without boundaries. We are now doing medical and foster care in Uganda. We have built, staffed and fully operated two primary schools in Cambodia. We provide daily meals to needy children in Cambodia and rescue children on the Thai/Cambodian border, placing them in foster care.

Our latest effort is to help eradicate the endemic problem of unrepaired cleft lips and palates in India where an estimated 1 million people live with unrepaired cleft lips and palates.

The needs throughout the world are great, and I have been so blessed to have played just a little part in it. Indeed, recently we merged our firm, and I have stepped away from the business to help raise money to help kids through LWB. I often think, What could be done if we could just find that money tree we know must be out there?

Yes, I think it is safe to say that MDRT changes lives! I cannot wait to hear how MDRT has changed your life for good.

Donald F. White Jr., CLU, ChFC, is a 31-year MDRT member with 11 Court of the Table and 19 Top of the Table qualifications. The former CEO of Treasure Coast Financial Services in Stuart, Florida, White is a Legion of Honor Excalibur Knight and Inner Circle Member of the MDRT Foundation. He is treasurer and former chairman of the board of Love Without Boundaries Foundation, a non-profit organization assisting orphaned and vulnerable children. A world-renowned communicator, White has spoken at six MDRT Annual Meetings.