OHIO DEMOLAY LEADERS OF EXCELLENCE CAMP

    My experience at the OHIO DEMOLAY LEADERS OF EXCELLENCE CAMP (O.D.L.E.) was both educating and exciting. I learned many aspects of DeMolay such as leadership skills, Master Councilor term plans, awards, achievements, respect, ritual, and the organization into chapters.

    The leadership skills that we were taught were how to lead other people over a long period of time and lead them to the right way of life, I also learned that if you are a great leader many more people will like you because they know that you will not follow the wrong road of life. One last thing we learned about leader skills is that leadership skills will always follow you throughout your life so you could either make them or break them.

    Through the camp we learned how to make a term plan, which is a 6 month plan of events for your chapter. You would use one of these term plans if you werc going to become a Master Councilor, which is the highest ranking officer within a DeMolay chapter. To become a Master Couneilor you have to know many different parts within the ritual.

    I learned that there are many things that have to be done to meet the requirements to get awards such as the Representative DeMolay Award and many other awards such as the merit bars and all eighteen different categories in which you could receive merit bars which some of the categories include: Membership, Athletic, Attendance, Conclave, Fine Art, Masonic Service, Priory, Ritual, Religion, Scholastic, Visitation, and many others, The lamp of knowledge is an award you receive after you complete all five of your LCC'S, which is the test that needs to be taken so you can test your DeMolay knowledge. Titles such as Chevalier which is the highest honor that an active DeMolay can receive. Some the requirements of receiving some of the bigger awards were being a Past Master Councilor or having awards that lead into the next biggest award, also I learned that many of the big awards were voted on by your Jurisdiction.

    I learned about better respect towards your brethren and how to respect all people who are either a member of DeMolay or not. It also taught us to respect the laws of our City, State, and Nation. I was taught how to respect the feelings and property of the people around myself.

    The O.D.L.E. camp also taught us about the ritual and how to follow it more Precise and what we might have not been following right within the ritual. It showed us how the seating of the ritual should be taught. They showed us the shield form of the ritual and how all of the officers should sit in that form of the ritual. They explained the meanings of the older words that are used in the ritual and why it's not. a cult form of a ritual.

    The O.D.L.E. camp showed us how to work as a team with the cabins broken into different chapter names and being around the same brethren all weekend. The camp also brought many fun events such as the Dodge Ball game in which everybody had a great time. Also there was a day in which the councilor's track chapters, which was one of the four tracks that were at O.RLE. The other three, were the Members track, Advisory track, and the Veteran's track. The Councilors track had to make up special games for the other chapters to play in for about 2 hours on one of the days. So there were many times during the camp when us the children had to time to be children and play.

    Overall, the O.D.L.E. was a great experience for all the young and also the old because it showed how different people from all walks of life could interact with each other and all of us would know how the others felt.

Joshua Jones
6th Preceptor

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