Fireside Talk on Pioneer Trek Experience

THE GOOD OLD DAYS

Do your parents ever tell you how hard life was in the old days?  Don’t you hate hearing that?  Here are some of the things that I have told my own kids over the years when they have complained:

·         I had to walk two miles to and from school every day—and it was uphill both directions (halfway true)

·         When we went to a fast food restaurant, it was only once or twice a year and we had to choose between a small hamburger or French fries, not both, and no drink (true)

·         We had to go to church three times every Sunday and to primary during the week (true)

·         We were so poor that my first bike was from a DI and was so tall I had to stand on a stump to jump on it and it didn’t have any brakes (true)

·         We were so poor we couldn’t afford skis or a ski pass so I had wooden skis and leather boots that you laced up that even then were 25 years old that only cost $5 at DI and I had to go to the ski resort and walk  to the top of the slope and ski back down when everyone else had lift passes (true)

·         Our high school football coach weighed over 350 pounds and would hit anyone who got out of line with a large wooden paddle that had two large holes drilled in it so he could swing it faster, which left two round incredibly huge welts in the area of your buttocks (true)

·         I had three part-time jobs my senior year of high school – one of them was waking up at 2:00 a.m. every morning to clean restaurants (true)

Aren’t these annoying things to hear? It is tempting for the older generation to imagine that the younger generation is spoiled and doesn’t face significant challenges.  It has probably always been tempting for every generation to think this way.  You are likely to think this way about your own children – you will tell them how tough your life was, how you had to help with the dishes, or walk to the bus stop, or play 2 dimensional video games, or do your own homework on an old fashioned computer. I hope you will know what to say to them and what kind of things might help them overcome the challenges they will face. 

The truth is that every generation faces unique challenges and in some ways the challenges are getting more difficult, not easier.  Your challenges are very difficult.  They include being way too busy or having way too much free time, not having adequate opportunities to learn to work hard and serve others, too much money for some of you and too little for others, and too easy access to the negative influences of media and the Internet.   

TURNING THE HEARTS OF THE CHILDREN TO THE FATHERS

How are the experiences of your parents and grandparents and great-grandparents relevant to you?  Does anyone remember the scripture from Malachi that Moroni quoted to Joseph Smith on his first visit?  Read Malachi 4:5-6:

5 Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord;

6 And he shall turn the heart of the fathers to the children, and the heart of the children to their fathers, lest I come and smite the earth with a curse.

I doubt Joseph Smith knew why this scripture was so important when he first heard it.  Eventually he learned that it included the restored keys to do baptisms for the dead for our deceased ancestors.  But if you read it carefully, it says more than that: Elijah was to turn not just our works, but our hearts, to our fathers.  In other words, the keys that Elijah restored do not merely relate to ordinances – but to our hearts, meaning that we must learn to love our parents, grandparents and ancestors and to love and think about our own descendants in order that the earth may not be smitten with a curse.   I’m pretty sure the curse he is talking about is ingratitude and pride, which is surely something that is increasing in our world today. 

This brings me to the subject of tonight’s meeting: Pioneer Trek.  As I talk about my own experiences with Trek, and the experiences you will probably have, think about that scripture from Malachi: why does it matter to have your heart turned to your fathers?  How will this help you? 

I know this is hard to imagine, but I have personally been on over 50 pioneer treks.  Let me tell you how this strange thing came about.

