Century Of Honor

Boy Scouts has been a player in our lives for about 25yrs.  Jack has served in many capacities...as have I...for those years.  He, much more than me!  We always laughed when the organization says: "It's only 1hr. a week"...Ha!  However, it's been fun, busy, hard work and I believe, totally worth it.  Boy Scouts can shape the lives of young men in many positive ways.  Achieving "Eagle Scout" is something that will be a major impact in their future. I know men who received jobs over other candidates just because it has "Eagle" in the resume.  Even if a young man doesn't get his Eagle..he has still achieved many goals and learned valuable lessons.  In 1913 the LDS church became the first to charter Boy Scouts Of America.  Last night we celebrated that 100yr mark with the broadcast "Century Of Honor" and holding an open house for the community.  We really didn't think many would attend.  Here in Ohio and in our small town our Church isn't exactly welcomed and embraced!  We weren't even sure how we were going to approach this activity!  Salt Lake sent a wire to our newspaper telling them we were going to have an open house and the paper interviewed Jack and our Scout Master.  OK then, I guess we'd better come up with something since a photographer was also coming out to document this event!  I put together a few picture boards using 100 photos from the past few years showing what our little troup 555 had done.

Jack and our friend Kyle...his wife Stacy writes  the blog Crawford Clan, put some props up.

On the table we had some of our Klondike awards and Stacy's son's shadow box from his scout years...he received his Eagle a couple of years ago and Dakota is now getting ready to go on a mission for the Church!  We had a couple of old Scout manuals. One from 1946!

Reading them is fun and seeing the notes from the young..now old..boy/man who once owned it showing his advancements and the dates is pretty cool!  The best part is seeing that not much has changed...values that were important back then are still important today.  Duty to God and country, being honest, trustworthy, loyal, kind, courteous, clean, reverent and all the other values that seem to be a bit blurred by society today.  Since we were inviting our own scouts and the public, refreshments must served! (That's my motto..gather and feed!) I made a few different cookies. When I say "different", I don't only mean different flavors.  I had a cookie cutter shaped like the Boy Scout "Fleur De Lis" but somewhere between the cutter, the dough, and the oven it lost it's impact...

We decided they looked more like (a)..flying fish with 100 on them, or (b) ears of corn. Well, they tasted good! My other attempt at creativity turned out a bit better:

I thought some Boy Scout cookies were needed...can you find me in the mix? Hint: Pink scarf! Ha!  As predicted, we didn't get a huge turnout...although the photographer did show up.  I'll be curious to see what she came up with and if it makes the paper. The broadcast was good...a bit long...but good.  We enjoyed the company of those that came and the important part is inspiring these kiddos to continue on and also to go on to be adult leaders some day.  Here's the real reason we do this...

These are a couple of our scouts and they are great kids.  I've enjoyed being back in Scouting this past year and I hope we can go on for another 100yrs.