In my estimation the three most intense callings in a typical ward are bishop, Relief Society president, and scoutmaster.  These callings require a great deal of sacrifice if handled properly.

Our scoutmaster, Jake Bingham, organized a campout this past Friday and Saturday for 9 boys and 3 adults to go to the hot spring upriver from Oxbow Dam.  He did that at great personal sacrifice.  His wife is due to deliver their third child in one week.  That's neither a good nor a convenient time for a husband and father to be gone from home.  I'm sure that a scout campout was one of the last things that Jake really wanted to do under the circumstances.

It was a wonderful campout, with good weather, beautiful spring conditions, and good fun.  The scouts played "stalk the deer" up on the mountain until after dark.  No scout campout would be complete without "stalk the deer"—one of the world's truly great games.

Jake and the other adults played, too.  Jake slunk, crawled and slithered across the mountainside, over rocks, through bushes and around obstacles in his own attempt to sneak up on and tag the deer before the deer could identify him, call out his name, and send him back to start over.  The boys—and the adults—had fun at this until it was too dark to see anymore.  Their game had carried them to the summit of the mountain, far from camp, requiring a careful walk back in the dark.

The next day found the scouts back up on the mountain.  Jake and the other two adults were hiking together when Roy bent down and picked up a brown wallet lying camouflaged among similar-sized brown and gray rocks.  Jake immediately recognized it as his own.  He hadn't even missed it.  He recognized the spot as the place where he had belly-crawled as he made his first stalk on the deer.

Had Jake missed his wallet, and had he been able to even deduce the area and activity in which he'd probably lost it, those twelve scouts and leaders could have combed that mountain for a week without finding it.  The odds that Jake and Roy would be in that exact spot the next day, and that Roy would notice the wallet, are huge.  It simply shouldn't have happened.  It can only be explained as one of the Lord's tender mercies extended to one of His faithful sons who was willing to sacrifice for others and faithfully fulfill his calling.

Nor was that the only tender mercy bestowed by the Lord upon that group.  A 12-year-old scout was asked by his quorum president to ask a prayer as the trip began.  In his 12-year-old vocabulary he asked that everyone would be safe.  At suppertime another scout was asked to bless the food.  He also asked that everyone would be safe.  The same thing was done at bedtime following the campfire singing, stories and activities.  At breakfast the next morning a fourth scout blessed the food, and asked that everyone be kept safe.

That day as the scouts were again climbing the mountain blindly going here and there in their rush from one activity to another Justin was about to step down from one rock to another as he'd done hundreds of times before.  This time, however, something told him to look first.  He wilted at the sight.  Had he made the step, it would have been onto a coiled rattlesnake—the first anyone had ever seen in the numerous campouts that had been held at that site over many years.  Justin took the snake's picture, and went on his way rejoicing—not so much that he hadn't stepped on the snake, but that he'd felt the Spirit's prompting and had looked before making the step.