As the relationship between our church and the Boy Scouts of America was coming to an end, a bunch of 14-15 year old boys were feeling a desperate pressure of time to reach the highest award in scouting--the Eagle. Alex was one of those boys. For him, completing all the requirements and the big final project came down to the wire of Dec 31st deadline. Great thing was that Robert's calling until last week was the Scout Master--thus he did all the prep work with Alex, guiding him and half a dozen of other boys through the final steps of their scouting journey.
Alex's project was to build, sand and seal three wooden picnic tables for the urban garden in Durham. This organization
Inter-Faith Food Shuttle doesn't just help people learn how to grow a vegetable garden in the middle of Durham (in a neighborhood that doesn't look like one you want to drive through at night), but also teaches the community about healthy meal prep with fruits and vegetables, organizes classes, serves free fresh meals to kids during summer, provides food for the seniors and much much more. It was very interesting to listen to the urban agriculture manager's tour of their space. Alex's building the new tables was going to help them fit more people in their classes as they hold them outside by the garden.
Alex slowly progressed with his project by finally going to Lowes in October. He independently had to call the store manager days before that and arrange the time he could come in and discuss what Lowe's could do for him in terms of the supplies. Then I took him Lowe's, where he told me to go shop for something else as he wanted to talk to Brian, the store manager, completely on his own. Somehow, magically, the manager was able to give Alex one picnic table kit for free and give him an awesome discount on the other two. Another employee was very kind to help us locate the tables and help Alex load them onto the cart (to put on hold, so Robert could come get them with Alex later).
A couple of weeks later, Alex got a bunch of his other scouts together to work on the project. They sanded and sealed the tables and made them look fantastic.
Big shout out to Rob Bennet who let Alex borrow his wood working space and then drove Alex and his tables to Durham to drop them off late afternoon.
It surely felt great to be done with this part!
Then on Dec 3rd, Alex had his Board of Review. That's when he had to present his pictures and description of his Eagle project. Needless to say, it was kind of nerve-raking, but Alex carried himself really confidently and impressed all the leaders there. And so he PASSED! YAY!
Our 14 year old Eagle Scout.
It would be really-really hard to get this done without Rob B. for sure.
So now we wait for the special night, the Court of Honor, in a couple of weeks where we'll present our newly made Eagles with their awards. Alex is very proud of what he had accomplished as it wasn't an easy path. The best part is that he actually really enjoyed scouting--especially all the camping and the wilderness stuff he got to do with other boys his age and with his dad. Great job, Alex!
Lyana.
