Great Trees Sponsored by Girl Scout CEO’s Serving on P.R.A.Y. Executive Board

The P.R.A.Y. Board of Directors includes representatives from local Girl Scout councils. The following Girl Scout CEO’s from the 2020 P.R.A.Y. National Board together are sponsors of the Great Trees patch:

Tracy Keller – CEO Girl Scouts of the Colonial Coast, Chesapeake, VA

Roni Luckenbill – CEO Girl Scouts of Western Ohio, Cincinnati, OH

Vikki Shepp – CEO Girl Scouts of Orange County, Irvine, CA

Joy Wheeler – CEO Girl Scouts of NE Kansas and NW Missouri, Kansas City, MO

The release of the Great Trees RP3 Patch coincides with GSUSA's Girl Scout Tree Promise. Thank you, Girl Scout CEO’s, for your leadership and passion in supporting Faith Based Initiatives within the Girl Scouts of the U.S.A. Thank you for sponsoring the Great Trees patch!

Jesse Trigg
St. John AME Church
Zoom Sunday School Program

St. John's virtual Sunday school program has been using the Bible Basics RP3 Patch Series from PRAY.  It takes a month to earn a patch. Each Sunday school lesson lasts 40 minutes and begins with prayer and ends with a Kahoot! game with questions on the Bible story. Students received a banner along with doubled-sided tape to display their RP3 patches. Patches are a fun, visual reminder of all the Bible stories they studied in Sunday school! Thanks to Jesse Trigg for stopping by the PRAY office and sharing her enthusiasm for the program with us!

Green Hill Presbyterian Church
Girl Scouts of Southern Alabama
Girl Scout Sunday Celebration
 

Some members of Girl Scout Service Unit 923 participated in the Girl Scout Sunday service at Green  Hill Presbyterian Church on March 21, 2021. They began the service with a flag ceremony, sang "On My Honor" and even got the congregation to sing "Softly Falls." After the service, the Girl Scouts set up a "Pinwheels for Peace" display on the church lawn as part of recognizing World Thinking Day. "We are thankful to the congregation at Green Hill for continuing to support our local Girl Scouting program." 

John P.
Four Star Award
BSA Troop 310
Chatham Baptist Church
Chatham, IL

Eagle Scout John P. of Troop 310, Chartered to American Legion Post 759, was recognized on February 7, 2021 at Chatham Baptist Church during Scout Sunday services with the God and Life religious award. John also received the Four Star Award, recognizing that as a 3^rd grader he completed the God and Me award, as a 5^th grader he completed the God and Family Award and as a 7^th grader he completed the God and Church award.

Congratulations, John, on your accomplishments! May you always “Let your light shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven.”

Sally Hiller is using the “Tents and Shelters” patch with some young scouts and is pleased with how well it serves in preparing for Easter. Here’s what she had to say:

We had a great adventure with the Tents and Shelter Unit. We learned about sacred spaces and how we might use our gifts to help create the outdoor sacred space for Easter. While we will not be building a tent, we will be serving by working in the cemetery and decorating a tree with Alleluia bookmarks that we started making.

The scouts will be removing all the old (artificial) flowers from the graves, picking up fallen branches, and where leaves have gathered - rake them. The Easter service is held in the cemetery. This is a little cemetery at the church, about 100 gravesites and an older congregation. So this is a service project that helps them as well. We will decorate the alleluia tree for Easter Sunday.

We had a great time talking about sacred space and how we create it. I appreciated the three stories. Thank you.

Submitted by: Sally Hiller

[Look for an update to this story after Easter when we post a picture of the Alleluia Tree!]

Lone Scout Chris G. received his Four Star Award from P.R.A.Y. in 2019 and then became an Eagle Scout on Sunday, December 6, 2020 at Ivey Memorial UMC in South Chesterfield, Virginia.

Many – even those in Scouting – may not know what a Lone Scout is. A youth may apply for membership as an individual Lone Scout only if he or she cannot conveniently join an existing Cub Scout Pack or Scouts BSA Troop. The biggest drawback is not having fellowship and teamwork with a Pack or Troop.  Despite these challenges, Chris excelled in all aspects of Scouting and many of his service projects were for his church: Chris built an outdoor prayer labyrinth, provided sermons for Scout Sunday, and did a complete rework and expansion of an outdoor chapel for his Eagle project. Chris was also recognized by the Foundation of Evangelism with the honored Harry Denman Evangelism Award for his exceptional personal faith journey and impact on the faith of others.

“A four star performance all around.  We heartedly congratulate Chris and watch for what he may do in the future.” – from Bill Chaffin who submitted this article.