Pioneer Trek

David and I were asked to be the "Ma" and "Pa" for our stake youth pioneer trek. We were very apprehensive about the whole ordeal. David has had horrible foot problems and had a hard time walking around the block with out pain. The thought of trekking 20+ miles seemed nearly impossible. I was a bit apprehensive because we were in charge of not only the physical well-being for our group of teenagers, but it was up to us as to the spiritual experiences they would have. - A bit of an overwhelming task, to say the least. We figured that we were asked for a reason and so we accepted.

We got to our starting place and met our "family", a group of 9 teenagers ages 14 to 17. We were supposed to have a big brother or big sister to help with cooking, activities, and other stuff assigned from the stake, but there were too many last minute cancellations, so it was just David and me. We were so blessed with a wonderful group of kids. All of the kids in our group were very upbeat and willing to do what ever was asked of them. We did have some complaints about feet hurting and missing their ipods, but not enough to "poison" the attitude of everyone else.

We pulled the handcart loaded with our belongings about 8 miles the first day. It was almost 100 degrees and muggy. We discovered that the trek route was through tick city. Everyone got ticks on them. At the end of the first day, the kids saw the camp site and literally ran with the handcart into camp. We camped by a river and we sent the kids to play in the river while we prepared dinner. This is what I was worried about. I have a hard time cooking at home on the stove, let alone in a dutch oven. It is a good thing the kids were hungry. Taste didn't matter that much, although the stake had given us pretty fool-proof recipes.

We had a very nice fireside later that evening.

More to come---