This year our stake youth conference was an overnight pioneer handcart trek. The stake did an AMAZING job recreating what it must have been like for the handcart companies to trek to the Salt Lake Valley. Although instead of snow and freezing temperatures, we had hot almost 90 degree weather! We have some incredible youth in our stake and we have the BEST youth in our ward! 2nd Ward ROCKS! I was an Aunt in the Briggs Family. Bishop Davis and his wife were the Ma and Pa and they had two daughters and three sons and an egg baby. The egg baby was a pillowcase tied to look like a baby with a raw egg in it, if the egg broke, then the baby died. We named our baby Jedediah and called him Jedi. He made it until lunch then he passed away!

Saturday morning all the handcarts lined up ready to go!

Yummy oatmeal for breakfast, it really wasn't so bad if you dumped in tons of brown sugar!

I LOVE this picture! Bishop and Peter Welsh were hungry!

Saturday, I had The Handcart Song stuck in my head. "...for some must push and some must pull as we go marching up the hill, so merrily on our way we go, until we reach the valley-O! BTW, it's Wed. and I STILL have that song stuck in my head!

Before we started trekking Sat. Pa had to leave on a mission, AND Michelle and Danny died during the night! Michelle and Danny became angels and were able to sing, but not talk and they could not help push or pull the handcarts. Michelle was able to on the woman's pull, but that was it. So our family of seven became a family of five very quickly.

This is the first big hill we did. We are at the top in the first group, is you look closely, between the two trees in the back is the second group coming up the hill.

These mean men on the horses told us they we could not use their road so we had to go up and over the hill!

Here we go up and over! One girl slipped and fell, her foot got run over by the wheel and she broke her little toe. She finished the trek, hiking the whole way.

Off roading in handcarts, gotta love it!

Here we are getting back on the road. We are not pushing them up, we are lowering them down! Most of the guys (boys and men) offered to team up and do all the work so the girls didn't have to.

Taking a rest.

Lunch time!

After lunch, the boys we called off to fight in the Mormon Battalion while the girls went off to do the woman's pull .

There they go, it was really weird after the men left. Then we went to do the woman's pull which of course was really steep and hard! We didn't know this, but the guys were up on a hill watching us! They were really surprised when they heard us singing and laughing the whole time and not complaining. They also said that it was really hard for them to watch us struggle up the hill and they couldn't help us. I didn't take any pictures of the woman's pull because I was too busy!

This is the last stretch of our journey. It was really nice knowing that by the end of the day, I was going to have In-N-Out, a nice hot shower and and a comfy bed to sleep in. I really don't know how I would handle days and months of this!

Danny playing All is Well on his violin.

THE END!