Trail Talk – 11/17/25

Hello and welcome to a new week! Can you believe how fast November is going? Can you believe that next week is Thanksgiving week?!! That’s crazy! Just in case anyone is wondering, we DO have scouts next week. We totally understand if you are gone for the Thanksgiving holiday, but we will still hold a meeting!

I want to thank all of you that came out on Saturday to help with Yuna Sullin’s Eagle Project! It sounds, from what Yuna told me, that all went well and the project got done in a good amount of time! I got to see some pictures from the project, and everyone looked to be working very hard! I am glad that all of you came out to help Yuna, not only to complete her project, but also to build some brand-new benches for the outdoor area at the church! That is awesome!

IMPORTANT NOTES AND ANNOUNCEMENTS FOR THIS WEEK:

PACK 235 CROSSOVER – TONIGHT! Monday, November 17th at 6:30 pm at Pathfinder Church. We have a couple of scouts who have crossed over into our troop from Pack 235 recently. They will do their official Arrow of Light ceremony and crossover into Troop 244 at their Pack Meeting TONIGHT Nov. 17th. We NEED scouts from our troop there to welcome them to our troop! The more the merrier! Let’s really show Pack 235 how we welcome scouts to our troop and let’s make these new scouts feel how welcome they are. We want them to know what troop does more! If you can attend and help with the crossover on Nov. 17th, it would be much appreciated!

TWELVE BASKETS FOOD DRIVE – Starting THIS Tuesday November 18th. It is that time of year again, Thanksgiving is almost here and that means there are those people out there that need our help. We will once again be collecting non-perishable food items to donate to Twelve Baskets Food Pantry to be distributed to those that might be a little less fortunate than us this holiday season. We put out the shopping cart and made collection available last Tuesday but as a troop we will officially start collecting food items THIS TUESDAY! We will continue to collect food items until our Holiday Party on December 16th. That gives us 5 Tuesday meetings to bring in Food Items. The shopping cart is going to be just to the left of the main doors as you come in at the end of the counter in the lounge. There is a sign hanging from it that indicates it is for the food drive. Put your donations in the cart! Often, this time of year, stores have sales of canned goods, and you can go to the store and buy items for real cheap. Please consider purchasing goods and bringing them in so that we can turn around and donate them to Twelve Baskets!

December Movie Event – December 14th at 2:00 p.m. at M89 Cinema in Plainwell! Cost is $10 per person and includes ticket, small pop and small popcorn. We will be seeing Zootopia 2 by popular vote.  You can sign up on Tuesday night, pay the fee, order your drink and turn in the permission slip! The permission slip is also attached to this email. We will also be asking for drink orders ahead of time so that the theater can have that already! They have Pepsi Products.

Registration – DUE TUESDAY DECEMBER 9TH!! I sent out an email about registration yesterday. Please remember to ignore that text or email you may receive about registration and to pay the registration fee DIRECTLY TO THE TROOP. The cost for reregistration is $210 per scout and $100 per adult leader. DO NOT REREGISTER ONLINE OR THROUGH THE COUNCIL OR NATIONAL. To streamline registration and make the least confusing as possible for you and for us, it is better if you pay the registration fee directly to the troop and then let us pay the national and council fees for you. You can pay the registration fee directly to Sherry or online at Zeffy(see below)

Please keep in mind that for scouts or adults to attend activities that must be registered paying members of Scouting America. We are not allowed to have scouts attend activities if they are not a registered paying member of the organization.One of the points of the Scout Law is to be “COURTEOUS” and I ask that everyone be courteous by paying this in a timely manner!

Troop 244 Payment Portal – Zeffy. To make paying for campouts, registration, and other events a little easier, Troop 244 utilizes an online payment site. You can even purchase Troop 244 swag on the site and the pick it up at a troop meeting. Right now, you can make payments for the November campout, Swampbase, Philmont deposit and your scout registration on our site.

Pack 287 Crossover – Monday, December 15th at 7:00 p.m. at Amberly Elementary. Just like we have scouts that are crossing over from Pack 235 next Monday night, we have at least 1 scout and possibly more that will be crossing over from Pack 287! We need to have our scouts on hand to welcome these new scouts to Troop 244. We are looking for scouts to attend the Pack 287 Crossover on Monday, December 15th at 7:00 p.m. We have at least 1 girl(Frederick Thurn’s sister) and possibly more will be joining Troop 244. Let’s make them feel welcome. If you are able, please plan to attend this Pack crossover and welcome these new scouts to the best troop around!

