Court of Honor

I've got a lot of thoughts about last night's court of honor and I'm not sure quite which ones to share or how to share them.

On the one hand, I'd like to focus on the positives:

Four out of six Venturers in uniform, only one of which was a Boy Scout uniform. The other three had the recommended green Venturing uniform. They sure looked sharp.

I was able to award a Venturing Bronze award to one young man. This is only the second bronze award earned in our crew. Ever (as far as I can tell). I think I've got some others who want to work on them, but need a little more motivation. The boy who earned his is now thinking seriously about trying for Silver. How cool would that be?

I think I got some interest from at least one boy in trying out the Varsity program. This boy was a real leader in the Boy Scouts (deacons) and was awarded his Life rank last night. He just turned 14 so will be joining the Varsity Scouts. He was the one I thought might take the bait. What was the bait? A promise of a hand made hiking staff (with some simple carvings and orange paracord handgrip involving two three-strand Turk's heads and French whipping) for the first boy to earn the Denali award. This boy came up to me after the meeting and asked me "so, what's the Denali award?" I directed him to his Varsity coach.

Three of my Venturers surprised me with a recognition of their own. These three had been on staff for our local Boy Scout camp (one being the staff Senior Patrol Leader) teaching merit badges to younger boys. One of the badges they were teaching was woodwork. During the process, they built a stool and carved the Venturing logo in the top. Last night they gave me the stool. I was blown away.

Then there are the negatives.

But I decided I'm not going to focus on those. I actually had it all written out and then deleted it. I decided I'd rather just look at the positive. Isn't that part of being Cheerful? Anyway, I'm going to stick to the good stuff--for this post anyway. Only let me comment that it's interesting that all of my positives had to do with the boys while all of the negatives had to do with adults. Hmm.