The crazy days of summer are here and before you know it they will be gone. I have been gone for the past week as I was on Staff for a Boy Scouts Timberline Course. For those of you who are not familiar with Timberline, it is a leadership training camp where 13 - 15 year old Boy Scouts learn leadership skills for a week. The role of the adults is to help implement and oversee the program while the youth leaders teach skills to the participants. Its purpose is to teach young men communication and leadership skills that will enable them to return their respective troops and help the program run better.
We had 25 participants, 13 youth staff and 6 adult leaders. The camp was held by Brainhead at a formal scout camp called Thunder Ridge. Whe chose a lion theme, and tied in the Biblical story of Daniel and the Lion's den. We had and award called "Dare to be a Daniel" and it was awarded to scouts who were nominated by those at camp for acts of service. Once a scout earned the award, additional awards were beads which were then added to the original award. It was a lot of fun and the camp was a success.
In a larger sense I had to take a minute and think about what we are trying to accomplish. I hear so mauch about the bad things that happen in the world, and the problems without youth, and yet, the young men that participated were generally good young men who are trying to figure out who they are and how they can be better. They wanted to learn and grow. We had a flag ceremony each day and they got progressivley better through the week. We retired a flag during the week on the top of a knoll and spoke about our duty to God, Family and Country. After the ceremony was over they walk down an Honor trail where they were instructed on the points of the Scout Law. It was was a great night. If we all lived the scout law our country would not have anything to fear.
Let's all remember A Scout is:
Trustworthy
Loyal
Helpful
Friendly
Courteous
Kind
Obedient
Cheerful
Thrifty
Brave
Clean and Reverent
What a great set of values/virtues for all of us.
The summer will come and go as we each make a few memories. I hope to make an difference, in my away from the office time, by working side by side with my wife, Marta, and kids. Hopefully, the we can influence the scouts I work with, or whomever I come in contact.
Let's make the most of this summer and make a great memory.
Brad
Monday, June 16, 2008
Sunday, June 1, 2008
What do you do in the Summer Time?
Summer is here and there are lots of great things going on. Marta and I have 7 children and three of them are teenagers. School has been out for a week and already one has gone to EFY or "Especially for Youth" and two others have gone to mountain bike trail building school hosted by IMBA. As a family we went to Salt Lake this past weekend and helped work on a mountain bike trail up Killyon's Canyon. It was nice to work with a dozen or so other people on a trail that had been overused.
Marta and I enjoyed the time in the mountains and took the time to smell the crisp mountian air. We hiked up a mile or so and then went to work for a couple of hours. The area where the trail was diverted was all washed out and cupped. Overall there were about fourteen people clearing brush and smoothing the trail. Chandler (13) was not too impressed with the new trail as it was so smooth you could have ridden a road bike on it, and he want a little more adventure. We enjoyed the time together.
Tonight, Sunday, we had a planning meeting. We all had a lot to contribute to the week. Marta commented that rather than get an overview of the week, we had to plan each hour. Monday, there is basketball camp for the boys, not to mention the plumber and electrician coming over, Scouts on Tuesday, and meetings for the Timberline Camp next week, the two oldest have Youth Conference at the end of the week and Jed (17) has a basketball tournament in Payson, Utah simultaneously with Youth Confrence. As we wiped the sweat off of our forheads after wrinting all of that down, we looked at the next week. It looks pretty much the same. So the crazy not lazy days of summer begin to scream by.
Life is crazy and wonderful, and I am glad to share it with Marta. Marta is truly graceful. I have heard a lot of defintions of grace, but the one I like the best is simple and yet challenging. I define grace as the ability to undertake something, which is very difficult, and make it look simple. Marta does that every week. She accomplishes so much every week with such seeming fluidity that it is mind boggling.
I guess that really we all want to have our own bit of grace somewhere in our lives. We watch Olympians with awe as the they perform amazing feats of strength, agility, stamina, endurance and balance. Deep inside each one of us we watch with the hope that we will find our niche in life where we feel like we have given our Olympic performance. Most likely we have. Probably, our performance is not of physical grace but along the journey we have the opportunity to share our humanity. Along the way we have been there for someone, or are there day after day, making someone elses life little easier, and hopefully better. I am sure most of these act or deed are done when or where few can see or recognize the good deeds, yet they remain, testaments to the goodness and the humanity lies within each of us.
So what is the relationship between grace and the crazy schedules we hold? Well, it is simply this, we continue to drive ourselves, and often our families, in the hope that our children will have opportunies to realize their own greatness; we hope that by providing them with new wholesome situations, that they remain fully alive. As we watch our children grow, we also grow, inside, and our hearts stay young with them. Someday, when they are grown, we continue to live the principles we tried to instill in them, and when the end comes and we graduate from this life, we look back and know we did our best.
Marta and I enjoyed the time in the mountains and took the time to smell the crisp mountian air. We hiked up a mile or so and then went to work for a couple of hours. The area where the trail was diverted was all washed out and cupped. Overall there were about fourteen people clearing brush and smoothing the trail. Chandler (13) was not too impressed with the new trail as it was so smooth you could have ridden a road bike on it, and he want a little more adventure. We enjoyed the time together.
Tonight, Sunday, we had a planning meeting. We all had a lot to contribute to the week. Marta commented that rather than get an overview of the week, we had to plan each hour. Monday, there is basketball camp for the boys, not to mention the plumber and electrician coming over, Scouts on Tuesday, and meetings for the Timberline Camp next week, the two oldest have Youth Conference at the end of the week and Jed (17) has a basketball tournament in Payson, Utah simultaneously with Youth Confrence. As we wiped the sweat off of our forheads after wrinting all of that down, we looked at the next week. It looks pretty much the same. So the crazy not lazy days of summer begin to scream by.
Life is crazy and wonderful, and I am glad to share it with Marta. Marta is truly graceful. I have heard a lot of defintions of grace, but the one I like the best is simple and yet challenging. I define grace as the ability to undertake something, which is very difficult, and make it look simple. Marta does that every week. She accomplishes so much every week with such seeming fluidity that it is mind boggling.
I guess that really we all want to have our own bit of grace somewhere in our lives. We watch Olympians with awe as the they perform amazing feats of strength, agility, stamina, endurance and balance. Deep inside each one of us we watch with the hope that we will find our niche in life where we feel like we have given our Olympic performance. Most likely we have. Probably, our performance is not of physical grace but along the journey we have the opportunity to share our humanity. Along the way we have been there for someone, or are there day after day, making someone elses life little easier, and hopefully better. I am sure most of these act or deed are done when or where few can see or recognize the good deeds, yet they remain, testaments to the goodness and the humanity lies within each of us.
So what is the relationship between grace and the crazy schedules we hold? Well, it is simply this, we continue to drive ourselves, and often our families, in the hope that our children will have opportunies to realize their own greatness; we hope that by providing them with new wholesome situations, that they remain fully alive. As we watch our children grow, we also grow, inside, and our hearts stay young with them. Someday, when they are grown, we continue to live the principles we tried to instill in them, and when the end comes and we graduate from this life, we look back and know we did our best.
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