LDS Scout Advisors,
Are you struggling to have your boys involved? Do you find it a chore to get out and spend time with your scouts in the outdoors? Does your calling feel like a burden instead of a blessing? Are you putting off getting trained?
If you’ve answered YES to any of these questions, maybe you should check out this month’s issue of the Ensign magazine… more specifically, the article entitled “Scout Training Was the Answer”.
Here are a few things that stood out to me if I were to highlight statements made in this article:
“[Church leaders] aren’t asking me if I would like to go to training if I have time. They’re saying that all those with responsibility for young men have a duty to be fully trained in Scouting and Aaronic Priesthood.”
“Suddenly the young men got excited, and we leaders got out of the way.”
“Where once they had been lackluster about ‘our’ activities, they became enthusiastic about ‘their’ activities, which they chose, planned, and carried out under the direction of their quorum president/team captain.”
“Once the young men became engaged, other things fell into place. As they got excited about going on high-adventure activities, they started working together as a team, hanging out, and being more diligent in priesthood service. They started stepping up in ways we never could have imagined. I had no idea that Scouting would play such a big role, but it enhanced everything else and gave us opportunities to teach priesthood principles.”
“My training gave us a uniform, organized way to help the young men plan their activities. I didn’t have to reinvent the wheel; I just had to implement my training. Before, we racked our brains about what we were going to do each week for Young Men night. Now we didn’t have enough weeks to do all the activities the young men wanted to do.”
“The more time we spent outdoors with the young men, the more opportunities we had to instruct them on leadership principles and the more chances they had to teach each other.”
“Scout training made my calling 10 times easier, and we had 10 times the results.”
So here’s another great example and more evidence that scout training is the answer.
Why does it take some advisors so long to figure that out??
