Come Come Ye Saints--Trek 2013

A couple of weekends ago we went on trek! 

If I could describe trek in two words they would be: 

short
&
wet. 

"Brigham Young" calling the saints to head west

Long story short, trek was planned in a month's time, so they could only do two days (one night) instead of the usual four. Then when we got there it rained ALL day long--every kind of rain you can think of. It was awesome! Because of the shortened time, the leaders focused more on application to our every day lives than pushing physical limits. We walked 5 miles--in the rain--navigating our heavy handcarts through narrow biking trails with trees ALL over. Our kids were great. We didn't meet them until that morning, so we had been praying beforehand that we would know their needs and have the love for them that they needed. It was interesting to see how each individual youth reacted to the challenges of the day. It was a TRYING day. The hardest part came after we had made it to camp. Because we had stopped walking, our bodies really started to feel the cold wind pounding against our wet bodies. It took us several hours in the rain to get our dutch oven dinner going and our shelters (made of tarps and rope) up. Kids were shivering and spirits were quickly sinking. After dinner, Steve and I stayed back at our family's camp to clean up while the kids had a hoe down under the stake's pavilion. Even we found ourselves fighting hard against discouragement in the harsh conditions. 

Meeting our family!

Onward ho!

We had STRONG girls in our family!!

One of the girls got "bit by a rattlesnake" and had to ride in the handcart. That happened at the same time one of our boys "broke his collarbone" and couldn't pull for a little while. 

Receiving cream from Ma Marcie to make butter for our lunch

Everyone was soaked. Kids didn't have extra clothes or pajamas because they were told to only bring one set-the set they would be wearing. Several didn't waterproof their sleeping bags or bring ground cloths to sleep on. Some didn't even bring ponchos! And at 8:30 p.m., the rain was STILL not letting up. 

EVERYTHING. WAS. SOAKED. 

The stake leaders were concerned about safety--they didn't want anyone getting hypothermia or pneumonia. So we had a ma and pa meeting to talk about options and see how bad off everyone was. We actually had a really spiritual experience as we counseled together and prayed together to know what to do for our youth. We decided to meet in our families and give the kids the opportunity to decide what to do and how to help those that were worse off than themselves. We had a really spiritual meeting with them, too. Can I just say that I am SO impressed with our youth?! Four out of seven of them wanted to go home that night, but ALL of them said they would give up some of their dry possessions for others who were worse off. I was amazed. I gained a lot of respect for those kids in that freezing cold meeting. 

Thanks to the rain and wanting to keep our camera dry, I never even got a good picture of our whole family! This was the best one I got, and honestly, I think it's a perfect representation of our experience. :)

We then went back to our ma and pa meeting to report. Together we decided to go home and not spend the night. So at 9:30 at night, we were abandoning our shelters made out of tarps (we didn't even have tents) and our handcarts, and loading all our personal stuff into our cars and a school bus they had brought in case of severe weather. The bus was going to go to our stake center and parents and leaders had to come pick up their kids. Steve and I got home at like 1:30 in the morning after dropping off kids in our ward, and then we heard that the bus had gotten stuck in the mud and had to have a tow truck come pull it out. So there were people who didn't get home till like 3 am.

It's interesting because one stake leader who planned trek said that there has never been more adversity surrounding any event that she has ever planned than this one. For some reason, things just did not work out, over and over and over again, for months, to the point where they almost cancelled it. But who knows, maybe this experience was tailored to the needs of the kids. And I know that even though it didn't go to plan, we had unique spiritual experiences we couldn't have planned on as leaders as we carried it out the best we could and as we tried to follow the spirit. 

I know that this is kind of hard to explain and have it make sense without going into way too much detail. I just have a testimony that the Lord knows our needs. He doesn't always calm the storms, but he can calm our hearts. We had a full trek experience in less than 24 hours. It was the most interesting trek I'll probably ever experience, but we're so glad we got to be a part of it!