Trail Talk – 11/18/24

Good Afternoon Troop 244 Scouts, Scouters and Parents!

Happy Monday! This is a bit of a LONG trail talk so make sure you read all the way through to the end. I hope you all had a great weekend this last weekend. I can happily say that our campout this last weekend went very well! Our scouts intermingled and did some activities with the scouts from Troop 287. We explored a new scout camp, that I personally, had never been to before, we ate some good food, had some good fellowship and it didn’t rain! We look forward to our next campout which will be January 17 – 19th at Pioneer Scout Reservation! We will once again have cabins available. Onto some important pieces of information for the troop for this week:

CITIZENSHIP IN NATION MERIT BADGE CLASS, CITY HALL MEETING, HANK POPPEN TRIBUTE All Scouts taking Citizenship in the Nation merit badge are requested to attend the Portage City Council meeting at Portage City Hall at 5:50 PM on Tuesday November 19th if you are available.  The meeting starts at 6:00 PM and will include a tribute to Hank.  Please dress in full Class A including Neckerchief.  If you have any questions, please contact Terry Clare at (269) 720-4692 or tclare.the.man@gmail.com

NO SCOUT MEETING NEXT TUESDAY, 11/26 – you may have noticed that my dad’s visitation is next Tuesday, November 26th from 5 – 8. This was done intentionally. My sisters and I decided to have his visitation on a scout night so that the entire troop could attend. Because of this there is NO MEETING next Tuesday. Please come and pay your respects to your Scoutmaster Hank Poppen instead. We will resume meetings again on Tuesday, December 3rd.

EAGLE COURT OF HONOR (Sunday, December 1st) – We are planning to honor 5 of our young men who became Eagle Scouts in the last several months on Sunday December 1st at 2:00 p.m. at Pathfinder Church. These young men have worked very hard to reach the rank of Eagle and it is only appropriate that their fellow scouts and scouters be there to help honor and recognize them. We are asking that all scouts attend this Eagle Court of Honor.  We like to have scouts play different roles in the Eagle Court of Honors and we need help with setup so please have your scout to Pathfinder Church by 12:30 p.m. to help setup and to be assigned a part to play. All others can arrive shortly before 2:00. We will be recognizing Roan Borton, Caden Dodde, Charlie Fox, Jack Kingston and Alexander Haas for the rank of Eagle Scout.

Registration – It is time to “reup” in scouting for another year! If you want your scout to remain an active scout, be able to attend meetings, outings and earn rank advancements then you must reregister your scout for another year. The Council started a new process this year of wanting each individual scout/parent to reregister their scout so you may have received an email about this! IGNORE THAT EMAIL! The troop decided, and it is possible, to go about our registration process like normal. Please pay your registration fee to Sherry at the troop meetings and the TROOP WILL REREGISTER YOUR SCOUT! The fee for registration is $200 for scouts and $100 for adult members. You can also pay your registration online at  https://bit.ly/pay244  I cannot stress this enough: THIS HAS TO BE DONE AS SOON AS POSSIBLE. It cannot be put off. If you don’t pay your registration, the scout becomes unregistered and you have to go through all of the paperwork again. Please pay the registration now.

HOLIDAY FOOD DRIVE – every Holiday season for years now Troop 244 has done a food drive to gather food for those in need. We gather the food together at the church throughout the month of December and then we bring all of that to Twelve Baskets. Twelve Baskets right now is supporting 400 families. We will begin collecting food this season TOMORROW NIGHT AT THE TROOP MEETING and we will continue collecting food until our Troop Holiday party at the meeting on Tuesday, December 17th.

Events coming up through the rest of the year:

November 19 – December17: Holiday Food Drive

November 26 – No meeting, Hank’s visitation 5 – 8 p.m.

November 27 – Hank’s funeral at 10 am and Burial Service at 12:00 p.m.

December 17 – Troop Activity – Holiday party, end of our food drive

December 24 – No meeting, Holiday Break

December 31 – No meeting, Holiday Break