Dear Bobwhites,
Can you believe it? It's been just over a year since we started this amazing journey together and it just keeps getting better! Audrey and Scott have both completed their tickets with Kat, Joseph, and Dave soon to finish as well. I've heard back from you all and you are so close! Keep it up and let's finish strong. If there is anything anyone needs, be sure to reach out and offer help to one another to get over the hump!
Do you remember your first day on course and your apprehension about what to expect, the awkwardness you felt the first time you met one another and the nervousness to start something you weren't sure about? Then after the ice was broken and you settled in you started to have your eyes opened to the wonders of the Boy Scout program. Maybe not the program you grew up knowing or even the one you thought you knew before course started but a program seen in a new and brighter light that inspired you to use your newly found tools to make a difference.
You realized that the Vision and the Mission are the foundation for all that we do. You began to realize that every boy deserves a trained leader and you wanted to be that leader. You wanted to be the best you could be to offer the best you have in order to make lasting and meaningful changes in the lives of the boys you have a stewardship over. The marriage of your religion and the culture of the BSA began to take shape and really gel in your mind. And you began to realize that it is just like BP said, "There is no religious 'side' to the movement. Religion is the whole of it". This may have changed the way you viewed things in the past and how you would plan for the future.
You learned that in order for this program to work the boys need to be taught through the EDGE method and that a patrol needs to operate as autonomously as possible. This became your new goal, implementing the patrol method in all you do. This became your new vision. This became your new focus.
You learned that it takes all walks of life to make up our world and that every member of the team has something to contribute despite of the initial judgements you may have passed on people. You learned what it felt like to step back into the shoes of Cub, Boy Scout, Varsity, and Venture aged young man and what it feels to have conflict in a team. You learned that together everyone can win if they work together and the pure joy that comes from helping others. Through practical application you experienced turning from the "selfish to the selfless"... another goal that BP had for each boy in the program.
You learned that your duty to God came first above all else. Then duty to country and fellow man. You learned the joy of helping others first and thinking of others first. Then came the real stretching and application of what you learned by planning a ticket to how you could make a difference where you serve. I am so proud of all of you and can't express enough how grateful I am to have been able to meet you all and call you friends.
One of my favorite lines in the movie "October Sky" is when Homer gets in the elevator for the first time to go down into the dark and ominous mine he loathed so much. The mine represented for him everything bad in life and a prison to the freedom of exploration and expression he felt was inside him. But the circumstances of his life made him feel trapped. He felt doomed to a life cycle that nearly every man from his community was in. He did NOT want to do this but he felt he had no choice.
Just as they were about to descend into the pit an older co worker nudged Homer and said, "Turn on your light boy". Homer almost without a thought reached up and clicked his headlamp on. That for me was symbolic and the words meant so much more than just turning on a headlamp to see in the mine, and I believe the director intended it that way. For me this is what we do each and every day as we serve in the BSA. We help young men who feel trapped or unsure or insecure turn on their proverbial light to see their true potential.
May God bless us all in our quest to help the young men in our lives turn on their lights and find their eternal potential.
YIS -
Tom Brand
The Regal Eagle
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