SwampBase Participants – SwampBase participants! You know who you are! Please continue to make monthly payments for your SwampBase Trek. $160/ month with the balance due by February 15th.  Questions about SwampBase, please see Mike King.

Philmont 2027 – I sent out an email last week with a ton of information about the Philmont 2027 trek. Please reference that email if you have any questions about payments or preparation. If you can’t find that email or need it again, please let me know! I still have 3 spots open right now. You can secure those spots by paying $150 deposit.

Pictured Rocks Backpacking Trip – I sent an informative email out about the Pictured Rocks trip last week. Please refer to that email. If you need me to send it again, please let me know. The BIG THING right now is that we need a commitment from everyone. We are asking that you sign up WITH SHERRY and pay a very small deposit fee of $25. I need to know how many people are going when I can finally go to make reservations in January. I completely recognize that everything is very tentative right now and so we are going to try to be as flexible as we can be. If for some reason something changes, we can move paid fee to your scout account. PLEASE SIGN UP IF YOU ARE INTERESTED IN THIS TRIP STARTING THIS TUESDAY! PAY A $25 DEPOSIT FEE. Permission slips and all else will come once I have concrete reservations.

Scoutmaster Minute – This last weekend, I had the opportunity to go to Chicago and visit with some friends from college. We all went to the University of Michigan vs. Northwestern football game at Wrigley Field on Saturday. It was a blast! Michigan did not play well at all, I will be the first to admit that, but we did pull off the W in the closing seconds. I had a chance to hang out with my old college roommates both on Friday night and on Saturday. However, to get to Chicago from Grand Rapids and home again, takes a lot of driving. On Friday night, because I left around rush hour, it took me nearly 4 hours to get there. On Sunday morning, it wasn’t so bad and only took 3 hours. When you are in the car THAT MUCH you get to doing a lot of thinking. There were A LOT of things I thought about but there were 2 that I wanted to share with you that I think would be good life lessons for scouts.

The first thing I want to share with you is how much I hate driving in big cities. There is a reason I could never live in a Chicago or New York or whatever. I cannot stand driving in big cities. 20 minutes to go 3 miles…are you kidding me? The traffic creates a huge amount of anxiety and fear in me. It really does. In fact, I have never visited these very good friends at their house in Chicago because of it. This time around, however, I told myself that I needed to face that anxiety. These friends are friends who have been by my side since college. These friendships have survived the test of time, and I OWED it to them to visit them. I said to myself “thousands of people drive this everyday so you can too, Brian”. With that in mind, I took off and as long as I was careful, took my time and paid attention to where I was going, I was fine(although I did make one wrong turn and had to do a big turnaround to get back on track). I made it there fine and I made it home fine. I think the lesson here is that we all have some kind of anxiety and fear that we need to overcome, and it isn’t easy, but we also have priorities that are important in life. We can’t let our fears and anxieties keep us from fulfilling those priorities.

The second thing I wanted to share with you is the importance of both doing something for yourself on occasion and stepping away from responsibility once in a while. As I already mentioned I was very hesitant to go to Chicago this weekend because of the drive but at the same time, I thought “this could be fun” and I could get away from home for a bit. I could do something that doesn’t involve me having any responsibility for a change. I think, too often, we feel guilty if we do something like that. If we reach out and try to do something instead of doing “what we should be doing”. On the other hand, I think it is important that we do those things. We need to “let go” once in awhile and just enjoy ourselves. In lives full of responsibility, it is nice once in awhile to be able to do something where you don’t have to worry about someone or something else. I still “had” things I needed to get done this weekend, but I did those on Sunday when I got home. They didn’t take long, and my weekend was still fulfilling. Did I “shirk” my responsibilities? No, not in any way. Did I make sure that things that needed to be done were taken care of? Absolutely. At the same time, I allowed myself to “rest” and to have a weekend where I could set things aside (INCLUDING MY COMPUTER AND PHONE) and just enjoy myself. I think we all need this some of the time and I challenge you to try it once in a while!

“What Troop Does More!!” – 244!!!