This award is a current Troop 4 activity. Meetings are at the church, on Wednesday nights, at 7:00 PM. Attendance is extremely random, but Minhthien Nguyen, Alex Luna, Anthony Reyes, Abe and Ben Sosa, and Daniel Herrin are semi-regular attendees. Cedric and Jacob Velez have also been members, but they have not been present lately. My dad and I (the Hornbostels) show up every meeting.
We have dinner at every meeting. So far, we've had Greek, Italian, Barbeque, Chinese, Mexican, etc. We've also gone for more generic fare - Luby's, Spanky's, and McDonalds. (the last of which barely qualifies as food.) Interviews were conducted in several of these meetings - we've interviewed Reverend Nan Dorr, the pastor of Church of the Redeemer, and former schoolteacher and police officer. We also interviewed Mark Ball, youth pastor, father of three and skilled computer technician.
Other activities include letting writing, weekly prayers (we regret that we forgot to pray for Alex Luna, when he was having a really rotten week.)
We also helped with the Fall Festival that Redeemer puts on almost every year.
We do occasionally discuss the end of the world and prophecy generally, angels/demons, supernatural encounters, the Holy Spirit, etc, some of the more dynamic elements of Scriptural canon, as well as Near Death Experiences, all kinds of interesting "out there" stuff.
At one meeting, my dad brought a shofar - an ancient musical instrument made from an antelope horn.
These things are not part of the proper curriculum. The real focus has been on the books of Luke and Acts, and the story of Paul in the early church. We go through our G&C workbooks very slowly. Maybe it's the "extra discussions" or the long dinners, or the fact that we wind up doing everything twice for whoever missed a meeting, but after maybe 30 meetings, we are still in Section 3 out of 5.
That, of course, is embarrassing. But this is about more than just paperwork and simple advancement, it's about relationships, and fun, and knowing God.
I am also constructing a documentary depicting the process of earning the badge.
This award has been done before, I earned it when I was a scout. I recorded a documentary of the first God and Country badge in 2002, a year before I did the first Troop 4: Uncensored. You can see some pictures from it below. Our food in 2002 was not anywhere near as good. All we had were hard little pretzel balls.
If you want to see the videos I did in 2002, from my hornbostelmedia.com website, including the old God and Country video, click here.
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GOD AND COUNTRY FLYING CIRCUSTech errors, shoddy camerawork, mediocre acting and a lot of stupid jokes. Yes, that's right, it's a Troop 4 movie. But not a "Troop 4: Uncensored" movie, just a 13-minute mockumentary chronicling our God and Country program. This pile of nonsense comes complete with misprinted Bibles, a gunfight, a music video, superpowers, amnesia, severe pencil-related injuries, and teapot boy. Available for your downloading pleasure. The show premiered at Minhthien Nguyen's Eagle Ceremony, December 3rd, 2007 at the Church of the Redeemer Episcopal, Houston, TX. DOWNLOAD TRAILER HERE (Using "Save Target As" - 2.75 MB h.264 mov) Download God and Country Full Video: DOWNLOAD HIGH RESOLUTION (43 MB) DOWNLOAD LOW RESOLUTION (19 MB)
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