What Your Outpost Did This Week.

We have been fundraising for Camporama. It will only cost our boys and leaders 75.00 to go. The 2 hour drive is a God send. Looking forward to the big event.

Last night we had 20 Rangers in running around making cowboy hats and boats out of cardboard. What a rucus. One new Commander bless his heart was over whelmed when we asked him and his boys to cut out 6 trash can sized hat brims out of cardboard. Those boys and those razor blades... some folks have no idea how to work with Boys. Show tell do. They got the tool craft merit. They can use a utility knife. We must make sure they do it safely.

Mark Jones

RRCmdrBennett wrote:Everyone receive their camporama packet?  Happens that the event is concurrent with our church camp so its a no go.

It's going to be expensive for us. close to $700-800 per boy, so closer to $1k Canadian. I don't know if it is going to happen for most of us, we are going to fund raise though.

Well, you know your church, but I would be afraid that $1,000.00 per boy may tend to sour the Pastor.

You can purchase a lot of uniforms, training material, & sponsor outings for that price.

We've been saving up for 2 years, currently have $2,300.00 in the Ranger Account, and I'm hearing rumblings that the Church Board is already licking their chops, looking at that money. (And I just saw last night that we'll need to purchase 2 new flags for the Church at $165.00 to $250.00 each, depending upon size.)

We cook Ribs and tri tips and pre sell them. Best fundraiser I have ever seen. We can raise about 8 bucks for each side of ribs we sell. Sometimes 200 slabs at a time.

Claymore wrote:Well, you know your church, but I would be afraid that $1,000.00 per boy may tend to sour the Pastor.

You can purchase a lot of uniforms, training material, & sponsor outings for that price.

We've been saving up for 2 years, currently have $2,300.00 in the Ranger Account, and I'm hearing rumblings that the Church Board is already licking their chops, looking at that money.  (And I just saw last night that we'll need to purchase 2 new flags for the Church at $165.00 to $250.00 each, depending upon size.)

Funny how church government and real government ain't much different Claymore. Both see $ other people paid into a fund all their lives and think they deserve it.

We finished up fencing this week as well as Colossians

We've been on summer break, so I haven't had anything to add here lately. We are, however, having a leadership planning meeting after church at our house. Trying to get things a little more streamlined and organized. Our biggest problem had been data acquisition so COA gets tough when you're trying to remember who did what.... Anyway, think we've found someone who will do really well keeping the record book for us.

Paperwork has always been my Achilles heal! Even in my company, I despise it. I "can" do it, but I hate to, so I get my wife to. Plus, then if something goes wrong, I have someone else to blame...

We gave out 267 awards and certificates at last weeks COA. Ranger Database makes it easy.

For individual merit steps I use a colomn sheet boys names on the left merit steps along the top and a x shows they completed that step. Bible merits are the same I just put the date in the top row. It also works for attendance tracking as well.

I only track in the computer COMPLETED merits. Not the steps to a completed merit.

Sometimes I have to send the leaders a list of there age groups completed merits to bring them up to speed on who has what. Paper records have a tendancy to pile hi and take lots of time to process and are out of date quickly.

We break for the month of August for Sunday nights no church at night. Then on Wed nights we break for 2 weeks.

Today we meet at noon to 4:00 pm to build boats. No Rangers tonight. This break always reduces our attendance in Rangers.

Mark Jones

Mark Jones wrote:We have been fundraising for Camporama.  It will only cost our boys and leaders 75.00 to go.   The 2 hour drive is a God send.  Looking forward to the big event.  

Last night we had 20 Rangers in running around making cowboy hats and boats out of cardboard. What a rucus.  One new Commander bless his heart was over whelmed when we asked him and his boys to cut out 6 trash can sized hat brims out of cardboard.  Those boys and those razor blades... some folks have no idea how to work with Boys.  Show tell do. They got the tool craft merit.  They can use a utility knife.  We must make sure they do it safely.

Mark Jones

Mark, I forget but hasn't the price of gone up $50 a person

We had our first outpost meeting last Sunday afternoon and ended up having a few new boys and commanders! Looking like it's going to be a good year. There seems to be a resurgence of excitement in the outpost this year, which is nice.

We didn't get into any official merits, but rather just set up the new patrols and such. Had a good time!

Our outpost had its first official staff meeting last night. We have already grown from 6 leaders to 8. We launch on the 15th. Got uniforms in the mail too. We are all very excited.

Wow! Sounds great! Enjoy the journey.

Any idea how many boys y'all will have when you kick off? Will you span all four age groups?

Phillip Gross wrote:Any idea how many boys y'all will have when you kick off? Will you span all four age groups?

So far we are going to start with RK and DR, If there is much interest in AR we can start it quickly. As of today we have 10 boys registered with 2 weeks until launch.

10 to 15 Rangers is a good number for a start. It's enough boys for some really good group activities and team recreation (Dodge-Ball and Capture the Flag), but it is not so overwhelming that you can't see what everyone is doing.

That IS great, especially with only doing the two groups. We had 13 boys last Sunday spread out over all four groups. Definitely still doable, but I think 4-5 and more in one age group starts to make it more lively for the boys. More interaction with peers.

Man is it hot & HUUUUUUUUMID
we were out running around tonight & most of us were dripping wet by the end of the meeting

That humidity off the lake kill ya.

It's been crazy humid here too! That fall that was trying to sneak in was booted back out by summer the last couple days. I guess it'll be a tug-o-war for awhile here.

We started the Archery Merit tonight for all of the age groups besides for the RK's. Looking forward to this merit while it's still nice weather outside.

How many boys are participating, how much equipment have you gotten together, and what did it cost?

Going to have 8-10 boys participating depending on the week. We'll have at least that many girls, if not more, over in AHG.

To be honest, we didn't already buy anything. We may be doing it incorrectly, but we're planning on allowing the kids to use their personal bows for this merit. A lot of them, both girls and boys, already have bows. We may end up needing to buy a few bows when it's all said and done, so I'll have to let you know about cost when it's over.

Just like most everything else, we fly by the seat of our pants. We might get burned a little here and there with that, but it's worked out for the most part for three years so far. We pretty much dive into whatever we do and make it work out....

Had a good outpost meeting tonight going into the second lesson of Archery. The boys started shooting longbows this evening and some of them did quite well. I was pleasantly surprised that one of our rangers who normally doesn't do well with things did pretty good with archery. He is very small for his age and doesn't have a lot of coordination, so he struggles a lot with things.

Bryan picked up a few longbows from somewhere today for the boys to shoot with, but I don't remember exactly where he bought them from, or for how much. I do know that the place gave him a discount because we're an outpost. That was nice!

We had a great first meeting after a long 6 weeks of no rangers.
I had 5 in my AR group with 2 more to join in after soccer ends in 2 weeks.

Started recruit requirement (code, pledges, moto) and did first 2 steps in woodworking merit.

ER group had 5 total with 3 leaders working with them. 2 of those young men are 18 year olds staying with the outpost..

FCF fall trace this weekend.

Mark Jones

We went to district pow wow. It was awesome!