"I'm proud to have the Barako Scout Award that was given to me. I recently became an Eagle Scout and it has been a really great journey considering I started all the way from a Tiger back in Cubscouts. I've been happy and excited to go through this journey even though I went through events like Covid that stopped me and slowed me down. Being able to keep on going and progressing through this has been an awesome adventure. I've been grateful to do other events such as the National Jamboree when I went to the other side of the country and explored the history and the meaning of so much behind the US government. I also got to participate in other things such as NYLT which is National Youth Leadership Training which gets younger scouts get filled up in their roles of being a leader. After that year, I was also grateful to be coming back and being a staff member and help teach the next generation of Scouts. It's been really great being in Scouting and also having my older brother in Scouting really helped me push forward and completing my Eagle rank."

"I first joined Scouts when I was very young. I was may be five years old and brought into the Pack which is the younger version of the Troop. That's where I started off. I met my first group of friends and my Dad made his friends. We aged together and we went camping every once in a while in a place called Shaver Lake. I turned into a Boy Scout which you do so when you are in sixth grade or 12 years old. That's where the brotherhood really started for us. That's where I met my Patrol. We had a very large patrol. Eight people. Eight of us. We named our Patrol the Sushi Warriors. In the Troop, one of the main differences is that you go camping every single month. So we would go up on a Friday night to somewhere new or somewhere we've been before and we would do a service project on a Saturday. Something to help the environment whether that's building a pathway out of rocks or cleaning weeds or planting flowers. One of the main things I really loved is that we always play card games. Card games we made up or popular ones. We'd have a speaker playing music and we'd be playing with cards, just bonding together. Scouting wasn't just an extra-curricular for us. It was our closest friends. It was our brotherhood. It was a large part of our life. As I got older, I understood the values taught more. It gave me a moral code to live by. Something to understand and keep in mind with every action I take. At the end of my journey now that I am an Eagle Scout, what I have with me is a lot of service hours that I've done helping the community, a lot of people I've met, a brotherhood created, and a lasting impact on my life and others around me. I would recommend to keep Scouting, keep going, so that you build relationships and connections with friends and their parents. You learn to navigate the world which is a scary place to navigate with not only a set of values and morals but also an understanding of how to work your way around things. That's why I would recommend that you keep Scouting."

"Hi, my name is Colton Shipman. I'm from Troop 95, Fresno, California. I wanted to share a message with the San Juan Scouts and tell them about my Scouting journey. I started off Scouts nine years ago. I started as a Cubscout. I started kind of late. I got my Arrow of Light then afterwards, I went onwards to Boy Scouts. Now that I'm in Boy Scouts, I've been in it for some years. My Patrol is called the Sushi Warriors and it's all my close buddies. We're almost all Eagles and I'm one of the last ones. We have two more after me. After that, my entire Patrol will be Eagle. It's honestly a long journey. It has taken a lot of time and effort but I had a lot of wonderful people who helped me like my parents, my friends, my Patrol, a lot of mentors. I just want to say thank you to all of them, and thank you to you guys."