MY FIRST TREK

My first experience on trek was when I was 15 years old.  Our stake went on a pioneer trek organized by BYU.  Two years earlier we had been on a similar program called Wilderness Trek. Together, these two experiences had a truly profound effect on me and changed the course of my life.  You have to realize that at the age of 13, I was the classic case of a “nerd.”  I wore pants that were too short and rode too high on my waist, a calculator on my belt, had glasses that turned dark in the sun and never seemed to quite clear up indoors, and played the flute. I liked science so much I turned in four projects rather than just one.  I was so bad at basketball that they cut me from the church team.  We had to do something called the presidential fitness challenge where you get a certificate if you could do 8 pull-ups and 30 pushups and could run a mile in less than 8 or 9 minutes.  When it was my turn, I could barely hang onto the bar at all let alone do a single pull-up.  And I had to do this in front of an entire co-ed gym class.  I was truly pathetic.  In fact, I once used my flute case as a weapon to beat back a bully who kept teasing me on the school bus.  He didn’t bother me after that.  In my career as a nerd, I was shy and self-absorbed.  That is why I studied so hard, because I had to have something I could brag about.  It was a vicious circle and there was no way I could get out of it without outside intervention.  Perhaps I never did come out of it. 

And then came Trek.  I had never done anything so difficult before.  The Treks BYU ran were enormously challenging – sometimes you would pull the handcart the first day without food and without much water until 1:00 or 2:00 in the morning.  That’s not what is in store for you.  Treks are different now. Much more focused on the spiritual and historical and social experience.  But Trek was what I needed.  Somehow, the experience gave me self-esteem and helped me to know I had more capabilities than I thought I had.  It helped me know that I could change. On Trek, everyone sets aside their fashionable clothing and money and all dressed up like pioneers.  It is like the temple that way.  It helped us look past outward appearances and see each other as God sees us.  In 1 Samuel 16:7, we read:

But the Lord saith unto Samuel, Look not on his countenance, or on the height of his stature…for the Lord seeth not as man seeth; for man looketh on the outward appearance, but the Lord looketh on the heart.

On Trek, whether you were popular or not, good at sports or not, or had money didn’t matter.  We learned to see each others hearts and I found out that I liked everyone in my Trek family, and they all liked me.  I learned to be grateful for my own family and parents and for my heritage.  I learned how important the contribution of each family member is to making a family function well.  And I had my first real experiences with sincere, sustained vocal prayer, because both of these Treks included a solo experience in the mountains. 

After coming back from Trek, I set goals for myself to change.  I started an exercise program and soon joined track and cross country.  I quit the flute and started singing and playing the guitar.  After Trek, I tried to be more outgoing and kind and friends with everyone.  This eventually got me involved in student government.  I came away a much better and happier person.  And the effect wasn’t temporary.  The Trek experiences I had as a young man had a more long-lasting and profound effect on my happiness and my future than any other experience I had as a young person, including scouting and including attending EFY on three separate occasions.

The years passed and I went on a mission to Argentina.  My trek experience helped again because of how much walking I had to do on my mission.  My first companion was an Argentine who loved to walk and walked so fast I almost had to jog to keep up with him.  Sometimes we would walk 8-10 hours a day.  I got huge blisters on my feet the first few weeks and had to hobble around until I finally gave away my missionary clodhopper shoes and bought a pair of black tennis shoes.  I could not have kept up with him if it hadn’t been for Trek. 

MY LIFE AS A PA

When I was a student at BYU after my mission, I looked on the job board and saw an ad for a job as a Pioneer Trek “pa.” I applied and was accepted and spent the entire summer of 1985 going every single week (over 13 times) into the mountains with different stakes from all over Utah, Colorado, Arizona and Idaho.  We did Treks in the desert near Tooele early in the season and later we did them above Daniels Canyon in Heber.  There were about 16 of us – all BYU students – who would leave every Thursday morning and drive a big stake-bed 2 ton truck up the canyon, filled to the brim with handcarts and wheels and canvas and big boxes full of pioneer food supplies.  Behind us was a suburban pulling a two axle trailer that was filled with four portable toilets and up to 20 live turkeys that someone had to pick up in Moroni every Wednesday.  Sometimes the turkeys would end up getting covered with the blue chemicals from the portable toilets as they sloshed around while they were getting pulled up the dirt roads. We called this trailer the “honey wagon” because at the end of the week when those toilets were full, we had to pull it back out of the mountains to a place where the toilets could be cleaned and it had a unique smell and would sometimes drip “honey” as it wound its way down mountain roads.  Let’s just say you didn’t want to be driving right behind it. 

