What Your Outpost Did This Week.

Great meeting. I like a meeting that ties it all together and brings in some personal experiences. The hands on trail markers are a good idea. You also taught patrol use as they worked together and just how far they could go out each carrying their own weight and responsibility. Also that jerky..they had a hand in it. Good job Commander.

Mark Jones

Claymore wrote:After our Bible Lesson, we talked about how you can lose a trail or misplace something, or have trouble re-locating a blood trail in the woods.  I used the example that my son got me a nice camouflaged stool that I took deer hunting.  After a while, I decided to do some "patrolling" in the woods, and it took me 10 minutes to find the stool when I came back.

We then did a math lesson that if you had a patrol of 6 boys and each had 3 trail markers and they placed one marker at every 100 yards, they could mark 1,800 yards of trail: or more than a mile.

We then took white plastic clothes pins from the dollar store with some red duct tape & some red plastic engineer's ribbon (the hardware store was out of International Orange).  They attached about a 10-inch streamer of the plastic ribbon to the clothes pins and had removable "trail markers".

Then they ate the venison jerky that they had cut & seasoned last week, and I had smoked.

Thanks, Mark.


It's good to know that someone up in H.Q. notices.

Well the H.Q. was close to home but I am not in the inner circle up at the National Office. Just on district staff here in so. mo district. At one time when Richard Marriot had the helm I had some input into things through Brian Hendrickson but those days are long gone.

I would say that Brian was the last person I know that really listened to the field. The rest since has had the idea of we know better. (hense the falling all over the place and failing badly.) Hopefully they will once again listen to common sense and follow the leading of the Holy Spirit.

I almost think the AG has gone so far with this modern day pscho babble that it maybe too late for them to swing back into God's favor.

Rangers needs to get back under the mens ministry. Give the men in the church back a manly program and let them champion it once again. The sunday school stuff of stomping balloons, running relay races, bouncing balls may work for sunday school but it makes this man just a bit bored with it all. Grin!

Mark Jones

COA tonight! Giving out 124 recognitions. Had over 30 boys at our Leadership Sunday between Churches.

Compiled a short video on the Ranger Derby Race, River Crossings and put a bunch of pictures from past events up for pre COA showing.

Its been a busy week. Saturday we do a Sections Ranger Derby Car Crafting. It's fun. It's a lot of work and it's worth it.

Mark Jones

We studied Ecclesiastes 4:8-12
"  Though one may be overpowered,
   two can defend themselves.
A cord of three strands is not quickly broken."

Then I broke out a roll of Parachute Cord.

I showed how the strength is in the inner strands of the cord, and that you can tell the difference between 375 pound and 550 pound cord, and how many strands there are in each type (4 strands in 375 cord and 7 strands in 550 cord).

Each boy got his own length of Paracord, we removed one strand, gave each boy a small safety pin and showed him how to make a fishing line with it, then we seared the ends of the remainder of the piece to keep it from unraveling, and they were allowed to take it home.

Lastly, we took a length outside to the base of the Fire Escape.   We tied a single piece to the framework, tied a loop for a stirrup, and each boy (& Commander Claymore) put his foot through the stirrup, lifted himself up, and hung from a single piece of Parachute Cord.

Good job Commander. This one should be in the Ranger Manual. Good stuff all around there.

Mark Jones

This week we started off with a teaching on Ephesians 2:19-22
After that we worked on lesson 2 of Rope Craft: Figure 8 & Square Knots.  
I teach Square Knots (& some others) with ropes of 2 different colors to make it easier to follow each rope through the knot.

Here is a pic of the group with their Square Knots

This week we worked on Clove Hitch & 2 half hitches

We were busy getting cars ready for the Big Race this Saturday. I love making derby cars. It's a bunch of ideas that go all kinds of places. We all learn something we didn't know. The Dad's that show up are busy trying to keep their childrens cars in check.

The paint booth is where many cars are changed from better to worse. GRIN!

Mark Jones

Good idea with the different colored ropes!

We would use rope "Swiss Seats" for the boys to practice their knots, and I wrapped the ends of the ropes with different colored electrical tape (red on one end and blue on the other). But those tended to get pulled off.

The kids won't pull the colors off of your ropes, Chris.

Younger Commander teaches the veterans a new trick. That is cool.

We are setting up the 4 lane track in the multipurpose room this evening. Put it up on tables so all can see the cars run down the lanes.

Got a update patch to add to the software. I need to reverse the polarity on the ready button. Tommarrow. Big outpost race.

Mark jones

This week I had only my own kids,our 2 Ranger Kids were kept upstairs by their father. Which usually means they were misbehaving.

I had planned to review the knots from week 1-3 so that's what we did, along with lesson 3 of Ephesians.

