Trail Talk – 9/15/25

Good afternoon Troop 244!!!

Happy Monday! Phew! That weekend went by quickly! Here we are back at another week! One important note for scouts this week; Sherry will not be at Tuesday night’s meeting. Taking her place will be Mrs. Baldwin. So, please make any signups or payments, see Mrs. Baldwin in the scout office! Sherry will be back the following week. I will not be at Tuesday night’s meeting due to a work commitment this week either. Please see Christy if you have any questions!

IMPORTANT NOTES AND ANNOUNCEMENTS FOR THIS WEEK:

SEPTEMBER CAMPOUT – Yankee Springs September 19 – 21st. That is next weekend! Holy cow! That is coming up fast! We will be camping at the Deep Lake Group Sites. The cost for this campout is $40 per scout and $20 per adult leader. The permission form for this campout is attached. We have about 13 – 17 scouts signed up and about 3 – 5 adults signed up right now. You can still sign up on Tuesday night but that will be the last chance. We have to figure out transportation and food after that. If you plan to actually fish, and are 17 or older, you need to have a valid Michigan fishing license! If you plan to go out in the canoes that we are getting, you must be a swimmer or if you are not a swimmer, you need to be in a canoe with a swimmer!  We will NOT be swimming in the lake. That is off limits! Just using the canoes to canoe or fish!

SCOUT RECRUITING IN PORTAGE – Another chance to get youth into scouting! We have been asked to help with the pack join scout night/open houses along with Troop 287. We will be meeting September 22nd at 6:30 PM to make sure that we are effectively promoting the events.  Here is the list of locations we have committed to helping at:

• Amberly Elementary Cafeteria (6637 Amberly St, Portage, MI 49024)
• Lake Center Elementary Cafeteria (10011 Portage Rd, Portage, MI 49002)
• Moorsbridge Elementary Cafeteria (7361 Moorsbridge Rd, Portage, MI 49024)
• 12th Street Elementary Cafeteria (6501 S 12th Street, Portage, MI 49024)
• Central Middle School Commons (Just inside of Door 13, 8305 S Westnedge Ave, Portage, MI 49002)

We will need 1-2 scouts per location to help entertain the prospective scouts and cub scouts while their parents sign up their kiddo. Bring something fun to share, along with you such as stories about your time as a cub scout, favorite merit badge, favorite camp out, scout skills!

Please email Christy, send her a text, or sign up through the link HERE. This will count as service hours for your scout! So far, we do have enough scouts for 2 or 3 of the schools, but we need some more scouts to cover the rest of the schools!

Helping bring kids into scouting is good for all of us and will help keep a strong program locally

New Things to Take Note of for this New Year:

There are 2 items that you should take note of that are a little different for this scout year:

1. Permission Slips –Permission slips are now 2 pages. The first page is the regular permission form that must be turned in to Sherry. The second page is the medication page. The top portion of the second page can be torn off and kept by PARENTS so that Parents know the time and location of departure and return. The bottom half of the second page is to be filled out and placed in a Ziploc bag with your child’s medication that is sent along on the activity.
2. Medical Forms – medical forms are now required for ALL outings for BOTH Adults and Scouts. Medical Forms are good for 1 year. For activities under 72 hours, we need Parts A, B1 and B2 on file. For activities over 72 hours, we also need Part C filled out by a doctor. This is Scouting America policy.

ADOPT-A-HIGHWAY –   September 27 at 9:00 a.m. at the Speedway Gas Station in Schoolcraft. Please bring gloves and wear long pants. We have adopted this section of 131 now for 30 years and we clean it up every September and April. These are SERVICE hours! We need as many people as possible to help! The more we have, the quicker it gets done. It usually takes about 3 hours. We need adults who can drive alongside the highway to supervise and keep scouts safe. Sean Harrigan will be leading up this event.

SwampBase Participants – Please be making your payments for SwampBase now. For the month of August, you should have paid a minimum of $125. We need another payment of $125 due by September 15th. Starting in October, payments will be made in increments of $160 per month through February.

October Campout – October 17 – 19th and we will be camping at Fort Custer Recreation Area in one of their group sites. After having a discussion and a vote with YOU SCOUTS last week, we found out that the alternative to camp at Fort Custer and then to go to a Fall Orchard of some sort was the option that seemed to excite the great majority of YOU! So, with that in mind, we will be looking to go someplace like Gull Meadow Farms during the day on the Saturday! We are currently looking into various options for that Saturday and will make decisions soon. I will have a signup and permission slip for this campout AFTER the September campout!

