Dear Wood Badgers,
On behalf of the staff and myself we welcome you to Wood Badge. We have spent many hours preparing for your arrival and hopefully you are almost as excited as we are to get started.
Each staff member has a great deal of love for you, and we are so happy that you have chosen to let us share with you the Wood Badge experience.
This course is sponsored by the Provo East and West Stakes combined and we are thrilled to welcome the members of our Stakes as well as any others who have chosen to join us. We look forward to getting to know each of you better as we go through the next few days. As you will find out in your Wood Badge experience one of the best parts is the great people you come to know and often grow to love.
Christ taught us to serve one another and then He showed how by His example. We hope to model that example by serving you and teaching you as we each learn along with you how to serve more effectively. Wood Badge is service, and if taken seriously it can change your life. It changed mine years ago, and since then I have greatly enjoyed sharing the experience with others and watching the magic as they go on to do great things.
Our course theme is from Alma 7:22 and is about duty to God. If we can learn together to be of better service to our Father in Heaven, whom we love, I will count this course a great success. That, and if through this added training we can become better teachers and mentors for the young people we have the opportunity to work with, we have accomplished the goal of Wood Badge.
I pray that your experience will be worth the many and various sacrifices that you have each made to come to Wood Badge, and that your life can be changed for the better as husbands, wives, fathers, mothers, and leaders in the Lord’s Church in these the latter days.
Sincerely,
J. Gaylun Smith
Course Director
