2014 So. Mo District Pow Wow Space Trek "The Heavens Declare The Glory of God"
June 5th - 8th. Temps between 65 and 80 over cast and cloudy with a few showers the first 3 days. With little sun showing though it was nice out!
The previous weeks are filled with all kinds of prep work for Pow Wow. Like most outposts it starts at least a month out and we are busy making costumes and entry plans and getting gear inspected and ready for the big 4 day campout. The boys really enjoy making the costumes and the various projects. This year we made jet packs out of 2 liter bottles. Making 40 jet packs was a little project but with lots of helping hands it goes along nicely.
Click on a picture for a larger view.
Rest of the report at the end of the pictures.
Dayspring Church Pictures link.
So many good people doing great things for Jesus. These boys are worth it.
District Royal Ranger Pow Wow is the Biggest and BEST event of the year. We get to camp for 4 days. We get to have all kinds of neat challenges. We get to fellowship with men and boys and young men that are like minded sold out to Jesus and pointing others to Him.
Every ministry in the Church of today is trying to create life long servant leaders. Yet Rangers does these things as second thought. It's not our focus as are focus is to Reach, Teach and the hard part Keep boys for Jesus Christ. We use many means to that. We make things. We race things. We cook things. We tie things up. We do songs and yells and skits and we laugh and kid a lot.
The one thing that brings Rangers to the BEST Ministry for me is the SCOUTING - CAMPING FOCUS. If we didn't teach this fundamental as a base for our Rangers we wouldn't see them at Pow Wows, Rendezvous, Camporamas, Float trips, backpacking and a whole list of events. Johnny Barnes knew this he even wrote a article about it and here is the link to that.
http://readyrangers.tzo.com/Why%20Camping%20-%20By%20Johnnie%20Barnes.pdf
Some things are timeless. They just work good and don't need a reinvention or a total program rewrite every few years. The camping and scouting programs work. Those that don't like to camp should find another ministry that doesn't camp. There are tons of need in those ministries for sure and YES they reach out to many folks and see mighty moves for God in them. Yet Rangers can be watered down to a point where it stands for nothing and falls for everything.
I was reminded of this at Pow Wow this year. At the Mars Landing event we had 6 Kayaks but first the boys had to build a one match fire using a knife and a baton splitting a 8" piece of old cedar fence. We only teach tool craft once to our Discovery Rangers. We saw hundreds of boys that had no clue on how to build a A-frame fire or properly use a knife. In our Outpost each Pow Wow on Friday morning we go over the Cut n Chop card and review the tool craft section in the Adventures in Camping. A 45 minute lesson and it keeps the boys minds on safety and tool use.
Camping brings us together. It puts us all on the same level and it grows boys by challenge and success/failure it takes both to develop properly.
So many cool things going on at Pow Wow I could write for hours on them. Yet I have rambled long enough. Remember if you don't camp you won't be at Pow Wow. So at the bare minimum develop your camping program. Please read that article by Johnny Barnes. It will put you RIGHT ON on what works.
Mark Jones