by Mr. Gentry

Saturday Dec. 18 at Walmart, Troop 282 did their last Community Service project for the Christmas Season.

As many of you know Troop 282 rang the bells for the Salvation Army from 9:00 AM to 9:00 PM at all 3 doors of Walmart. It’s a great thing to do during the Christmas season and we found most people to be very friendly and generous.

Curren and myself had the 3pm to 5pm shift at the South door. We happily rang the bell and tried to give everyone a "Merry Christmas" as they walked past. It was a little cold but we were dressed pretty well and just needed to move our feet every now and then to keep them warm. We heard that some of the other Troop 282 families at earlier shifts were singing Christmas Carols and that someone even had Christmas music playing while they rang the bell. It’s great to hear that everyone had a good time volunteering.

I want to encourage everyone that’s out there, if you haven’t come out to ring the bell, you should. We considered it an honor and a privilege to ring bells for the Salvation Army!

We couldn’t get a picture of everyone, but we did get a picture of a few of the many families that helped, go see them in the Troop 282 Photo Collection.

And the winner is… Jacob McLeod with a guess of 35,265!

35,622 was the actual total number of items we collected for this years Food Drive for Fairmount Pantry.

Fairmount Pantry and Boy Scout Troop 282 would like to say THANK YOU to everyone that contributed to this great community service project.

We set a goal of 30,000 items this year and with the help of many participants, including the generosity of the Citizens of Independence, we reached our goal and then some with a total of 35,622 items collected.

In case you didn’t know, Troop 282 and their families went door to door in the neighborhoods of Independence passing out over 10,000 food drive bags and picking up items for seven weeks from October 23rd to December 4th. The boys also collected food from their friends, family, and neighbors. All the items collected were donated to the Fairmount Pantry located at 800 S. Hardy in Independence, MO.

An online contest was held here on our troop website. The Boy’s submitted their guess at the total number of items collected. The boy’s guess that was closest to the actual total number of items collected won! The grand prize winner will receive 1 can of pop each week for a year.*

*This challenge has ended and was only for the Boy Scouts of troop 282. The one can of pop will be awarded after each weekly Scout Meeting for one year starting 12/27/2010. The winner must be present at the end of the scout meeting to claim his can of pop. No carry over or accruing of pops will be allowed.