SERVICE OPPORTUNITY! At Pathfinder Church! In October we will be filling Blessing Bags for Midwest Mission. The bags have rice, soy, dehydrated vegetables and a vitamin packet. One bag will feed hungry people and they are sent all over the world. We will be setting up assembly lines with 10 people per line to fill the bags, weigh them and seal.  We will be running 4 lines for probably 3 hours. We wondered if perhaps the Scouts might be interested in helping to set up, tear down or fill the bags. Set up will be on Friday, October 24 around 6:15.  Saturday, October 25 will be filling the bags, sometime during the day. No set times currently. Probably that afternoon we will be tearing down. 

Philmont 2027 – Are you interested in the trip of a lifetime? Are you interested in challenging yourself alongside your fellow scouts? Are you interested in doing things you might not be able to do elsewhere? Are you interested in seeing some of the most beautiful country that is on planet Earth? If you are then, please sign up for Philmont 2027 on the signup sheet with Sherry and pay the $150 deposit as soon as possible. I need to know definitive numbers by September 23. If paying the deposit right now is something you are having a hard time with, please come and talk to Sherry or myself. We will keep it confidential, and we will work with you on that payment. We want to make sure every scout has the chance to go to Philmont!

Fall Court of Honor – September 30th at 6:30 p.m. We are planning to have our annual Fall Court of Honor on Tuesday, September 30th. This court of honor is always a big one because of all that has been accomplished over the summer months. There will be announcements and awards galore! This includes merit badges, rank advancements and more! In addition, we have a special ceremony for one of our adult leaders that will be a part of this court of honor! You don’t want to miss out! Make sure that you attend with your scouts! Tuesday, Sept. 23 will be the last day for any merit badges or rank advancements to be completed if you want them to be awarded at this court of honor. This is only a few weeks away, so if you want an award earned by the court of honor, you had better start finishing it up now!

Tuesday, November 4 – no troop meeting due to election day at church. All church activities are cancelled, and the building is closed except for the election.

Scoutmaster Minute – You know, I was struggling a bit this weekend. I don’t mind being honest about that. I was struggling, mostly mentally, but a little physically too. I had put a lot of “to-dos” on my plate for the weekend, and I let myself get overwhelmed. I was also struggling because, quite frankly, I was worried about Troop 244. Like my dad and like many of our adult leaders, I want the very best for our scouts. I truly do. I find myself second guessing myself quite frequently when we plan an activity and then not very many people sign up for the activity or people wait until the last minute. Two examples of late include the upcoming September campout and Philmont. I was really struggling mentally with the idea that we had a smaller group sign up for the campout as of right now. Even more of a struggle was the fact that we have a somewhat small group signed up for Philmont right now and reservations must be made in two weeks. For me, it is difficult to comprehend why people are not signing up for things. I worry that things aren’t interesting or aren’t going well. People aren’t interested in what we are doing or going to do as a troop. It is at these times that I wish my dad was still around so I could talk to him. He would always have the answer. He really would. It was always my dad that I went to. However, I can only speak to him in spirit right now. So, I did some more thinking, and I got stuck on a phrase that is a part of the Scout Oath. The very beginning of the Scout Oath says, “On my honor, I will l do my best…”. It was that right there…”to do my best”. I remember the cub scout motto at one point in time being “To do your best”. I started thinking about this and I realized that these worries are 1. A part of my anxiety and 2. Situations that I just can’t control. The troop and I can make the offers and the opportunities available, but scouts/parents have to be the ones to take advantage of those opportunities. I also have to recognize that our scouts are BUSY!! There are so many things that kids are involved in these days, including my own daughters, that they have to make choices. That is out of my control. Could I do better? Sure?! We can all do better. I just have to keep in mind that all I can do is “my very best”.

Do you ever find yourself in a similar situation? Maybe you are second guessing yourself on a homework assignment? Maybe you are wondering if your friends aren’t responding to you because you did something wrong(when that might not be the case at all)? Do you ever think that you’re not going to get an A on that test because you don’t feel like you studied enough or don’t understand the material? I challenge you to ask yourself this question when you get these doubts: “Did you do your best?”. Did you check the answers on that homework assignment? Did you reach out to your friends to find out what is going on? Did you seek out help if there is something you don’t understand for a test? Did you actually and truly do your best? If you can say “yes, I did my best”, then you shouldn’t have to worry too much. Continue to do just that, do your best!

“What Troop Does More!!” – 244