Tuesday morning Drew and I dressed up in our pioneer outfits and dropped our kids off at my parents' house. I was a little bit freaked out because it would be four days (longer than we have ever been apart) and we would have no contact (no phones), but really they ended up having a party without us.
It was raining from the get-go. We got to Ensign Ranch around noon and unloaded all our stuff by our handcart. We were divided into three companies. We were in company C with President Neild, one of the councilors from the stake presidency, as our company captain. After waiting around for a while they assigned us our families. We went and had "family pictures" and then ate our sack lunches while we chatted a bit and started getting to know each other. Then the kids loaded the handcart. As Ma and Pa we could give some pointers, but we were supposed to let the kids figure it out themselves. I was amazed right off the bat at how willing all the kids were to just get to work and to work together.
We started out walking out of Ensign and along a road that ran right along the freeway. The kids were really excited and energetic at this point and a couple of the girls in our family and some of the kids in other families were trying to get the semi's to honk. They got lots of honks and they would go crazy every time. It was pretty funny actually and we were loving the enthusiasm and fun. Then we turned off onto a dirt road and headed for the mountains. That first day was a lot of windy uphill pulling and pushing. Once again the Ma's and Pa's were not supposed to do the pushing and pulling unless it was absolutely necessary, and it was a little bit painful to watch them working so hard without being able to lend a hand. We were so impressed again with out hard they worked. They never complained about it either, just took care of business. Drew and I are both pretty competitive, and we were secretly proud to have our group of kids that wanted to go faster than everyone, and kept begging us to pass everyone, unfortunately we kept having to tell them no.
It rained off and on for the first day. We got to camp that evening after a few hours of trekking and set up our tents. The cooking staff had dinner ready for us. We had a little family home evening that night. We talked about how hard it was for the pioneers, but how worth it they felt it was. We had the kids try a little mixture of flour and water which was sometimes what was rationed to the pioneers in a day. They were not impressed. :) Then we got together with our company and each family performed a skit with a few random items we had been given. They had to come up with a skit using those items having to do with a principle in the For the Strength of Youth pamphlet. We had 3D glasses, a warrior mask, and an old shower head. Our kids ended up doing a bit of a violent skit about choosing good media. It was a little bit crazy, but they had fun.
The rain hadn't bothered us so much until it got dark. That first night was pretty cold. When we finally got in our tents to go to sleep, we were entertained for about an hour by one of our boys teaching the other three boys how to be a ladies man and what to look for in a girl. He was talking so loud and so many people around us heard the conversation in the morning. Everyone had enjoyed it though because it was so funny. He had some really awesome tips!! I wish I could remember all the details. I was so terribly uncomfortable that first night. I haven't been camping in a long time and I guess I need more practice at sleeping on the ground, because it was not working for me. I heard lots of people say they didn't sleep very well that first night.
The next morning we ate breakfast and packed up our cart again. It rained off and on that whole day too. As we were getting ready to leave they announced that the boys would be taken away (like the Mormon battalion) and that it was time for the women's pull. Without the help of the boys the Ma's had to help push and pull the handcarts at this point. Because of the rain the uphill trail we had to hike out on was really muddy. I was excited to get to help, but quickly discovered how hard it actually was. I also understood why our kids were getting a little impatient with the handcarts in front of us the day before. We would start going and a group in front of us would stop. There was so much stopping and going, a lot of the time only making the tiniest bit of progress. Sometimes we would end up stopped right on a steep hill where we struggled to keep our cart from rolling backward.
As we got closer to the top of the hill where it was really steep there were people dressed in white (angels) who came and helped us push or pull for while. It was surprising how amazing their help felt. The night before we had read a story about a pioneer man who had felt angels helping him push his cart along when he felt like he couldn't go any further. I understood that feeling a little better after having those "angels" help us when it felt like we were reaching our limit. When we were almost to the top we saw all the men lining the trail up ahead. The leaders were trying to get the boys to stay there and let us finish, but you could see they were itching to come help. After trying to stay back for a minute they started inching towards us little by little walking and then running down to help. They just couldn't hold back. As I watched that happen I got really choked up. It was the sweetest thing to see them all come running to help. Unfortunately as I got choked up, and added that to being out of breath already from pulling the cart up the hill I started having some sort of asthma attack. I don't really have asthma, but I could not get a breath. I started to feel a little bit panicked about my lack of air right as a couple boys grabbed our cart. I slipped out under the bar just as they took over. I was sad about being the wimpiest girl while our other four girls pushed on. They were as tough as nails! After the pull the stake young women's president had a little devotional with all the girls while the ward Bishops had a devotional with the boys. As the women's devotional one of the young women sang the most beautiful song and her voice was absolutely amazing! The rest of the day it felt so great to have the guys back with us.
