Tucker Pike's patrol fixed a breakfast of scrambled omelets and pancakes with orange juice.
Then we walked to the main amphitheater for Sacrament Meeting with Elder Neil L Anderson.
The sight of so many LDS scouts from all over the country and from many parts of the world was impressive. (The long white tables are the sacrament tables)
As 60 Priests broke the bread and blessed it, and as 180 deacons and teachers passed the bread and water, my eyes became moist and I remembered another group sitting on a hill as the Savior fed them with a small number of loaves of bread and fishes.
Elder Anderson mentioned the same, and stated it was the largest Sacrament Meeting he had ever attended.
He said, "To Do Our Best we must be able to feel the Spirit and follow His promptings." God our Father has allowed both Good and evil to act upon us. Satan is about in the world attempting to make all men miserable like himself. What will matter at the end of our lives will not be if we are rich or poor, intelligent or not. An athlete or an athletic unknown. What will matter will be if we choose good rather than evil. To see clearly, we must be clean and pure. There is no substitute for it. "Be ye clean that bear the vessels of The Lord." There is power in being clean. Beware the plague of pornography. "I warn you in the name of The Lord: Be clean and be pure." Through prayer The Lord gives us strength to overcome temptation.
Ask your boys to tell you the stories behind the following quotes:
"Beware of the Evil behind the smiling eyes." - Bro. Winn
"I am late, but I am clean." - Joseph F. Smith
Just before Elder Anderson spoke, at the end of the Sacrament and during a talk by the President of the BSA, Wayne Perry who is LDS, it began to rain lightly. The scouting leaders set up a rain fly over the podium chairs. Dear Sister Anderson bore a brief sweet testimony from underneath it, holding a handheld mike and clearly feeling sorry for being under shelter while the 4,000 were under raining skies. When Elder Anderson stood up, he began speaking with a handheld microphone under the podium rain fly. Then he paused, walked to the unsheltered speaker's podium and said, "I have faith enough to speak from here." He continued his speech and warm rays of sunshine rose over the hill from our right. The rain stopped as we were spiritually fed about being clean. As we walked back to camp, the cool rain began again. I observed a powerful lesson watching a clean vessel, an Apostle of The Lord, have faith in a spiritual prompting, and watching as The Lord delivered on the prompting He sent.
The boys spent their last Sabbath here doing a wide variety of things. Some wrote in journals and read scriptures, some went to religious displays, and attended some of the more sedate activities like woodworking, Brownsea Island and archery.
As dinner time approached, hungry boys filed back to camp. We had a chicken stir fry dinner with rice and fortune cookies. Then a complete surprise: a leader from the Summit Bechtel Reserve delivered a large sheet cake! The boys could not get in line fast enough.
After cake we cleaned up, had our troop meeting and the patrols sat down to study Preach My Gospel together. It is just wonderful to see the boys engaging in teaching each other these lessons.
The sunset brought another surprise. The largest and longest firework show I have ever seen. The boys LOVED it!
Hope you all have a good night!
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