diogenes

I think he means that to reach Eagle, you have to know something more than Scout "lore" like you do for AoL. AoL trains you to be a Boy Scout, Eagle trains you to be a leader in the world.

Scouts can't be in two different troops at the same time. We ran into that problem recently trying to train up a troop for another LDS branch. They were ready to stand alone, and thought they had been for a few months when they found out they were denied because someone in the scout office thought they were trtying to "poach" boys from my branch's unit. We got it fixed, but it was frustrating. You've gotten sound advice from others, so I'll just add my agreement. Work with the boys and their parents and church leaders, but in the end it is still a non LDS unit so you should aim for what w

We just did one for a Weblos from our pack. We've been combining award ceremonies for the pack and troop so the can help support each other, so this seemed a "normal" ceremony. The older Scouts had built a bridge in the cultural halll where we meet, and we had the Cubs and Scouts sit on different sides. After focusing on the Scouts and their awards, we slipped into the AOL/bridging ceremony by making a big deal about not having enough scouts. The SM crossed the bridge to the Cub side and asked Akela. The Weblos was told that AoL was not earned lightly, and he would be tested. Akela and other l

Our Scout Executive is LDS, and we have some LDS members on the committee. We even have an LDS ranger at BTSR now. Buffalo Trail Council is large georgraphically. Rough guess is that we have maybe a dozen LDS Boy Scout units in the whole council. Maybe half a dozen Varisty/Venturing. I don't know how much further we'll get on accommodations for LDS units regarding check-in times. We're perfectly willing to leave our start points at oh-dark thirty (I've done it other councils that were far less spread out), but I think the issue is more of having district and council leadership on si

Sounds like you've hit the target I'm aiming for. Thanks for showing that it can be done. Good luck helping the boys keep it that way.

John: Our Eagle candidate has hit the snag of a dead home computer trapping the draft of his packet. He was delaying the process a bit for family reasons which have come to pass, but is now kinda stuck. With the Inauguration Day looming, he might get motivated to be creative and/or hard working in getting his packet finished. Back on the main subject, yes, the Sabbath is a key issue. The local council camps have a provision to allow you to check in Monday AM instead of Sunday PM, but you have to have been at the camp at least once in the previous 2 years. Another issue is program. We'd

I've not been a TG, but in other classroom environments I've found that white print on a blue background works great for PP slides. And John is right... don't read the friggin' things to us. PP should enhance your presentation, not *be* the presentation. Most people fail to do this properly and, especiqally at Wood Badge, end up with an audience of ZZZZZZZ or people frustrated that you're wasting their time and insulting their intelligence. If your job consists of pressing the clicker and reading the slide, you know you have a poor presentation. Also, same concept as PP, but don't re

Another update: The Alpine patrol has split off and they are up and running gonzo. They have Cubs going as well. The Pecos side is going to be split off when we recharter in the next week or so. They've had more than enough time to get things running and they haven't. Not our problem anymore. We'll keep the one lone scout on our rolls and fold him into our older patrol. He's been coming pretty regular the past few weeks since he's hitching a ride with a church leader that comes out our way every week to handle clerk duties. Side note: we're going to charter a Varsity team for th

I'd ask the scouts not attending, or only minimally attending, summer camp why they aren't participating. JObs, school, etc are one thing, but if they are skipping out because they're not getting anything out of it, then something should be done to help them if possible (or help them help themselves). It sounds like the majority seem happy enough with the routine, but the others guys might be able provide some input to freshen things up a bit. I'm a little leary of always doing something the same way just because "we've always done it that way." If it meets the needs of the scouts, ok. Can it

Seems we have wandered way off the two original points. 1. LDS involvement in Scouts. Seems to have been answered pretty well by others. I've never heard of Venturing for Young Women (probably to avoid mixing the unit with the Priests' Qurorum Venturing Crew), but that may be a local leader decision. 2. Prop 8. A very heated subject. My in-laws have told me about how ugly the "Vote No" crowd has been. I'm going to take a guess that the person got upset because they were surprised and maybe caught flatfooted by your intention to vote "No" because they probably assumed your involvement

I'll work the logic from the reverse angle here: If only Scout parents can be leaders, then: Childless couples (for medical reasons or whatnot) are left out, even though they would have the extra time to help. Forget about the old teacher's line of "I have hundreds of kids... my students". Forget single people, young or old. They might as well just go party with their free time instead of giving back to the community / Scouts. People with only girls (I'm in that category so far). I guess they have to go try to overcome the GS creepy man rule. People with young children

Thanks Beavah. We've decided that we'll follow the law as best we can. We considered going to New Mexico, especially as some of our leaders have private property out that way, but in the end it was decided we would be setting a poor example for the youth (Scouts and our young women) by avoiding the law like that, at least until we've made an effort to comply and/or correct the situation. I'll certainly take up the issue with out legislators. Civic responsibility and all. Perhaps I can nudge some of my scouts to use this for their Citizenship MBs and they can learn something as well.