Every week we would meet about 200 young people and their leaders and we would all unload the big truck and divide up into families of about 12-15 youth and a ma and pa and then assemble the handcart.  We had to put axle grease on the wheels and cut new leather washers every week so that the metal inside the wheel wouldn’t get worn out.  Every family was new and exciting and unique and we would try to get kids together who didn’t know each other.  The first thing we did is that each family came up with its own name and slogan and each young person came up with a new nickname for themselves.  This allowed people to sort of start over with the way they interacted with others, start a new approach to life.

I got a new ma every week, always a single college age woman from the Stake that was coming on the trek.  One of my ma’s was a beautiful young woman who had also served with me in Argentina as a missionary.  During that summer, it was on a Trek that I climbed to the top of the mountain to pray about whether I should ask her to marry me.  I did it and for some unknown reason she said yes, and shortly after the end of the summer we were married in the Salt Lake Temple.

MY LIFE AS DIRECTOR OF PIONEER TREK

At the end of that summer they hired me as the director of the program.  Over the next three years, I went on another 12-13 treks every summer.  I worked part-time during the school year planning for the next season, making presentations to various stakes, writing and rewriting training materials, ordering new wheels, hiring new mas and pas and training them.  Sitting right next to my cubicle was a skinny blonde guy who had just become the director of EFY.  He had a sort of silly laugh and did great Barney Fife imitations.  Can anyone guess who that was?  His name was John Bytheway and nobody knew at the time that he would dedicate the rest of his life to giving EFY talks and writing books.  I remember wondering why he was so excited about EFY, which I thought of mostly as a week-long party that was nothing compared to the Trek, which actually changed people’s lives! 

Every week was a new and wonderful experience.  Every stake had a different character: I remember the youth from West Valley who came from families without much money.  Some had only one parent or a parent who was ill or disabled.  Some had parents who were alcoholics or drug addicts or had other problems.  Some of the youth themselves had serious problems.  But these youth were unique because they were very humble and teachable and invariably had great experiences.  I also remember a stake where most of the youth seemed to have everything material they wanted in life.  Some of them had a harder time learning from the experience.  And yet even they had great experiences if they would give 100% to the program.

What really mattered most was the attitude and preparation of the youth.  Some came more prepared than others.  They had been praying that they would have a good experience, studying their scriptures and learning about their pioneer heritage.  They came with an open mind and a willingness to pitch in and participate.  They came with their own pioneer stories about their ancestors, whether or not they were pioneers.  They jumped into the square dancing and other activities we had and made the activities fun by their enthusiasm.  These youth invariably had an incredible experience on Trek. 

I emailed all my Trek buddies the other day to ask if they had any good Trek stories or experiences to share, and one of them – a former “pa”—wrote back and said this:

The morning after the “big pull” we met as a group and were sharing inspirational stories about the Pioneers and then we opened it up for personal pioneer stories people knew about their ancestors.  After several people shared their stories, a Native American kid stood up and said, “My ancestors wiped out a whole company of pioneers!”

Not everyone has pioneers for ancestors, but everyone has ancestors who were pioneers in their own way. 

The same Pa also said this:

What always impressed me the most was the unpopular kids saying that for the first time in their life they felt accepted by their peers because of how they were treated by their pioneer family.  I also had many experiences when I ran into youth and adults later in life that didn’t seem that excited about Trek when they were on it, but they talked about what a powerful experience it was in their life.

The only way you can avoid having a positive experience on Trek is if you are dead set against having a positive experience.  And I am sure that it will be more than just a positive experience for those who come with the right attitude and the right preparation – for these youth it will be a fabulous, life-changing experience.  Preparation and attitude will be the determining factor in your Trek experience just as in virtually every aspect of your life.  Preparation is simple: pray that you will have a good experience and learn, and try to find out about your own ancestors, whether or not they were actual pioneers.  Having the right attitude means more than simply a positive attitude – I am talking about something much more significant, something that comes from trying to approach Trek and every experience in your life with enthusiasm, with gratitude, with humility and with faith.  If you do this, you will increase your chance of success and happiness on Trek and in life. 

