- Joined
- Sep 6, 2001
- Messages
- 657
1. 150 Scouts assemble to hear results of weekend competitions
2. Scouts in their (damp!) Army pup tents, remember when that was fun?
3. Piet awarding First Prize to Arthur de Jonge
4. Mess Hall. Nothing fancy, but a virtual banquet house to hungry scouts!
Hello Forumites,
Many of you active Forumites know me by my username, GunCollector. Additionally, I have participated in a number buys, sells, and trades within this wonderful community of ours.
Nevertheless, honestly folks, I wanted to share with everyone by far the most rewarding transaction I've been involved in this last year. It was with Bagheera (Piet Henskens), esteemed fellow Forumite, resident Traser Glowring and Swedish FireSteel purveyor, and also Scout Troop Leader in The Netherlands.
A few months back, I approached Piet with the idea of donating a knife to his Scout Troop as prize for a competition of his choosing. The type of knife is unimportant (a Gerber Spectre 154-CM folder for those of you who must know). Piet graciously accepted it, and indicated he would award it at their Annual "Scouting Weekend" ("Jamboree" to us Americans). At my insistence, there was absolutely no mention of my name--though I did tell him he could reference the prize as being donated by their American friends over here at Bladeforums.com.
Now, I deserve very little credit, as anybody can donate a knife. It's Piet who deserves credit for making time in his busy life to help young people by actively supporting and leading a Scout Troop.
Anyway, without further ado, here is an excerpt of his letter to me (along with some pics from Piet):
Hi Ron,
Here are some jpeg pictures taken during last weekends Regional Scouts competition.
We competed with 3 packs and the youngest ones ended on 27th place if I'm correct, for them it was the first time the entered as scouts because they just flew over from the cubs.
The second team "de gangsters" (The crooks/gangsters) with my daughter in it ended 9th only see there was a counting mistake made otherwise they would have ended as 6th, somebody just forgot to add 8-15 points to their score.
The third and eldest scout pack ended on 3rd place and they were PROUD. There is a chance that they'll have to go to the National Scout competition.
Afterwards I had small presents for all our scouts, ranging from real signal mirrors, ACME Tornado Whistles, Spark-Lite survival firestarters and some SAK's to the first prize your beautifull Gerber.
I talked it over with the packs leaders and we all decided that the knife would have to go to Arthur de Jonge who is a very young Scoutleader who himself still is Pivo and who has silently taken over the leadersriole of his sister Marieke who has been scoutmaster for many years but her busy job is gettring to much combined with 2 days Scouting a week and each weekend a 100 mile car trip to our group.
5. Arthur de Jonge and his new Gerber Spectre
Arthur is a silent guy who has been in scouting since he was born, his whole familly is active at scouting and his father is our groups "president" and has been at least 50 years actively busy with Scouting.
Arthur has a bone/spinal growth disorder and has more metal in his back along his spine then we carry knives
I hope you don't mind that we used your beautifull gift to honour Arthurs commitment to our group and our Scouts.
[snip: irrelevant personal note]
I hope you like the pictures, some are not great as they were caoptured from a video tape.
Arthur wanted me to let you know how extremely happy and proud he is with his knife.
Speak to you soon,
Best Scouting wishes from Holland,
Piet
Scouting de Bevers
