Trail Talk – 3/17/25

Here are our Troop announcements for the week:

OA UNIT ELECTIONS – Unit Elections for Order of the Arrow THIS Tuesday, March 18th!  You must be 1st Class and have 15 camping nights(including 1 long term camp like Summer Camp) in the last two years to be eligible. I already know if you are eligible or not and will have that list of names available for the OA representatives who come to have the election. They will take place at the beginning of the meeting right after opening and should only take about 15 minutes. I am urging everyone to be present. For an OA election to take place, at least 50% of each troop needs to be present. This means having at least 21 of the boys in the boy troop present and 12 of the girls in the girl troop present. If you don’t show up, we can’t have the election and that means that those that are eligible lose out on getting  a chance to be elected this year!! We won’t have elections again until next March! IF YOU ARE ALREADY A MEMBER OF THE ORDER OF THE ARROW, WEAR YOUR SASH THIS TUESDAY!

March GERALD R. FORD Museum Trip –March 22nd 8:30 am – 3:00 pm. This should be an awesome small trip for the troops to take. This Tuesday is the last day to sign up, turn in the permission slip and pay for this wonderful excursion! How cool is it to go to a museum dedicated to the only Eagle Scout President in United States History! Meet at the church to leave at 8:30 am. SCOUTS AND LEADERS MUST WEAR THEIR CLASS A UNIFORM! Without the Class A Uniform, you will have to end up paying the regular admission fee upon arrival at the museum.  Lunch Provided. Permission slip is attached. The cost is $10, please sign up, pay and turn in permission slip to Sherry. If you have questions, please see Christy Szekely. I hope to see you all at the museum on Saturday morning! Let me say it again: ALL SCOUTS AND LEADERS MUST WEAR THEIR CLASS A UNIFORM otherwise you will have to pay the admission fee when we arrive!

 JERKY! – Our annual Jerky sale began on January 28th. Each stick sells for $1.00 and for each one sold, the scout earns 24 cents into their individual scout account. You can make payments for jerky at any time here – https://bit.ly/244Jerky

GIRL TROOP LOCK-IN – May 2nd, 2025, at Pathfinder Church. This event is for the girl troop only! Sorry boys! We will be having a lock-in at Pathfinder Church starting at 6:00 p.m. on Friday May 2nd and ending at about 10:00 a.m. on Saturday May 3rd. We will have the use of the Fellowship Hall, the gym, the community room and the firepit out back! Scouts in the Girl Troop, let’s get together and have a good time! We will get pizza, and we will ask you all to bring snacks and drinks! I will get a sign up for this out and a cost to you once I confer with that darn SPL! Please put this on your calendar girl troop! It should be fun!

SUMMER CAMP 2025 –Pioneer Scout Reservation the week of June 15 – 21st! The cost for Summer Camp this year is $430 per scout and $215 per adult. That cost goes up by $21 per scout and adult leader if we don’t get the fees paid by the end of April. I was pleased to see many more people sign up last Tuesday, but we aren’t where we need to be yet! I am looking for more signups! I hope you realize that we have deadlines that we have to meet and so waiting to sign up for Summer Camp is not a thing we can do. We need you to sign up NOW! Please go to Zeffy(click here) or see Sherry and sign your scout up now. Lord Baden-Powell, the founder of the Scouting movement, fully believed that “A week at camp is worth 6 months of theoretical teaching in a classroom”. I agree with him on that AND I am a teacher! Every scout NEEDS to go to camp! If there is an issue or something keeping you from signing up, please let me know and we will address it.

SUMMER CAMP MEETING – Tuesday, April 8th after we return from Spring Break. Our Troop meeting on April 8th will be solely dedicated to summer camp. We will all gather in the Fellowship Hall. You will get to hear about the activities at camp, the things YOU need to know to be prepared for camp and you will get to select YOUR MERIT BADGES! If you are still undecided about camp, this is the night to come to and sign up for camp!

CUB SCOUT INVOLVEMENT – We have some Cub Scouting things going on this month that we need to attend to. First, On March 20th, is the Crossover/Blue and Gold Banquet for Mason Clapp! This is at Centerpoint Church on 10th Street at 6:30 p.m. Second, Pack 235 is having their Pinewood Derby on Saturday, March 22nd. They need help to set up on Friday, March 21st starting at 5:30 p.m. at the church. They again need help in the morning on Saturday, March 22nd starting around 9:00 a.m. There are various jobs to be done! Here is the signup link to sign up to help at their Pinewood Derby: https://www.signupgenius.com/go/8050C4AAAAB2DA7FB6-55740872-2025

Finally, on Tuesday, March 25th we have a scout from Pack 251 in Vicksburg crossing into our troop. His name is Thomas Hawkins, and he is the son of a Troop 244 Eagle Scout and a dear friend of mine. His crossover will be at Vicksburg Bible Church at 6:30 p.m. It is a Tuesday night so you would have to miss our troop meeting to attend. I will be attending this one. You can sign up to attend one of these Crossover events here: https://www.signupgenius.com/go/30E044AADAC2CAAFE3-54790393-2025#/

Pack 235 is still looking for Den Chiefs for their various Dens! If you could help be a Den Chief for one of their dens for the remainder of the school/scout year, that would be great. They meet at the church on Monday night at 6:30 p.m. Recently we did have another one of our scouts signed up to be a Den Chief! Thank you, Colton Chambers, for being willing to serve!