One of the very few youth I met who had a difficult time learning from Trek was one of my sons named Branton, who pulled me aside [during a tough part of the handcart pull] and chewed me up the left side and down the right.  This guy was a football player from a big stake in Salt Lake City.  You’d think he would have been able to handle the Trek better than almost anyone.  But instead, he did little to prepare and came on Trek with a bad attitude.  He became angry that they weren’t getting fed and that I wouldn’t or couldn’t tell him where or how far they were going to go.  Branton was about ready to hit me and I really didn’t want him to do that.  At the time I only weighed 142 pounds from walking hundreds of miles that summer, or about 40 pounds less than I weigh now.  I had to just tell him he had to keep going.  He walked behind the cart for a while, refusing to help, but after a couple of hours he came up again and decided that he would keep pushing.

Ultimately Branton had a good experience, but not until he changed the way he was thinking.  His attitude was ruining the experience—not the experience itself.  Everyone else on that cart was pulling with all their heart and refused to give up.  It was all he could do to pull at all.  He had no humility, no interest in learning, no faith or ability to trust his Pa or the Trail boss, who had done this many times before and who only had his best interests in mind.  Once he changed his thinking and became more humble, everything changed for him.  This is a lot like life and it’s a lot like our experience in the Church.  As a member of the church, the experience you have in your ward and in the gospel is far more dependent on your attitude and your humility than it is on how good your ward or your bishop is, or what specific calling you might have. 

PIONEER TREK OUTREACH

In 1986 we decided to start doing something we called Pioneer Trek Outreach, which was to help organize and conduct treks in other parts of the country.  Over the next three years we did treks in the high desert of Arizona, in a state park in Pennsylvania, in southern Alberta, and in other places.  It was amazing to travel all over the country and meet members of the Church from different areas.  We had a trek in Pennsylvania and made the mistake of taking our black powder rifles.  We didn’t realize the effect the humidity and rain would have on the rifles – all of them were ruined by the end of the week.  We also had never experienced how truly pitch black the sky can be at night in the East – the first night there had a thick cloud cover and you could not see your hand in front of your face after 10:00 p.m.  The final 200 yards of the pull was a steep downhill section.  I was standing at the fire waiting for the first carts to come and in the distance you could see this little white blip appear at the top of the hill, reflecting the firelight, and as the cart went over the edge, it would start picking up speed and you could hear the kids screaming in the distance as one by one they began to let go of the cart and the cart would go faster and faster until it seemed to be a bullet and suddenly it would appear by the side of the fire, usually with only one teenager still clinging to the handle for dear life – everyone else had fallen off.  Fortunately no one got hurt – and in fact this experience and many others helped me to realize that the Lord was physically protecting the Trek participants. 

In the summer of 1987, we did our second trek in Southern Alberta, just north of Glacier National Park.  I was busy with another trek somewhere else in the country so I couldn’t go, but we sent three experienced Trekkies up to Canada to help and felt pretty good about things because we had done another Trek the summer before in the same area.  This was a very remote and beautiful area and we had to bring riders on horses carrying large guns because of the risk of bears.   Everything was well organized, but on the very first night, as it got dark, a freak summer storm hit the group.  They were pelted with wind and freezing rain and then snow which quickly turned into blizzard conditions as if they were pulling their handcarts in the middle of the winter.  There were nearly 200 teenagers and adult leaders pulling handcarts in a blizzard, over 100 miles from civilization.  There were a few four wheel drive vehicles there with them and a motorhome, but they had no way of sheltering that many people that quickly.  It became very serious very fast.  The Trail boss and the Stake president who was on the Trek spoke and they and a few other leaders knelt in prayer to ask for help.  They knew that they could not save themselves.  After praying, they felt that they needed to go on a little farther and within a half hour they found something miraculous – a large Quonset hut, which is an airplane hangar shaped like a dome, in the middle of a field in the middle of nowhere.  And it was open.  They were able to get all 200 people inside and start warming them up and taking care of the most risky cases of hypothermia.  They found a phone and were able to get vehicles in so that they could shuttle people out.  They got everyone home to safety.  A few ended up in the hospital for a day or two but everyone was ok.  This was on a Thursday night, and Sunday night they decided to have everyone come to the Stake Center for a testimony meeting to end their youth conference. 