We had our quarterly WOW (Wild On Wednesday) meeting. Using our cowboy theme for the year, I planned a rodeo. Boys competed in the following:

- Barrel racing (the boys were the horses, running around BGMC barrels)
- Bronc riding (the boys were the horses, trying to throw off a dummy put on them)
- Calf roping (a wagon with a deer skull was pulled along, and the boys tried to rope it)
- Clown skills (boys had to climb into a stack of inner tubes, then get rolled along as far as they could hold it together)

The top boy in each age group was given a cowboy buckle. We also had corn bread and "rattlesnake" chili, and watched a documentary about TV/movie cowboys.

Nice job!

Good example of taking what you know, teaching the boys, making it competitive, and putting a reward/goal at the end.

joecool wrote:We had our quarterly WOW (Wild On Wednesday) meeting. Using our cowboy theme for the year, I planned a rodeo. Boys competed in the following:

- Barrel racing (the boys were the horses, running around BGMC barrels)
- Bronc riding (the boys were the horses, trying to throw off a dummy put on them)
- Calf roping (a wagon with a deer skull was pulled along, and the boys tried to rope it)
- Clown skills (boys had to climb into a stack of inner tubes, then get rolled along as far as they could hold it together)

The top boy in each age group was given a cowboy buckle. We also had corn bread and "rattlesnake" chili, and watched a documentary about TV/movie cowboys.

That s a great idea for a fun meeting! good job!

Our 2 wayward Ranger Kids returned this week (Half way through the meeting )
We started out with a lesson from Ephesians (Full Armor of God)

Then we continued on in Rope Craft with the 2 Half Hitches & Taught line hitch knots

Started the Rappelling merit last sunday night. Went over gear and got it all inspected. Will have hands on knots and hook ups and commands this next sunday night. Following Weekend we get to rappel off of the rock face. It's all good stuff.

Some of the boys are earning BB gun green merit. Didn't realize there was a green merit for it.

Mark Jones

Our XMen had a lesson on Communion, so we made the call for it to be a joint lesson from DR up. I asked RK, but the Cmdr there was sure they would just call it snack time. I didn't disagree.
So we actually had Communion. Old school, broke the bread and everything. Talked a lot about history from the last supper, Catholic beliefs, Lutheran, AG. One the best lessons the Spirit gave us ina while.

Kids LOVE Communion.

We did the same discussion, ranging from the belief in the literal Transmutation to the belief that it is just a nice Worship Ritual.

When the boys asked me where I stood in this argument, I told them, "Jesus said that when two or more are gathered in His name, He is there. So draw your own conclusion."

I what ever is in front of you is irrelevant, you could do it with pop tarts and soda if you had the right mentality. Jesus cares about your heart and your mind and communion is reminder to keep those straight, self check, and correct. I chose to do the breaking of bread as a visual reminder how Jesus was broken. If he was wiling to go through that, do you think you have something he can't take?

We are heading out tonight for a big adventure backpack. Tonight it's 100% chance of rain through the night up till daylight in the morning. We have 18 going. Rain has dampend some spirits...but were still going.

A group is already down there 3 young men. Camping on the top of a 200 foot cliff. Our plan is to walk the cliff trail. It will be very senic and we will have to be extra careful.

While most folks would cancel and not go. I have found it fun either way. Just have to think it through and be "Ready" . When we train for this stuff and just talk..it rarely teaches us anything. Yet when we go and do... big time teacher.

Mark Jones

This week we did.........nothing!
I was sick & so were half my Rangers The flu is making the rounds of the church at least its a 2 day variety

Well. We changed our leave time until tommarrow morning at 8:00 am. We were getting 2 to 3" of rain today and tonight. Supposed to be gone by noon. So we will still have some of it going in....but it will be nice Saturday afternoon and Sunday. We have a new boy and his dad going from our outpost. I didn't want his first night out backpacking to have to deal with the 3" of rain. Other wise... we would be down there now.

Mark Jones

I had pointed member Sasiki in the direction of the TracClub examples.  The Skills Merit on that page was Photography.

I started looking it over and thought that it would be great, especially since we are only running 5 to 6 boys per meeting right now.

I pulled out a couple of digital cameras, a cell phone, and one of my 35mm SLR's from years ago & started the merit.

In order to explain the difference in application of Digital Photography vs Wet Film Photography, we did a study of the "Corona" Spy Satellite project against the Soviets that started in 1960.  We talked about what was learned through photography, how much money was saved by knowing what the capabilities of the Soviets were, how they got the film back, and how it has advanced through digital photography.

We also learned about how the first "digital" photos were "Polaroid"-type pictures that were taken and developed on the satellite, and then were scanned by a small television transmitter, then transmitted back to earth. However, they were found to be pretty-much useless, until the advent of true digital photography.

And so it was a History Lesson, a lesson in American Government, and an Introduction to the Mechanics of Photography.

The kids absolutely loved it, and they enjoyed passing around an old 35mm camera.

I purchased some rechargeable battery packs for the digital cameras, so next week, the boys will start snapping pictures.

For the "Documentary" photographs, we're going to do a Crime Scene.