The Trek was AMAZING!

The trek was everything I had hoped for it to be. All of the experiences and activities I planned went so well. I had the most amazing experience. I will never forget this! I feel blessed to have been apart of this and hope that I will be able to do many more treks. The Lord blessed us so much on this trek. It was a miracle that we walked away with no major injuries or illnesses. This really gave me a deeper appreciation for the pioneers and everything they sacrificed for the church.

When we arrived at our starting point all of the carts were lined up ready for us to pack them up and go. Everyone was so excited.

Are you impressed with my cow pie stacking skills? I collected these for the cow pie toss for the second nights activities.This picture is supposed to be further down. Bad blog.It is doing crazy things and it is driving me crazy.

The womens pull. This picture is supposed to be further down too. This was such an amazingly super powerfully awesome experience for the girls (written by Nathan in Polly's terms).

Ok here we go, here the leaders are pulling the cart. We didn't pull it for very long because we were doing so many other things, but when we did pull it it wasn't easy! and we didn't even have anything in the cart. The youth kept on making fun of us.

We lowered this cart down to simulate "The Hole in the Rock story". We were going to have them take their carts down this hill but it was way too dangerous. The doctor literally started swetting bullets when he found out we were going to try it needles to say he was very releived when we decided not to do it. But we had the youth get a good look at it and told them a hole in the rock story.

This is murder hill. You can kind of get a picture of how steep this hill is. They had to get to the top of this at the very end of the first day and at the top we set up camp.

The sunset on the first night was so beautiful. We camped at the top of murder hill so the veiw was beautiful.

The morning of the second day we had one of the families baby die. They dug a grave for her and had a service. It was pretty emotional- well for the girls. Here the mom is getting her baby ready to be put in the grave.

The 2nd day while the kids were trekking I gave out hardships to all of the families. Some of the families were not happy to see me because they got word of what I was doing. This family was suffering from dehydration and they needed to get water for their family ASAP. So they had to dig a hole to find water. We made them dig a hole that was 4 feet deep. It took them almost an hour, but they did it and I was really impressed. I got all of these hardships from things that actually happened to the pioneers.

For this family I took away their nice snack of trail mix and candy and had them eat what the pioneers ate. They were given a bag of 4ounces of flour in it that they had to make a paste out of. the pioneers called it gruel and would eat it raw or cook it like a pancake. The Martin and Willie handcart companies were so desperate for food that their food rations got as low as 4 ounces of flour per day. After I told this family their challenge, they just stared at me "Are you for real". It was great. I got a few choice words from a girl but for the most part they did pretty good with it. Adam the guy in the picture is from my ward. He was such a sport and was choking that stuff down like a champ. The girls face behind him is really funny.

Here is our trading post. As the youth were trekking they came upon this. They were really excited to see this because we had a lot of good food that they traded for. They traded their bracelets they made along with their hats, sunglasses etc. The Indians drove a hard bargain and the youth gave a lot to get those watermelons.

This is President Lee. When we got to camp all the youth played in the river. And of course so did President Lee. He is such an amazing Stake President and man. I loved being able to get to know him more and spend time with him.He reminds me of Joseph Smith. He is very charismatic and a great speaker. He is incredaibly funny and is constantly telling jokes. He is always the life of the party and he likes to play with the youth, so they all love him. And of course he is an incredible spritual leader. He is the type of man that everyone just wants to be around. Our stake dearly loves him. Oh yes, his pants are christmas polar bears pajamma pants that he cut off with a knife and that is why they are all jagged. They made me laugh.

Our camp site for the 2nd night.

So for the 2nd night we had a huge game night and dance. I had the kids compete in the stick pull, three legged race, cow pie toss, arm wrestling, tug of war and a pie eating contest. The night was so much fun. And you know it is good when you see the boys who have been "To Cool" actually getting into it and having fun. Here I am collecting cow pies for the youth to throw. Everyone was really leary of me wanting to do this. And what do you know the youth loved it! I am not surprised. They especially loved it when the trek leader Tom got out there and was a live target for them to hit. The kids that hit him got extra candy, genious!

Each family did tug of war against each other to find the strongest family. The youth loved this.

The show down... to see who was the strongest female and male. The youth loved this. Everyone was screaming and cheering so loud.

In the morning of the 3rd day the youth had to ferry their handcarts across the river. This was really fun for them.

This is our Stake President. We rented him this uniform and he came riding in and greeted the youth and told the men he was part of the Mormon Batalion taking them off to fight the war. He did such an incredible job, especially considering he had never ridden a horse. He took the men up the hill and talked to them on the importance of being a man and respecting women.

Here, all the young men were clapping and cheering for the girls doing the Womens pull. When the girls saw this it made some of them cry even harder; because they were already so emotional from being pushed so hard. Some of them started to hyperventalate because they couldn't breath trying to push hundreds of pounds up a hill. Needless to say this was extremely hard for them. It was very long, steep hill to climb. This was definently a very touching and humbling experience for the youth. Many of the ym cried too becasue it was so hard for them to see the girls go through this and not be able to help them.

Just walking the plains. The scenery was beautiful.

This is all the youth coming into the "Valley". Their parents were there to greet them and we had a big feast. It was great, especially after eating so many of my nasty homeade protein bars that I choked down for three days.