Order of the Arrow

Order of the Arrow Ordeal Weekend
September 12 to 14

Well just this weekend Nanuk Lodge which is part of the Great Alaska Council held their annual Fall Ordeal for the new OA candidates. This ordeal we had 3 clans of 7 guys each for a total of 21 candidates. All of them have now become ordeal members in the Order of the Arrow. I along with 6 others guys who are Ordeal level members went for becoming a Brotherhood level member of the Order. All of us passed the interviews, requirements, and sucessfully completed the ceremony. This ordeal in particular was interesting for me due to the fact that even though I was not going through the ordeal process again for granting of membership into the Order I went through the Ordeal to serve as a elagomat. Serving as a elagomat is a very important job due to the fact that you are the person who is incharge of clan of guys who are going through and experience the Ordeal process from the very first time. You must obey all of the rules and tasks the candidates go through during the weekend.

In a later post I am going to work on defining some of the important aspects and principals of the order of the arrow.

Yours in Scouting Service
Mark
Junior Assistant Scoutmaster
Troop 1616

Whoops

I can not believe it has been almost four months since the last time I posted something on the blog. I guess I just had a busy summer with work, fun, and scouting all wrapped into one package. Now that school has started again I am going to be more committed to ensuring that their is a entry posted regularly.

Lets just start out with the beginning of the summer and work forward. Summer camp for my Troop was June 29 to July 5. This year we double from last year and ended up with 12 youth and three adults. We even had one scout from out of state staying with our unit. I think that having a scout from a different unit stay with us for a week for summer camp was definitely a unique experience for my guys to participate in. Not only to meet other scouts from another part of the country but to also realize the strengths and weaknesses of each Troop. Each Troop has different traditions which makes them unique but sometimes changing some Troop traditions is a really good idea.

Next on the first weekend of August we had a weekend campout on Friday to saturday. This event went well with opportunities to ride horses and for the guys to just hangout and have fun. We also during this time went down to a lake for a swim. This was a excellent weekend even though we had a really small turnout. In fact it was only 4 youth but this allowed me to do some advanced leadership work since all of the scouts present were nee leaders.

I gues I forgot to mention that all of our Troop youth leaders changed positons. The Senior Patrol leader is now Tyler, the Assistant Senior Patrol Leader is Micheal and the two Patrol Leaders are Elijah and Walter. Congragulations on your appointment to these positions, your dedication and service to the unit is greatly appreciated.

After that in September on the 5,6, and 7 we had our annual aquatic weekend. Instead of going to Hidden Lake the Troop took over the cabin and campsite for engineer lake. The weekend went wonderful with 9 youth and 3 adults attending the whole weekend. Thanks to the adult leaders to leant boats/canoes and offerred their time, it could not be done without you. This was the first major campout with lots of youth that the SPL and ASPL attended as leaders since they are fairly new. I believe the leaders needed to be more proactive but I am very happy with the maount of stuff that learned this weekend anyway.