Assuming Isn't Believing

Hey!

Today was pretty good. It was an average day at school so I'm not gonna get into the day because I wanted to talk about something that happened after school.

Well, for a few months now one of my Assistant Scout Masters Mr. Hayes slowly seemed to back out of scouting. It started out by not coming to a lot of campouts and he eventually just stopped showing up. Well, I was really pissed about that to be honest. He was my favorite leader, been there since I started. His wife was also an ASM and I liked her a lot too. Well, after he left there were a lot of changes in the troop with the way we ran it. They were converting it to be pretty much all boy run with little help from leaders. This all started to happen while I was the Senior Patrol Leader. It made me very frustrated and also betrayed by Mr. Hayes. Why would he just drop out like that? Was it because his son wasn't as involved anymore? Did he just not care about us? I had overheard several times excuses. First was he was sick, then it was because of family trouble. I didn't believe it, I just thought it was excuses for backing out. They officially announced about a month and a half ago that he had taken a leave from scouting due to these problems. I knew it was coming, and I hated hearing it. I become really mad at Mr. Hayes because I liked him so much.

Well, we found out tonight what was really going on. Our SM talked with him yesterday and found out terrible news. He had been diagnosed with lymphoma cancer, which is a cancer in the bones and lymph nodes. It creates a large tumor on your throat. They are still doing tests and are not sure what could happen but it's not looking good. Wow.... I felt so bad. I assumed that he was just slacking off when something very serious was going on. He started out very sick. First with a cold, then fever, and it worsened after that. So the first excuse was right. He really was sick... God I felt so bad. I felt like crying because I didn't trust God for his reasoning before. Trust seems to be a big issue for me lately. So please...keep Mr. Hayes and his family in your prayers. I really hope they treat it and remove the cancerous cells... I don't know how I'd react if...nevermind.

So yeah, that was pretty much the inciting moment of the day. Jake and I have exchanged emails a couple times today about something that happened between us (my fault) a couple weeks ago. I'm not going to speak about it publicly because it is something private between us, but I feel really bad for it. I'm sorry man....

Oh yeah JAKE, I found this video on youtube today, I think it would be awesome for you to learn to play it!


Well, I'm gonna enjoy the rest of my night sitting here watching tv, lol. Have a good night everyone, especially you Jake. Goodnght.

Clifton