I recently attended a talk by Young Mens General President Dahlquist. He visited Twin Falls a week or two ago to talk to us about the youth of the church, and specifically about the Young Men of our Stakes and Wards. I know that I'm not supposed to quote general authorities when they come and visit, so, I'll just talk about some stuff I have been thinking about that was spurred by some of the topics he discussed. Is that vague and general enough?
Anyway, he was talking about hero's and that the young men need role models in their lives. I agree that our young men need someone to look up to, someone with good moral standards and values. I decided to try and find some famous people that had been Eagle Scouts. (do you capitalize eagle scouts?) I wasn't looking for just your run of the mill Eagle Scouts, I wanted someone that the young men would go "WOW, he was as Eagle Scout? COOL!" So, I put my best search engine skills to work. I wanted to find an NBA star or an NFL star that all of the young men would recognize and point to him as being an Eagle Scout. BUT, I didn't find one. I thought for sure that someone would put together a list of famous people that were Eagle Scouts. I did find a short list but it didn't have anyone that a young person today would recognize. I wouldn't think that Bill Bradley, Walter Cronkite, Steven Spielberg nor Ross Perot would be recognizable to our youth. Maybe Steven Spielberg, but the rest, I am sure are virtually unknown names to 12 - 18 year old boys. Steve Young was a scout but apparently never received his Eagle Rank. I'll keep looking and let you know if I come up with any more good names.
Today, I received a copy of the Church News. Along with the Church News, there is now a new publication called the Mormon Times. I noticed on the front page of the times there was an article about missionaries and basketball players. The article was entitled, "Mission experience pays off for college basketball RMs". It is a great little article about return missionaries that are currently Basketball players at Utah State University and other colleges. The best part about this article is that it has a picture of a return missionary from Twin Falls Idaho named Brady Jardine. Brady was a basketball star from Twin Falls High School. He is actually in our Stake and attended church in our same building. We watched him at high school basketball games and even went to Boise to watch him take the Idaho title. He then signed with USU and then left on a mission. This summer, he returned from his mission, traveled up to our High Adventure Camp, and gave a talk about preparing for a mission to our youth. It was AWESOME! He took his place on the USU Bball team this fall and is now a valuable player on their team this year. I don't know if he was an Eagle Scout, but I'll take a good return missionary as a role model any day.
NOW THAT IS A ROLE MODEL THAT OUR YOUNG MEN CAN LOOK UP TO!
