Hello everyone,

I hope everyone had a fantastic time at the Fishing Rodeo yesterday. The boys caught about 15 catfish in total. Definitely something we can look forward to doing again.

Tomorrow we are going over rank advancements. We will be particularly looking at group of Scouts with alike unfinished requirements and focus on teaching them and helping them thru it.

Lets look ahead at what is coming up:
– Next Saturday is our first ever Sun City Scouting for Food drive. I am 3 Scouts short of volunteers, so I’ll be looking for a few more names tomorrow. This will only run from around 8am to 2pm and the Scouts will be split into 2 shifts. More details to come.
– May 20th thru 22nd is the OA Spring Fellowship (this is for eligible Scouts ONLY). If you have not done so, register here: https://scoutingevent.com/549-oaspringfellowship
– Forms needed for summer camp went out to all attendees, please work on providing me with that by June 13th.
– Daniel Boone is continuing with their 22 week online merit badge program which you’re welcome to participate in. This week, they’re opening registration for week 20 in which they will be offering the Search & Rescue and Traffic Safety merit badges. Visit their site to see other opportunities and register.
https://www.danielboonecouncil.org/Virtual?fbclid=IwAR2JbckMkaCvB8ACcIyqmE81cf_n0isCywWdRrIyLxkthfmZMXnSm3wTbSU

To close let me just say this, our Troop is incredibly fortunate to have one of the largest leadership teams I have seen across our council/district. Within that leadership team are 2 very special female leaders whom are hard working dedicated mothers that add a much needed degree of warmth, comfort, and guidance to our Troop.

So to Vicky, Anne, and the rest of the mothers out there (on behalf of the Troop) let me just say THANK YOU for all that you do and have a wonderful Mother’s Day.

June 19th, Trevor Lynch and Luke Shannon had an Eagle Ceremony, a ceremony were you are given the rank of Eagle after fulfilling all the requirements for Eagle Scout. These two scouts have put in so much hard work over the past years to get to this point and we should all appreciate the hard and awesome work they did! The ceremony was held at Andrew Jackson State Park, located past the Van Wyck Elementary School. Thank you to everyone that went as it truly shows support to these amazing Eagle Scouts. Once again, congratulations to Luke and Trevor for achieving the rank of Eagle!

June 5th, our troop cleaned 521 highway again to show our support and service to the community. If those who don’t know what Roadside Clean-Up is, it is when our troop goes to clean up the road. Our portion is from the Faith Presbyterian Church (its after the Harris Teeter) to Walnut Creek. For those who attended you earn 4 service hours, which are need for all ranks above Scout. Thank you everyone who went as it was a massive success!

May 15, 5 scouts went to the graveyard across Belair United Methodist Church to place flags on the graves of our fallen veterans. Please as you are reading this, take a moment of silence for the veterans and others around the world and remember them on Memorial Day.

Last Weekend (5/22/21-5/23/21), two scouts, Jackson Hillard and Ivan Mercado, completed the S.E.A.L.S. training course. For those who don’t know what S.E.A.L.S. is, it stands for Scouts Excited About Leadership Skills, which teaches scouts basic leadership skills as well as how to lead a group, and to effectively communicate with others. As part of this course, scouts must create a contract that will improve their troop. As a reward for completing their contract, scouts permanently get to wear a strip on their uniform that says S.E.A.L.S. Again, congratulations to Jackson and Ivan for passing the S.E.A.L.S. course.

Last weekend (5/22/21), Drew Reinert made a deck in the back of the scout hut with a some of the leaders and scouts. The deck is a huge upgrade from what was originally there, a small staircase. Congratulations to Drew on his amazing project!

May 13th, former Scoutmaster Joe LaFollette and current cubmaster Jeff Phillips were both awarded scoutmaster and cubmaster of the year for the Palmetto Council’s York District. This was awarded at the monthly leaders’ meeting. Huge congratulations to Joe LaFollette and Jeff Phillips on their great accomplishment! We are all very proud of you!

Spring Camporee for those who don’t know, is a spring camp created by our council, and he play fun games as well as take merit badge classes. During the weekend the boys cooked in patrols and everyone in the patrol got to cook or clean, this is also to teach the new scouts skills, as this is their first campout after Crossover. There was many games like a tripod lashing race and a fire building race. There was also an OA Ceremony, which is where scouts who are First Class or higher, can get voted by their troop if they want to be in OA or Order of the Arrow. Our troop didn’t participate in the ceremony however, we will be doing it at Summer Camp. Sunday we had a Church Service (*Note: Boy Scouts is not a specific religion, it is all religions and none at the same time), and the campout was very fun experience!

Last weekend, we cooked 130 pork butts over the course of 14 hours. We prepared the butts with some pork butt rub, and then putt them in the cookers. Every scout participated in one shift overnight that lasted 1 hour and 30 minutes. The shift is to shovel coals into the cookers so the cookers are fueled while there cooking. We sold the pork butts from 9 to 12 and all 130 pork butts were sold (there very delicious).

We assembled 12 picnic tables on Saturday March 13 with Joseph’s amazing leadership and instruction! Thank you to everyone that helped out in the project!