Original Group Member 191 (2013)
Group Administrator (2020)
Website Administrator (2021)
A bit about me:
I got my start in the Royal Rangers Ministry back in 1979 when my sister brought me with her to the Assemblies of God church that she started attending. At the time I felt like a broken individual, and the Royal Rangers Ministry at Outpost 43 put the pieces back together. I loved doing the old school blue and white merits with my friend Jimmy. Although we completed plenty of merits, I missed my GMA by one required merit. I always make sure now as a Royal Rangers Leader that the required merits are taught and that every boy has an opportunity to earn their GMA.
Over the years, I have served on many staffs (Outpost, Sectional, District, FCF, Instructor), and am now currently the George Washington Chapter Historian and a Certified Instructor for the Pennsylvania Delaware (PennDel) District. I love pouring back into the Ministry that poured so much into me when I needed it most.
As for patch collecting, I think my first go around was when I attended my first (and strangely my only) National Camporama in 1982. There was not a large group of boys in attendance from our District, so we were given all of the old extra District patches to trade with other Districts — a prelude to pin trading. I had never traded for patches before but it became a fun activity to do at Camporama. I even scored a patch from Alaska.
After Camporama, I continued to collect patches from events I attended, and other patches I thought looked interesting. I definitely became a more serious patch collector when I joined the RR/FCF Patch Collectors group in 2012. My patch collection went from a shoe box full of patches, to organized filled patch binders. I still love the thrill of the hunt finding patches to fill the “holes” in my binders and definitely enjoy the occasional “mail call” when those patches arrive in the mail.
Update: I finally attended my 2nd National Camporama in 2022 … 40 years later. 😊