Pioneers

This coming week is my church's pioneer day celebration so last night was our ward party to commerate it. We had to start out and load up our hand card organize our families and begin our journey. We went around to different stations to see how the pioneers lived and to hear stories about some handcart companies and a few determined pioneers.

We got to turn butter, that was interesting and easier than I thought it would be. We had a race in our handcart company between some of our youth, of course none of them had to get the patience to go till it was done but in the end we got some fresh turned butter to have and it was good.

Our next stop was to hear stories about pioneers, the relief society president tells a story that brings me to tears everytime I hear it about her great great grandmother and how she came to be in the Salt Lake Valley. I don't remember the womans name so I will call her Sue. Sue's family was from Denmark and they were taught by missionaries in the early days of the church, were converted and wanted to go to Zion. Unfortunately since there were nine children they could not go all at once so they paired the children up and sent 2 at a time. The two oldest went first to set up a home there and help get things settled for the rest of the family. The next to go was Sue, she was 11. Since there was 9 children one had to go by themselves and they decided that was Sue. Some missionaries were on their way to the States so the took Sue along, she had a very long, very lonely boat ride from Europe to the states and once there she made it all the way to St Louis with these missionaries but after that they said they could no longer let her tag along and set her up with a nice family to work for. So at 11 she found herself in St Louis with a family that while nice, was entirely unfamilar. She became their nurse maid, help, she cleaned and took care of the kids and in return they gave a place to stay food to eat and an income. After 2 years with this family she decided she had saved up enough money and at 13 began to walk to Council Bluffs, which for those who don't know is at the complete opossite side of the state. She did finally make it to the great Salt Lake Valley and lifed a long happy life there but it didn't come without trials and perserverance. The strength and faith that these pioneers had was amazing, I am truely grateful for their sacrifices that helped build the Kingdom of God on this earth and I am equally greatful to be a part of it and to help the work move foward in this day.

Our next stop along the trail was our game room, we got to play some of the games the pioneers loved. First was the.., well I don't know what it was called, but we had to race to hammer a nail into some wood, Kevin won everyone he did!! I lost everyone but that's ok, he'll do the hammering in the family, lol. Next we did the..., oh I can't remember what this one is called either, it is where you sit feet to feet and pull on a stick to try to pull the other one over. Anyway, seeing as Kevin and I are incredibly competitive with each other we had a go, after a little stuggle, although he'll say it wasn't but the look on his face said otherwise, he did win, and went on to win several other after that. I think he really likes to win, lol.

After that we heard more stories and ended in Zion for some miggling and cobbler, I made a peach cobbler but it didn't turn out very good, I used to much cake mix and butter for the crumbly crust, oh well, I'm sure it wasn't as bad as I thought it was. During all our fun of finally making it to Zion the relief society president of my ward came up and pointed out that the hair line of the first presidency and the hair lines of our bishop brick are exactly the same, Bro Hunsaker pointed it out to her, leave it up to bro Hunsaker to notice something like that. LOL!