A Busy Week for Scout Fingers

What a gorgeous week of scouting activity!  Tuesday’s fingerprinting merit badge facilitated by Mr. Conrad was well attended and full of interesting ancillary trivia (did you know that an airline’s black box flight recorder is actually bright orange?  I sure didn’t!).  Everyone went home happy, albeit with black fingers.  For those of you still having to complete some of the paperwork in order to be awarded the merit badge, get ‘er done and turned in to Mr. Conrad.  Thursday night we attended an open house at Cocopah middle school letting 6th graders know about our troop.  Friday night we had a fine crew of fish eater / workers at our next-to-last Fish Fry service project with one more opportunity remaining on the docket for this coming Friday before Holy Week.  And then, in the highlight of the week, a large contingent of T648’s finest turned out in the perfect weather for an Eagle Project developed by the eldest of the younger Conrad men.  In an ambitious project benefiting Blessed Sacrament, we braved cholla, prickly pear and what seemed like thousands of other types of painful Sonoran plant life in collecting truckloads of trimmings while cleaning up an overgrown nature walk area in the north area of the property.  In parallel, another crew laid cement footings for the dozen or so stations of the cross, and a third crew repaired and painted the large stations themselves.  While the thorns were a bit rough on scout and scouter fingers, a fine project was delivered for our charter organization.  Just in time for Easter week, a lovely and solemn way to enhance worship and individual preparation for Good Friday and Easter Sunday is available for parishioners.  Congratulations to our latest Eagle candidate, and nicely done T648!

This coming week will continue to provide many scouting opportunities

  • Monday at 7PM (SWC board room) is the adult leader meeting
  • Tuesday at 6PM, Mr. Parizek begins the Eagle required Family Life merit badge for first class and older scouts
  • Tuesday at 7PM is the troop meeting. Remember to bring summer camp payment #3 of $100 and be planning to have a current health form completed for camp (in June this year)
  • Thursday we have two Eagle candidates going for their boards – good luck men!
  • Friday is the final fish fry – we’ll need one more crew of 10 scouts

Other items of note.  You should already be selling our May 3rd pancake breakfast tickets to everyone you know, and even more people that you don’t (who doesn’t love pancakes??).  The patrols will be deciding this week what their auction basket themes will be, so be planning to obtain appropriate items for the silent auction.  The next two outings are outstanding areas of Arizona this time of year – Tonto Creek will be a base camp, and Fossil Springs is one of our favorite backpacks.  If you are interested in joining the scouting fraternity of the Order of the Arrow, troop elections will be coming later in April.

There’s a lot going on!  Keep up your participation in meetings and events, as your patrol also benefits from all you do in earning points during this year’s Honor Patrol competition.  While the award for the Honor Patrol hasn’t completely been finalized by the PLC, the latest discussions were that the winning patrol might be awarded a fall trip to Magic Mountain.

See you at the troop meeting!

Mr. Cole