Now think about what the reaction of the parents or youth could have been.  They could have been angry that their lives were put at risk, that there wasn’t a better plan for getting them out of there.  Instead, the most incredible spirit pervaded that testimony meeting.  Everyone in that meeting felt that they had been touched by the most incredible experience of their lives – they had caught just a little vision of what the real pioneers went through, particularly the Martin and Willey companies, who were stuck in a storm like that one for days without supplies and without warm clothing or bedding.  Those who attended this Trek and testimony meeting later said it was by far the most spiritual experience of their lives.  The hearts of many people were touched as they came to truly

understand what their ancestors had experienced. 

SURVIVOR OF THE MARTIN HANDCART COMPANY

This reminds me of a story of a pioneer that was retold by Elder Backman in a talk he gave called “Faith in Every Footstep,” (see Ensign, Jan 1997, 7)

Of all the illustrations of faith in the Lord, few stories are more powerful than that told of the pioneer who years later stood to defend the decision of the Martin Handcart Company to start for the Salt Lake Valley late in the year of 1856. He had been one of the nearly 3,000 Saints who walked from Iowa and Nebraska to Utah between 1856 and 1860 in one of 10 companies pushing and pulling handcarts loaded with their belongings.

In a Sunday School class there was sharp criticism of the ill-fated Martin and Willie Handcart Companies, which met with tragedy because of their late start on the trek to the Salt Lake Valley.

An elderly man arose and said: “I ask you to stop this criticism. You are discussing a matter you know nothing about. Cold historic facts … give no proper interpretation of the questions involved. Mistake to send the Handcart Company out so late in the season? Yes. But I was in that company and my wife … too. We suffered beyond anything you can imagine and many died of exposure and starvation, but … we became acquainted with [God] in our extrem[i]ties.

“I have pulled my handcart when I was so weak and weary from illness and lack of food that I could hardly put one foot ahead of the other. I have looked ahead and seen a patch of sand or a hill slope and I have said, I can go that far and there I must give up, for I cannot pull the load through it. … I have gone on to that sand and when I reached it, the cart began pushing me. I have looked back many times to see who was pushing my cart, but my eyes saw no one. I knew then that the angels of God were there.

“Was I sorry that I chose to come by handcart? No. Neither then nor any minute of my life since. The price we paid to become acquainted with God was a privilege to pay, and I am thankful that I was privileged to come in the Martin Handcart Company” (as quoted in David O. McKay, “Pioneer Women,” The Relief Society Magazine, Jan. 1948, 8).

The Park City Utah Stake is going to the very location where the Martin and Willie Handcart companies became acquainted with God in their extremities.  It is a holy place.  The last Trek I experienced was four years ago when my wife and I went as a Pa and Ma to the same place you are going.  Some of our pioneer trek kids were there then and are here tonight.  I am so excited about the incredible experience and spirit that awaits you there.

THE PIONEER TREK GUARANTEES

To every group of youth who came on Trek, we made five promises, which we called “The Five Guarantees of Pioneer Trek.”  When I asked Brother Tingey and Sister Quinn to tell me more about what they had planned so far, Sister Quinn sent me a list of six objectives for the Park City Pioneer Trek.  Amazingly, these objectives match the original five guarantees almost exactly.  Here are the six objectives she described.

