Jacobs Eagle Project

One of the odd things about Idaho that I still can’t get my head around is that you can drive—as in drive a car—here at the age of 14 1/2. I sometimes pick Jacob up from the high school and there seems to be a sea of cars. Anyway, one of Jacobs conditions to driving is that he earn his eagle award. Part of that award includes an eagle project that is approved and sanctioned by the local boy scout big boys. About 2 months ago Jacob decided to organize a food drive for a local men’s shelter. He contacted Albertsons who donated grocery bags and attached a flyer explaining his cause to each bag. The boy scout troop in our ward all 15 of them then spent a Wednesday night dropping the flyer and bag off at 500 neighborhood homes. Saturday that same troop and their leaders then drove through the neighborhood to collect the donations. They started collecting at 9am and by noon we had a pickup load to drop off at the shelter. One eagle project down—one to go. We learned a few things this time around—like you can’t knock on doors at 8:30 on a Saturday morning—your neighbors are likely to throw the canned food AT you. Also, we made 2 trips to the shelter because so many people called for pickups—because they had forgotten to leave their donations out on Saturday. All in all, as Martha would say—it was a good thing.