Berean Eagles Pathfinders

• Introduction    

The Pathfinder organization started with an idea from a 17 & 15 years old youths; whose desire was to have something like the boy scouts in the church.  With this idea grew into a co-ed worldwide organization with over 2 million members today between the ages of 10 to 16.  Pathfinders is open to non-religious and religious youth which is sponsored by the Seventh-day Adventist church.  The curriculum is design for each age group that involves camping/camping surival, leadership training, community pride & involvement, vocational development, art & crafts, sports, relationship with Christ and so much more.  Pathfinder organization is over 50 years old of fun, character building and leadership training activities.  Come and join our pathfinder club which starts again in August and runs to May each year.

• Berean Eagles History

Now to give you some background on our pathfinder club.  Berean Eagles Pathfinder club goes way back in the 1960s.  I restarted the club back in 1999 - 2000 pathfinder year after a year of hiatus with a membership of 12.  We started learning about camping, marching and drilling, God's nature and having fun.  Pastor Anthony Kelly (former Lake Region Conference Youth Director) wanted to start a drum corps camp for pathfinders.  The first drum corps camp (1999) started with 5 young people in which one of them was my son; interest grew in the folllowing years with increase of people attending the camp.  This is where our involvement in drum corps took off in our club.  We adopted drum corps into our pathfinder curriculum with 6 of the 12 interested in drumming.  These youth at the age of 9 to 13 constantly practiced and practiced the rudiments (drum music) until they perfected their craft.  This drum corp ministry has opened up so many avenues of development, pride and leadership which has expanded their ideas to what they can achieve in life.  Their first real performance came on a cold, wintry Martin Luther King Day walk outside in January 2000 in South Bend, IN and it has not stopped yet.  We have played for churches, youth congresses & federations, pathfinders fairs & camporees, diabetes walks, parades and much more events.  Also, in 2004, Berean Eagles Drum Corps was called by Lake Region Conference Youth Department to play in the opening night of the "Faith On Fire" International Camporee held in Oshkosh, WI.  There were clubs from all over the U.S. plus many countries around the globe that totalled over 33,000.  Our pathfinders and drum corps has traveled to cities in Michigan like Detroit, Benton Harbor, Cassopolis, Berrien Springs, and Indiana cities like Indianapolis, Fort Wayne, South Bend, Mishawaka, Merrilleville, also Chicago, IL, Oskosh,WI and Atlanta, GA.  The Lord has blessed us through the years and our numbers continue to increase plus our need for more drums.

Director Herb Henley Jr.

Pathfinders has 6 Classes:

FRIEND     COMPANION     EXPLORER     RANGER     VOYAGER     GUIDE

3 Leadership Classes:

TEEN Leadership Training     Master Guide     Pathfinder Leadership Award(PLA)

Pathfinder Instructor Award(PIA)

This is the most recent award Berean Eagles has received that emulates what we do as a Pathfinder club.  On January 21, 2008, to our surprise during the youth program for Martin Luther King Day we were one of the recepients of our community work from the Martin Luther King Jr. Foundation.  We humbly and graciously accepted this award and give all the honors to Jesus who gave us the talent.

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