More of my scouting adventure: Stake Leader Specific training

Here is one my latest scouting adventures, in trying to advance my vision of having YM advisors and leaders well-trained in their scouting programs.

Utah County Scouting districts were reorganized this year to match the area organization of our Church.   Our scouting district was formerly called Black Hawk, but was partly merged with the Diamond Fork district and is now called Black Diamond.  It covers the nine stakes in Spanish Fork and the two in Mapleton, including Matthew’s and also the Blake’s stakes.  It also matches the areas covered by two High Schools, Spanish Fork and Maple Mountain.

One of the innovations developed by the Black Diamond Leaders is that about a third of the monthly Round Table meetings are the responsibility of the individual stakes and meet in the respective stake centers, and would typically be planned by the stake’s young mens presidency.  A few months ago as our presidency considered plans for these meetings, consistent with my scouting advocacy emphasis, I suggested that we offer Leader Specific training at the August 8 Round Table.  This proposal was accepted by the rest of the presidency and our High Council Rep and also  President Blair, who is the Stake Presidency counselor for youth programs.  I got the assignment to arrange this with the district training people, which I did, and got their commitment to supply the instructors. 

As time went on, I stayed in touch with District Training Director, and was surprised (frustrated, appalled) to receive an e-mail from him two and a half weeks before the event that they couldn’t find any trainers and so wouldn’t be able to help us. 

I was grateful that this did not faze our YM President, Ken A., or President Blair and we set out to find our own trainers.  It took quite a bit of telephoning and persistence, but Ken and I were able to arrange to have the three sessions covered.  Ken did the Varsity, we got the YM President in a neighboring stake to take Boy Scouts, and Lynn E., who is the Venturing rep on the UNP Council training committee was able to free himself to do Venturing.  I could have taught the Venturing session myself, but thought that the people from our stake ought to hear this message from someone else for a change, and was glad for the way this turned out.

We ended up with 60 attendees, including 51 from our stake.  Our Venturing session had 13 men from our stake and included our stake President and 4 of the seven Bishops.  Feedback from all three sessions was positive, and I was quite gratified and also relieved that somehow we were able to pull this training off successfully.