Sometimes you might wonder why you keep spending so much time volunteering for scouting. Once in awhile, you get a great big knock upside your head that reminds you why. This past weekend was a big 'THUMP!' for me.

The Penguin patrol planned a good agenda, actually right down to the 5 minute level, which of course is impossible to follow, but a good schedule to shoot for. With a thorough agenda, whenever a scout asked me 'What are we doing next?', I would just say, 'Ask Sam'. Sam is the patrol leader of the Penguins. This was his first experience with leading the troop.

On this campout, the Senior Patrol Leader did not attend, nor did the Asst. SPL. When that happens, the SPL must pick a scout to take over his duties. For this campout, he chose a scout that had just earned Star rank and has been an Instructor for the past 5 months. This was his first time leading the whole troop.

With a substitute SPL and a scout-in-charge, there was some confusion about who was really in charge - I learned a lot this weekend and have a lot of notes for the next troop leadership training! The substitute SPL (my younger son) did his very best and performed well, but his patrolmates tended to not give him the respect due the position. We had some time for his patrol to talk and I'm confident we'll work past any issues just fine.

Other than the leadership confusion, the weekend was a blast. We caught lots of fish - northern pike, sunfish, bullheads, and bass. A few scouts caught and cooked (and even ate) the fish required for the Fishing merit badge. We got a start on the Flyfishing merit badge and a couple scouts nearly completed Canoeing.

It was great having my son the Life Scout back from camp. He led the troop in a couple new songs at the campfire and taught them some new camp skills. This was really good for the first year scouts to see a much older scout enjoying scouting and giving it his best and having fun doing it.

If I start to wonder if it's worth the time and effort, I just start looking back through the troop photo gallery and see how the scouts have grown. That's enough to snap me out of it and look forward to the next troop meeting or campout where I have high hopes for another big 'THUMP!'

Scout On


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