Posted by Lisa Laree to Beer Lahai Roi.
Last week, My Sweet Babboo and I headed to Florida...for different purposes.
He was an instructor for a Royal Ranger ministry conference, which was held at the Florida State Royal Ranger camp/ conference center near Fort Meade...which was about 15 minutes south of the apartment of The Flute Player and her Hubby The Jokester. So I planned to ride down with him and stay with the kids whilst he did the Ranger conference. He had to be there on Wednesday, to prepare for the conference that began Friday afternoon. The Flute Player took Friday off of work, as both her hubby and her brother (they are all on staff at the same church) have every Friday off, and the Actor's wife just rearranged her work schedule to have Friday off. The plan was to spend the day resort hopping up at Disney, which is about an hour from the kids.
HOWEVER, The Flute Player and her hubby up and rented a house about halfway between the church and their apartment and began the moving process on Memorial Day weekend. So my visit with them was a lot of boxing up things and cleaning. We did get everything done by the deadline, and we got an evening of poking about Disney Spring and the Boardwalk area, which was fun...despite being exhausted, lol.
But I really wanted to talk about My Sweet Babboo's week...or really, about the Royal Ranger program.
It began in the 1960's as an Assembly of God ministry to boys, modeled after the Boy Scouts, with a much greater emphasis on faith and Bible content. It has expanded now to churches outside of the denomination, given the issues that BSA have had of late. But it's so much more than just a ministry to boys. I have talked a bit about the auxiliary to Rangers, the Frontiersmen Camping Fellowship, in which men and boys research the 16th and 17th century American History and build a character based
My Sweet Babboo demonstrating leather craft at the FCF 2022 National Rendezvous
on that era (My hubby's character is a Long Hunter). They camp, do hand crafts, etc., in ways that are true to the period, as well as develop their outfit and accessories/ gear.
And all of that sounds just fine, but that is just the surface level. At it's heart, it is a true men's ministry, and the guys who commit to it are providing community, camaraderie, encouragement, accountability and prayer support to one another. They have a motto... 'Mentoring Future Men' to describe what they do in teaching and training boys...but the benefit they get from it is of a nature that's difficult to cultivate in these crazy times.
And this weekend was a rich one for My Hubby. He has taken the class before, but this year he was an instructor, even though he hasn't officially quite finished the instructor training for this level. This was a national conference, and they had 35 guys there from all over...half a dozen came from New Jersey, several came from Missouri, and of course there were those from the southeast part of the country. The instructors had some teaching themselves, going into the weekend, and the experience of working with the guys who truly wanted to learn how to reach and teach young men made a deep impression on him.
I can't begin to express how proud I am of him for digging into this...or how glad I am he gets to do it.
Even though my experience last week was completely different, lol.
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