ADOPT-A-HIGHWAY – April 12th at the car wash next to the Speedway gas station on the south side of Schoolcraft at 9:00 a.m. Jim Gluys will be leading this one last time for Troop 244 and then Sean Harrigan will be taking over when we do this again in the fall. To get this done quickly and efficiently though, we need scouts to show up. This typically only takes about 3 hours if we have enough scouts. This counts as service hours towards your rank advancements! Please wear long pants and a long-sleeved shirt. Boots and hats. Bring gloves and a water bottle. We need everyone to attend. We DO need ADULT help to drive and escort the scouts for safety reasons.

BOUNDARY WATERS –July 11 – 20th. The cost is $900 and we have been asking for you to pay $200/month since January. Please be keeping up with those payments! We will be having an informational meeting during the regular troop meeting on April 15th at 7:00 p.m. Location at the church is still TBD. We will do a training/shakedown for those going on this trip on the Saturday of the April Campout. April Campout is April 25 – 27th. Come on the campout or come out for the day on Saturday!

Mini-High Adventure –The trip will take us to the historic battlefield of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. This trip is taking place August 2 – 6th. A day of travel, 3 days in Gettysburg and a day of travel home! The mini-high adventure sounds like it is going to be loaded with fun and some awesome things to see. Sign up now! The final cost is to be determined but could be somewhere around $150. That is a STEAL for a trip like this. We are going to ask for a $50 deposit currently to secure your spot. Sign up for this and pay the deposit with Sherry in the office.

PHYSICAL FORMS! – Every Scout and Leader MUST have an up-to-date BSA PHYSICAL FORM with all parts of the form filled out, Part A, B1, B2 and C if you plan to go to Summer Camp, Boundary Waters or the Mini-High Adventure. You must get a new one for this year. No Form, No Trip. WE NEED ALL PHYSICAL FORMS TURNED IN BY MAY 1ST.

HIGH ADVENTURE 2026 SWAMPBASE! – July 9 – 18, 2026. I have reserved our Troop 1 crew at SwampBase for the Summer of 2026. Our start date at SwampBase will be July 10th. Most likely this means leaving on July 9th, staying somewhere overnight and then arriving by 2:00 p.m. on July 10th. We will stay at their base camp on July 10th and then head out into the backcountry. We will come out of the backcountry on July 16th, stay at their basecamp and then leave SwampBase on July 17th. Most likely this means getting home on July 18th. We have asked for a $50 deposit currently to hold your spot. Once I talk to SwampBase and have this reserved I will let you know more about dates, payments and such. IF WE CAN GET 5 MORE PEOPLE TO SIGN UP, THERE IS AN OPEN SLOT FOR A 2ND CREW THAT WE COULD TAKE ON JULY 10TH. However, that slot is open to any troop! If you are further interested in this adventure, please talk to me As soon as possible!

Scoutmaster Minute – KIND – At last we come to the last of the 12 Scout Laws. This is the one I saved for the end because in many ways, I think being kind encompasses many of the other scout laws. I decided to look up the word Kind on Google and here is what my dear friend AI, had to say, “kind means possessing a gentle, caring, and helpful nature, often characterized by empathy, compassion and a willingness to do good”. It seems to me that all those words help to describe what a kind person is and although the words might not be the same as the ones we say in the Scout Law, they are so, so, so very close. More so, when I look at that definition of kind, I look at the part that says, “a willingness to do good”. To me, being kind means acting in a certain way. It isn’t just a characteristic of who you are, but it is what you do that matters the most! How you treat other people defines whether you are a kind person. Think about your actions daily. Are you polite, selfless, tolerant, generous, grateful, humble? All these words help to describe what kind means. In particular I think of the word selfless. Do you always think about just yourself and how things affect you or do you think about others? Do you consider how you can help others in the circumstances that you find yourself in? I am not saying to not think about yourself, but do you let that rule you? Do you ever think about how your actions might affect someone else? Kind is such an important word but even more, it is an important action. It seems more and more these days that kind is lacking in our society. We don’t see people being kind to each other. Even just the other day in the grocery store, I was walking down and aisle and I very politely asked to get by, and the person just stared at me and didn’t even try to move. On the surface, kindness seems to be disappearing. But you and I both know that isn’t true! In our troop, we are surrounded by kindness all the time. As scouts we learn the Scout Law so that we can learn to be kind and show it in our actions. Your adult leaders show you kindness all the time, by just being there for you every Tuesday night or on campouts or summer camp or other trips. They want to show you what it means to be kind. Kindness is not lost in this world if we choose to be kind and that is what we must do every day of our lives! We, as scouts and leaders, must choose to pave the path for kindness in our world by LIVING the Scout Oath and Law. We don’t just repeat it on Tuesday nights but it becomes a part of who we are EACH AND EVERY day of the year!

 “What Troop Does More!!” – 244