November Pack Meeting Was a Huge Success

I have great news: last night's Pack Meeting was really excellent. It was a lot of fun having the cubs from Packs 510 and 542, along with special guests: the Tigers from Pack 549 and the Raven Patrol from Troop 510 all together.

The room already happened to be decorated for Memorial Day: awesome! And John P brought lots of real flags used by the Navy and put them up as well for his "American Moment". (He did such a great job! I learned a lot about our flags.) So the room looked AWESOME. I think that was such a blessing, as I had brought up in Committee Meeting that I'd sure like us to get a Decorations Committee. But nothing came of it, unfortunately. (I will keep trying.)

We made care-packages for deployed servicemen. That went well. I was realy obsessed with making it go well. I even made a huge cardboard flying saucer for the intro to the space derby demonstration.

Susan H, who called from the newspaper announcement, brought her son Justin and her whole family, and we had an induction ceremony for them. I'm so excied about that. We're going to send one of the care-packages to Mr. H, who is a military doctor in Afganistan.

I stapled awards and advancements to big photos of real military medals. They looked awesome. We gave authentic noisy military cheers: "Hip hip hooray!"

We planned according to BSA guidelines -- wrapping up final plans at committee meeting. I planned a gathering activity (I always do, and we are guided to do so by BSA), and it was so obvious how well it worked. As boys arrived, they began to run. So we immediately got out the gathering activity, and soon there was a charming circle of boys busily at work doing word-searches and drawing pictures. (It was vital to have that, especially this month, as there were about seven Tigers visiting. I was thinking: "Look at that!".)

During a transition, I could sense we needed to refocus, so we went right into a fun song. That worked well.

The meeting ran just over an hour, including gathering. I think it could have been a tiny bit shorter, but I think we did really really well, and I think the families had a good time. (I just think 45 minutes is a good goal for most pack meetings, for the sake of the mommies holding small children.)

I just want to work so hard so we can have a big well-attended pack meeting like that every time with our own cubs and webelos. I hope we can find more and more families to join us. We need a thriving pack. And it will lead to a thriving troop in a few years. And that will be the troop my own sons will be part of.

To Do's

Some things I need to get done:

1. Plan the specifics for the pack meeting Thursday
2. Contact all parents via email and ask them to bring an item to put into 4 care packages for soldiers. (That's an easy way to remind parents about the meeting, too.) Tell the visiting Tiger Den about that, too.
3. Plan training specifics for Committee Meeting tomorrow.

Recruiting Update

Yesterday I visited a mom who called and would like to get her son into Cubs. It was a great experience. I created a few documents to help with orienting new parents. I found a neat presentation that I can learn to do from the Boy Scout website -- it's moving and uplifting and motivating. I discovered some materials I'd like to have on hand to give to parents when we meet them.

I learned a lot from the questions that the mom asked. She asked if any of the other boys are not LDS. (Not yet, but hopefully that is about to change.) She asked if we would be using scouting to proselyte. (Honestly, no.) She asked if religion is taught in the den meetings. (The weekly meeting plans are set by the BSA, so I really don't think that would happen. I will look into this, though, as I know the General Primary Presidency has suggested that some Faith In God items can be addressed in Den Meetings.) How much do scout shirts cost? (I don't know!)

I'd like to suggest to our Committee that soon we consider moving Den Meetings to the church building. I think new families will find that more comfortable. These days, it's hard to sell to a new family the idea of leaving your boy at a stranger's house.

Today I called and left messages for two families with boys of scout age on our roster. Then I wrote a letter to three families -- a recruiting letter that aims to help them catch the vision of scouting -- and invited them to come to pack meeting next week.

Improving the Pack Meetings

I've been working to improve the Pack Meetings. Here are a few things I've done:

• Add an "American Moment" as a regular 5-minute feature right after Flag Ceremony. Someone presents an iteresting fact or story or history that will help everyone to consider the greatness of this nation and it's patriots.
• Add a "Diversity Guest" as a regular feature. This is a ticket item for me. (I need to come up with a better name for it!) I invited a woman from American Samoa to speak in October, but she ended up not being there. I called to follow up beforehand but had to leave a message. Maybe it was a communication problem? Anyway, that one did not work out. I have invited someone to do a Hanukah presentation in December, and the speaker is very excited, and so am I! 5 days until November Pack Meeting -- we probably won't have a "Diversity Guest" this time. I find that this is challenging for me!
• Liven things up with a lot more songs and stunts.
• Try to get many people to participate and contribute to the Pack Meeting Show. I find that making assignments in Committee Meeting really helps.
• Wear costumes whenever possible.
• I want to add a face painting initiation ceremony for new boys.
• Add more recognition of helpful leaders and parents.
• Continue with having a good gathering activity at the start, and keep trying to make recognition of the achievements of the boys as exciting as possible.

Now I have wishes for greater improvements. I desire a decorations committee. I think a refreshment committee would be cool too. And it would be neat to get a few Pack Photographers (at least one per den), so that we can periodically do slideshows with music at the Pack meetings.

Training Progress

One of my Wood Badge ticket items is to offer training to our Cub Leaders at Committee Meeting. I'd like to report now on our first two training sessions.

In September I taught the Committee about BSA Youth Protection and Two-Deep Leadership. It turned out to be very timely and helpful, as our new Cub Den Leader hadn't learned about it yet, and needed the information. The Cub Den has been meeting at the Den Leader's house, and a couple of parents were feeling uncomfortable with the situation. It's such a small den, and some one-on-one situations had already occurred. As a result of that little training session, the situation turned right around. That was cool!

In October I taught what I learned at PTC about helping boys with disabilities and special needs to be successful. It was OK, but I don't think I did as good a job. I couldn't tell if anyone got anything out of it.

I think I need to prepare a better presentation for tomorrow's meeting, and make it fun. I think I'll present the Cub Scout Leader Book's advice on recruiting and retention. But I'll use an attention-getter and some visual aids, and also prepare a handout. (That will also be a good start on another of my ticket items.)

I'm So Excited!

I'm so excited about what's happening here!

Our numbers are few. We only have about 8 boys in our pack right now. We need new boys and we need some diversity in our pack. I've been working and organizing and improving our pack. So far I've:

• Been working on my Wood Badge ticket items.
• Made an email group and collected everybody's email addresses.
• Requested and received a list of all of the cub-scout-age boys on our congregation's roster so we can go personally invite them to join us.
• Encouraged a sister pack with only 3 active boys and no committee to stop languishing and consider joining us (and it looks like they will).
• Been aggressively improving the quality and diversity of our Pack Meetings (PTC's "Rick and Steve Show" was very inspirational).
• Put an announcement in the newspaper here a few weeks ago advertising our October pack meeting. (The newspaper thing was several weeks ago, but alas, no new boys came or called.)

So late last Friday night I started really praying for new boys and families to come to us. (Don't know why I didn't think of that before.) Guess what? A mom called the next morning at 8:45 asking if her boys could join our pack!

It's just really exciting and encouraging when God makes it totally obvious that he's got your back. Like maybe God wants us to be successful in Scouting. I wasn't thinking about it quite like that before.

I'm so excited!