We had lunch along the trail and got to camp around dinner time. We had to cook our own dinner that night in our dutch ovens. We had chicken and dumplings and peach cobbler. The recipes were really yummy, but ours ended up taking forever to cook. The guys had rigged up a little shelter for us with a tarp and all of us ended up huddling under it while Drew braved the rain and finished cooking our dinner. I was so grateful he was willing to do that. I was frozen at that point. After dinner the sun came out for a little while, just in time for our hoedown! Drew and I had SO much fun at the hoedown. I love that he is willing to go dance like crazy with me. They had a caller and we did line dances, square dances, and big group circle dances. I was sad it had to end. The kids had so much fun too. I was really pleasantly surprised at how willing everyone was to participate. There were only a few kids who sat out. I expected more of them to think it wasn't cool enough. We all slept a little better that night.
The next morning we woke up to a surprise. One of our girls had gotten a few mosquito bites the night before and apparently she was allergic to them, because she emerged from her tent with her right eye swollen almost shut and her left hand swollen to a few times its normal size. We took her to the medical people who gave her ice and benadryl. The benadryl made her soo tired just in time to start trekking for the day. She really just dragged along for the first half of the day, but she was determined to keep walking and we were proud of her.
Before we left camp a lady told us a story about some women who had a feud over cream for making butter and the problems it had caused and then each family was given a little jar of cream to shake as we walked. After a while we had butter in our jars, and later that morning along the road that same lady was waiting for us with some homemade bread so we could taste it. The each had a necklace with beads that we traded for our bread.
The third day was our last day of trekking and most of the day we walked along a long straight road. The kids really never complained, but we could see that they were starting to feel antsy and that that long straight path was wearing on them a bit (maybe it was just me). In the afternoon we were attacked by natives! :) They came running out of the trees as us, but actually just ended up trading us some homemade beef jerky for the remaining beads on our necklaces. Not long after that we got to our river crossing. They had wanted to have us traveling in the river for a while, but because of all the rain the river was high and we ended up only walking the water for about 50 yards. It was so cold though it felt like plenty! It was fun to have the experience though.
That night we made it to Zion! :) Actually it was called Pullsiville (our stake president's last name is Pullsifer). We were welcomed with lots of yummy watermelon. The guys were experts at setting up our camp by then and go it up quickly. We were the first company in that day so as we were setting things up we got to take a couple little breaks to go cheer on and sing for the other two companies as they arrived. While we were waiting for dinner Drew challenged one of our boys, Ali, to a race. Ali is a soccer player and he is very fast but he was limping around at that point so Drew thought he might have a chance. :) Ali is super competitive and confident in his abilities so he was excited about the challenge, but really surprised when the race ended with them neck and neck. He did win though. We had another one of our boys, Harrison, race him and it was another pretty close race but Ali won again. We decided to see just how fast Ali was and we went from camp to camp finding competitors for him. I think he ran between 10 and 15 races, limping in between each one, but he never lost. Drew ended up being his closest competitor much to our kids' surprise. We're pretty sure these races were the thing that made the trek the best for Ali.
After having a delicious feast for dinner we headed over to an outdoor amphitheater and had a big devotional. The people in charge spoke and there was a really beautiful musical number by two girls. Then they had a group of kids dressed up in church clothes holding glow sticks come stand in front representing "modern pioneers." They were all kids who were doing amazing things because of their testimonies and because of the gospel. Our boy Ali was one of them. He is originally from Sierra Leon and he is one of the first converts from that country. Everyone in the crowd was holding a glow stick also and when they told the stories of the modern pioneers we were supposed to break our glow stick if we had similar experiences. By the end everyone's glow stick was broken. It was a pretty cool thing to see.
We went back to our camps and had a little devotional thing in our little families. We talked about what we had learned form the trek and shared our testimonies. If was a very sweet moment for us. After that everyone was supposed to go to bed, but instead they scattered. We tried to get them to go to bed, but they put on their sad faces and we weren't very tough so we let them stay up. Drew and I went with a couple of our kids over to another family's camp fire and talked and heard a couple sad attempts at ghost stories. We weren't really supposed to go to bed until all our kids were in their tents, but we were so tired and we didn't really know where they were. We assumed they would be fine and went to bed. We were such rebels! I was very relieved to find them all in their tents in one piece the next morning.
The last morning we had breakfast and broke camp. After everything was loaded up we all went into a big grassy field and played some pioneer games. They had a big tug of war, but the rope shattered and threw everyone on the ground. They had stick pulling contests, balance contests, and a game with water.
Then we said goodbye and headed home.
We are soo grateful that we got to have this experience. We are grateful for the great kids that were in our family. We were amazed at the strength and goodness of the youth we were around. What an amazing opportunity this was to break away from the world for a few days, get to know some really wonderful people, and to have the Spirit with us in abundance. We will never forget it.
(I didn't have my camera with me until we were loading our stuff in the cars so I only have these few pictures from the last day. They had a photography and film crew with us the whole time so I am hoping to get my hands on some better pictures of the real action some day.)
Our family- Back row left to right: Me, Drew, Harrison, Ali
Front row left to right: Mikaela, Brielle, Cooper, Courtney, Maya, Bryson
Harrison and Ali playing the balance game
Brielle and Maya playing the balance game
Harrison and Cooper playing the balance game
Courtney and Brielle stick pulling