#1 Gain a stronger testimony of Jesus Christ

#2 Recognize when standing in Holy Places

#3 Appreciate our pioneer legacy

#4 Increase self-worth

#5 Appreciate eternal families

#6 Learn to love, care and respect others

The only one of these six that wasn’t part of the original Pioneer Trek five guarantees is number two, recognize when standing in Holy Places.  The reason that wasn’t in the original Trek is that the original BYU treks never got to go to somewhere holy like the place you are going.  I am here to tell you that if you go on Pioneer Trek and give 100% to the experience, I promise you that you will achieve these six objectives. 

I am going to read a couple of excerpts from my journal which demonstrate how these objectives were reached for some young people.  I remember Mark, an 18 year old young man who was my “son” on Trek one week, here is an excerpt from my journal about him:

Mark was having a tough time.  On Saturday he didn’t go to any of the workshops.  When I found out I left the workshop I was at and went to find him.  I really felt inspired to do that.  We talked about things for 40 minutes or so.  He doesn’t know whether or not he should go on a mission.  He’s been inactive for a while also.  I tried to listen to him and gave him some suggestions.  Later, when we were talking about a Trek family reunion – he said “Don’t have it after December because I won’t be able to come.”  I found out later that he turns 19 in December.

Here was a young man who was struggling with his testimony and whether to go on a mission.  On Trek he found the spiritual confirmation and answers he sought.  Another experience was as follows:

We had a Bishop in our Trek family that same week, and that Bishop stood up and bore his testimony to the other members of the family.  Afterwards, one of my sons, Ryan, went up and told him that he found out the Church was true when the Bishop was bearing his testimony.

I remember a son in my family one week named Kip who had tears in his eyes most of the week.  On Monday he didn’t want to leave.  He hugged me twice, then he shook my hand and just couldn’t make his feet move.   This young man came from a difficult family that was lacking in love and acceptance.  On Trek, he learned what a family can be and his desire to create a positive environment for his family and his own future family was strengthened.

WHY PIONEER TREK IS UNIQUE

There are many museums in the world.  There are many locations where volunteers reenact living conditions from the past, like Williamsburg Virginia where people live in conditions from 200 years ago.  But the pioneer trek experience is one of the only experiences I am aware of where young people and adults not only try to remember their ancestors, but actually immerse themselves as participants in an effort to recreate the actual living conditions of their ancestors – to suffer a little of what they suffered, eat a little of what they ate, think about things that must have mattered to them.   This is a truly extraordinary opportunity. 

Pioneer Trek will help you fulfill Malachi’s prophecy and turn your heart to your fathers.  It will bring a whole new perspective to your life, a whole new way of facing and overcoming the fairly significant challenges you face and will face as a young person, as a missionary, as a student, as a parent in today’s difficult world.  All of us – whether from the past, the present or the future – are God’s children.  And one of the ways we can become like him is by having our hearts turned to our parents – to our pioneer heritage.  Let me read one final quote to you from a talk by Mary Ellen Edmunds:

We’re all pioneers. Across the years, and across the miles, we blaze our trails through our personal wild frontiers. In a wide variety of circumstances, we cross our plains, sing our songs, bury our dead, deal with our personal sorrows, bear one another’s burdens, visit, comfort, and show compassion. Blessed, honored pioneers! Mary Ellen Edmunds, “Blessed, Honored Pioneers,” Tambuli, Mar 1993, 12

All of us – all of you—are pioneers.  You will understand that more clearly after you participate in Pioneer Trek with enthusiasm, with gratitude, with humility and with faith.  Plus, you will get to tell your parents that now you do know what life was like back in the old days.

Comments

[Pani]

I need help on preparing Pioneer food; need help with some easy recipes please.

[Matt]

They do have a pioneer trek completion certificate that people can download and print - 100 certificates.

http://www.TempleHouseGallery.com

http://www.templehousegallery.com/TREK-COMPLETION-CERTIFICATE-100-COPIES-CERT1001.htm