Today is July 2nd and we are still recovering from our time with our Stake’s youth conference and pioneer trek. Before our memory starts to dim we want to put this into our mission history, and include it as one of the highlights of our experience here as missionaries in North Dakota.
There may be some of you who may wonder what we were doing, going on a trek? The answer is that we bargained to go, promising that we would pay our own way and provide our own transportation. We have made it our policy to be at every youth activity held by the Bismarck Stake and it just made sense to go with the same youth whom we see in seminary. Besides this, the course we will be studying this coming seminary year is Church History and the Doctrine and Covenants. Going on the Pioneer Trek with the youth would be a perfect setting to begin the Seminary year. When we volunteered to help with the cooking, and because we knew something about Dutch Ovens, the invitation was extended and we jumped at the chance and said “yes!”
The Stake Young Women President and her husband (the main doctor), were in charge of the food. Everything had been so well organized that it was easy to take assignments and help prepare some of the food beforehand. We helped to purchase and prepare Beef Stew, as well as variations of cobblers and cakes. The Shaws, who recently moved from Denver, brought up six of our Dutch Ovens, sleeping bags and tent. Seeing our old black Dutch ovens was like seeing old friends again. With other borrowed dutch ovens wewere ready to go ‘Treking.’
Once again we were reminded of the hardship experienced by the early Saints, even if it was only a few days. We had encouraged a young woman from the Ft. Yates Branch to come and attend the youth conference. She is not a member, though her mother is, and she made a decision be with a friend from the Bismarck ward. With Ashley Weasel on the trek we were very sensitive to what was being said. We reminded ourselves that the Native Americans do not look upon the settlement of North America in the same way that we do. But the story of the gathering of the church to Utah is one of families, and one of sacrifice. It is the story of a persecuted people who would have been satisfied to remain in their homelands had that been possible. This was the beginning of a story that would cover two decades, 1846– 1868, of the trek of these faithful souls. They came to their precious Zion walking beside covered wagons, and pulling handcarts; sailed from Europe, traveled by river boats, and railway. Approximately 70,000 people migrated to “Zion”, 3,000 of those came by handcart. As they traveled they built communities and way-stations to benefit those who would follow. They married, bore children and many times buried their loved ones who perished because of the rigors of the crossing. This they did because of their testimonies of Jesus Christ and their belief in the restoration of the Gospel through a modern-day prophet. This is the important story of the early pioneers.
Our youth broke camp every day by striking the tents and loading everything in the handcarts, even if they were returning to the same camp site. At the end of each day, they re-pitched their tents and established their camp. Our stake leaders felt that this would give them a greater, realistic experience of a pioneer’s day. We never heard anyone complaining.
Women did the ‘Women’s pull”, pulling the loaded handcarts to the top of the hill without the strength of their men and young men. The men stood by, hats in hand, tears running down their faces, as they watched the sisters’ struggle through the gruesome ordeal. When one of the young women collapsed, the young men gathered and knelt in prayer, pleading to the Lord to give their sisters the strength to complete the task. All of this was very touching to those who witnessed the scene.
This is not the first time we have witnessed the “Women’s pull” and we have worried for those who, on a hot day and unconditioned for the task, are called upon to spend their strength in this fashion. But we also see the results of moving the youth to a level of emotion and understanding as they come to the realization that pioneer women went beyond their strength to pull handcarts, drive teams of horses and oxen and perform the labors of men.
Another moving experience was the crossing of the Sweet Water. This year the runoff from the snowpack in the Wind River Mountains has been excessive and the rivers are high. We could not take the handcarts through because of the depth of the water but everyone waded across to experience what others did. A few were carried on the backs of the young men but most walked into the swift current, water up to their waists, and trudged through.
Weather- excellent! In previous weeks they have had snow, rain, and fierce winds, but our 4 days in Wyoming were warm sunny days with breeze enough. Our biggest problem was mosquitoes in the early evening. We were lucky!
All 3 members of the Stake Presidency were there, and most of the adults were the stake and ward YM/YW leaders. We knew almost all the kids, and got a chance to meet some who will be new 9th grade seminary students this year.
We did not walk the entire distance of the trek but we were able to walk part of it. Our main purpose was food preparation. Each morning breakfast was to be ready by 6:30 AM which meant getting up with the “chickens.” We did use the Dutch Ovens to cook cobblers one night, upside-down cakes another night, and pork roast with vegetables. Each meal was a big hit and we were blessed to have everything turn out right.
We enjoyed meeting the missionaries serving at Martin’s Cove and Sixth Crossing. We seemed to get preferential treatment because we were wearing the name badge. One missionary couple came from Overland Park, Kansas, and we enjoyed catching up on news and information on many of our old friends.
We were using one of our smaller tents, which had plenty of room for sleeping and supplies, but not enough height to be able to stand up. It made dressing, undressing, getting into and out of bed more challenging. We joked about needing to lasso our toes to pull our feet close enough to put on our socks and shoes. By the end of the week we were wishing for younger years and more agile bodies.
We have just been treated to have a visit by Wayne and Lucynda Champlin. They were taking a vacation and wanted to come and visit us here in Bismarck. We remember Wayne being baptized a couple of weeks before we left to come on this mission. He and Lucynda were sealed in the Denver Temple about a month ago and they wanted to go with us to the Bismarck temple. We had a glorious evening together and we were blessed to have the temple presidency, and others, go out of their way to make things perfect. We are so thankful to these wonderful people for making our friends feel so welcomed and loved.
We are very busy getting ready for the 2010-2011 seminary year. Currently we are in the middle of another On-line Program training course. We are learning so much and we are seeing the great advancement over the course that we worked with over this past year. There is a learning curve to everything and so much has been learned from the past two years. Last year we held conference calls weekly with our online class, which worked fine. But this coming year we will have access to “Meeting Place” which will allow the students and teacher to use the computer to teach the class. We are looking forward to this new adventure.
Last week Branch Conference was held at Fort Yates. We had spent part of Saturday, with our two elders, cleaning the church and the grounds. It was beautiful. We don’t know if anyone could see a difference but we do know that no one was distracted by the sense of filthiness. The missionaries made a big effort to get the word out to many of our inactive members and we had a record number in attendance. Oh how we all wish that we could have those members in attendance every week. We had a wonderful Pot-Luck following the meetings and everyone went home, some traveling 5 ½ hours, full of good food and filled with the spirit.
Well, today is July 22nd and we started this update on July 2nd. (So much for writing down our experiences early before we forget things.) The summer months are a challenge without the structure of schedules that we have during the school year but it has been full of wonderful activities. We have been working two evenings in the temple and continue to have wonderful experiences in our service. We also watch after the flower gardens by the temple and keep out the weeds around the stake center. There are plenty of things to do.
We love and appreciate you all.
Love,
Elder and Sister Harris
Steve and Kris
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