Saturday, November 17, 2018

Blessed Are We and So Very Thankful!

As many of you know we were the victims of a theft that left our outdoor and camping program in danger due to all of our supplies being stolen.  All of the assets accumulated through the Pack are not from collecting dues, but it's through our fundraisers alone that we are able to provide all the materials needed for a successful outdoor program.  When we discovered it all gone in October, we were devastated.  After dealing with the range of emotions, we reached out to the community and the response was... well, it was overwhelming!

We have had people contact us from near and far to make donations, see what they could do to help or just reach out to offer words of encouragement.  We are thankful, truly blessed, for each and every thought and prayer sent our way.

Our leadership team wanted to see if there was a way we could do a donation promotion to at least help us replenish our camping equipment for the next campout and we would deal with the remainder of the loss at a later date... we just wanted to ensure that this campout was not going to be impacted. So, we put up a donation button on our website that linked directly to our PayPal account we use... within two days, we'd raised well over $7,000 and when I saw that, I went in and turned it off!  Even after that I had people wanting to donate reaching out seeing how they could.

We also had several individuals made donations over $200, $500 and of even $1000 through our plea. If there was an address affiliated with your donation, you will be receiving a thank you letter for income tax purposes.

Scouting is a small world... we had a gentleman reach out to us from a disbanded Troop in Denton who wanted to donate their chuckboxes to us.  You guys.... CHUCKBOXES!!!!  What a dream! We had those in the plans to make for the Webelos and Arrow of Light Dens so that they would have them for their den-level campouts and someone GIFTED them to us!  Through further communications, we discovered he was someone in charge of the Toys for Tots program there and we were happy to have leaders and scouts go volunteer this year. Full circle moment!

We had a former Pack QM and Troop ASM reach out to us ready to help make things happen as he had many pack-friendly materials any Pack camp needs. We are so thankful!

We also had one gentleman, David Snell, who heard our story and immediately reached out to news reporter, Scott Gordon, for our contact information upon hearing our story. David basically told April Driggers, you WILL camp this weekend. We WILL get you what you need. And you guys, boy DID HE EVER!  David owns three small business in North Texas and is the epitome of what it means to have a servant's heart. He wants to be a community leader to inspire others that we should all do what we can to help those in need. He's unbelievable! Through one of his companies, he was able to coordinate ... basically our entire camp kitchen!  It doesn't hurt that he knows his way around outdoor cooking, as he's the owner of CajunCrawfishCo.com Through his supplier, David provided three burner camp stoves, pots, thermometers, dutch ovens, griddles, spoons, utensils.  He pretty much single-handedly made sure that our boys would not only have replaced what was stolen, he also wanted to make sure we had enough to account for the fact that our pack DOUBLED in size this year.  We have been abundantly blessed because of him and wanted to make sure he knew just how thankful we are!  Oh, and another cool thing he does -- CHRISTMAS LIGHT AIRPLANE TOURS!  Seriously, if you want to give local areas your business -- check out StarlightFlight.com  So to David, THANK YOU for exemplifying to us all so many of the ideals of the Scout Law... trustworthy, helpful, friendly, courteous, kind, and cheerful.

So to our community members, to our anonymous donors, to our former leaders (we know who you are), to our family, to friends, to community leaders, to business owners, to Pack families...



Thank you!  Thank you from the bottom of our hearts for believing in our boys as much as we do!

1 comment:

  1. Sorry for your loss BUT glad we could help out. Sad when people take from people with no consideration to what it does to them or how it hurts people. SO many bad stories in the news these days so I wanted to make sure yours ended on a positive note! Very glad we could help you have GOOD kids TRYING to do good things. In no way was this theft going to win out. Keep up the good leadership it does make a difference and is appreciated by even random people like me who simply saw your story on ch. 5 and wanted to help out!!

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