My troop was planning to do our own summer camp this year in conjunction with the other LDS troops in our church district. A question to the Council regarding OA tap outs came back with a missive about the LDS church discouraging units from doing their own camps. The Chief Executive is LDS and does a good job bridging the gap between regular Scouts and LDS units, but when we got a copy of the e-mail we were a bit torqued off and inclined to ignore it and continue with our plans. Then we get a letter from our church legal affairs unit regarding the above act. The short version being t

We're a small troop and we pretty much do like Liz describes: we aim for at least quarterly, but we'll do them "as needed" if we need more. Most of the CoH we do are simple no-frills types. We do one or two upscale CoH a year, usually after summer camps are over or if we have a CoH with a lot of and/or very important awards earned. I guess you could say we resemble the pack meeting comment because we've started to combine our CoH with our Pack Meeting because of our small numbers. It also helps everyone to see the continuity of Scouting: the Cubs can see what the big boys do, and the Scouts ca

Another update and responses for John-in-KC (and others): eolesen: we're definately being thrifty. So far we've managed to keep staff BORs with our own committee members. The quality control aspect is a little wonky because the same committee members are mostly doing double duty on the ground as de facto ASMs. John-in-KC: PORs & representative democracy: yeah, I can see how that is a show-stopper (I feel that way myself sometimes), but it is one of things that LDS units do differently because we use patrols and troops a bit differently. Patrols are to overlay the priesthood quoru

I figured out the intention of the game early in. I realized that due to the actions of other patrols, we weren't going to achieve the best outcome, so I decided to help drive home the point of the game by doing a controlled push for what one of the staffers discribed as "the worst score ever". It really knocked the lesson home for everyone, though my patrol did have to do a bit of fence mending afterwards. Even that was a good lesson, as it helped everyone understand how the boys feelings can be hurt easily, especially when fatigue is involved. I think the game works best if you let peop

Reporting back and answering some questions: First, the questions. Yes, LDS units can have non-LDS scouters (and scouts) involved, so long as they understand and accept some of specific things we do and don' do with our units (no Sunday camping unless special permission granted, no Monday night activities so as to not interfere with family night, no smoking, coffee, tea, etc at unit activities.). In fact, half of our scouts in one end of the troop aren't LDS and we're glad to have them along to help make the program big/fun enough to be more than just a smattering of lone scouts. Per

Thanks for the info as well. I just received a report that one of my scouts and my SM were involved in some whitewater rescues on a family trip and we were trying to figure out the process as well. This thread just saved me a bunch of time! Here's hoping that these young men get the recognition they deserve.

We didn't go so far as to kick the Scout from camp, but we did have a few serious discussions during and after camp with some boys who decided to blow off their merit badges. Part of the reason was because they were blowing off the classes to just "hang around" (read: cause trouble). Part of the reason was we only had 2 leaders, thus we couldn't keep an eye on the ditchers while also keeping an eye out for the others (we had a lot of novice scouts, we were at BTSR during a very hot week of June, and we needed to keep an eye out for heat injuries). A significant reason was becaus

Brotton's Beavers SR 839 still working my ticket

Thanks for the input. I was planning to just do a 3 way call on my cell phone (I have way more minutes than I use, so no problem there). I'll look into using the videoconference stuff from local schools/governments if the current troop situation continues beyond the end of our current charter year (December). Our budget is pretty much wiped out now for a variety of reasons, so we wouldn't be able to do much of anything beyond free or cash on the barrel until next year. Maybe I can drop it as a suggestion for the church leaders to install in the meetinghouses to save traveling for the district

Can a Board of Review be conducted by teleconference? I know face to face with the scouts is the norm, but I'm not exactly in a "normal" situation. I have a (LDS) troop scattered out all over west Texas. Our troop is based in Monahans, but we have patrols in Pecos and Alpine because those two branches of the church are just now starting up their troops and our church district wanted our troop to provide most of the leadership until they can get their own and up to speed to stand alone. It kinda works on paper, but the logistics side is crazy. Pecos is about an hour's drive from Monah

Howdy Boris!

I'm guessing it's broken. I had the same problems last night and I thought it was because I was using Firefox. I switched to IE and it didn't even ask for it.

Thanks for the welcome, all. I'm in the Sand Hills District of the Buffalo Trail Council. Troop 37 in Monahans (and also Pecos and Alpine for the time being).