Pioneer Trek

I'm not sure how to even start with our whole Pioneer Trek experience. Brad and I were asked back in February to be a Ma and Pa on trek this year. It has been months of preparation, anxiety, and worrying (that is different than anxiety!) But here we are after 4 days in the Wyoming wilderness, and we are still alive... barely. Our kids were pretty excited to see us when we got home. A big thanks to both of our parents for watching them while we were gone.

Trek for me was an emotional rollercoaster. I think I felt every different emotion possible from nervousness to relief, excitement to complete exhaustion, from being angry and frustrated to being touched and humbled. I think I felt hungrier than I've ever felt, dirtier and smellier than ever before, and tired beyond belief. But I also felt the spirit so strong, I gained an appreciation for little things in my life, and it made me proud of my pioneer heritage. I was proud to be a member of our church and inspired to be a better person.
As we visited all the different areas; Martin's Cove, the 6th crossing of the Sweetwater River, and South Pass the same thing kept hitting me. These pioneers had so many reasons to give up. They had every excuse to either stop somewhere along the way in another town to try and save themselves the trials ahead, or to just simply give up and die. But they perservered. They were committed to come to Zion, and they proved that nothing would get in their way. They left behind every worldly possesion they owned. Some left behind family and friends. They had to bury family members on the trail and leave their bodies for the wild animals to find. Some lost limbs to frost bite. They were hungry, tired and freezing cold and yet they NEVER doubted their faith and their call to come to Zion. They never felt abandoned by the Lord. They could find appreciation in the simplest things. What amazing, committed saints these pioneers were. It was humbling and inspiring to read about these pioneers before trek. Brad and I both went through family journals and histories and found stories about our own ancestors coming to Zion. It was surreal to walk in the same places they walked, and to experience maybe one tenth of what they experienced. I am amazed so many of them survived. We tend to focus so much on how many died (in the Willie and Martin handcart companies about 1/4th of them died on the journey), but I think the amazing thing here is 75% of them lived. AMAZING!

One of the things Brad and I worried the most about was being in charge of 9 teenagers that were complete strangers to us and to eachother. We have a large stake (14 wards) so as you can imagine we don't know the kids and they don't know each other. 9 kids were assigned to our family, and not one of them was in our ward, and we didn't have 2 kids from the same ward either. So we all were starting from square one. I must admit I was a bit skeptical of this when they told us they were dividing out the families this way, but it turned out to be a great thing. We had the BEST kids in the whole stake. We grew to love every single one of them and they impressed us so much.

Trek didn't go off without a hitch. There were A LOT of logistical issues... major issues. One of them being not enough food. They warned us the first night would be meager (broth and rolls), but then we were told it would be plenty of food after that. I have never been so hungry in my entire life. Some days we would go 10-12 miles and 10 1/2 hours between meals (and the meals probably couldn't even be called meals they were more of a snack). It was rough, but our kids never complained. They would be so hungry that they started picturing the different rocks on the trail as food. They would find a rock and pick it up and say, "oh this looks like a hamburger, or a scone, or cookies and cream ice cream." We would all dream about what we were going to eat when we got home. It was a big debate whether we were going to eat or shower first!

We planned a big party out on the trail to have when we got home, and all the kids cared about was that there was food at it. So we had that party last night! And there was FOOD!

Our "kids" enjoying Brad's BBQ hamburgers and chicken

Posing on the playset! And there's nothing like a good game of spoons!

We had a fun filled night of games, handstand contests, plank wars, food, inside jokes, and food again!

Trek was definitely one of those life changing experiences that gave me a different outlook on a lot of things in life. I'm glad we got to go.... really! I know anyone in my family reading this probably doesn't believe that because they got all the nitty gritty details of the whole thing and they saw me the day after ( I looked like I'd been hit by a truck)! But it was a great experience!