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I had an absolutely wonderful time on Pioneer Trek. It is literally the most memorable, happy time of my youth as far as church is concerned. And we dealt with all of what you described. Our “ma” or “pa” searched through our stuff to make sure no one had smuggled in a walkman (please note this was mid-80s!), extra food, unapproved toiletries, etc. At the age of 14, it didn’t seem intrusive at all. And yes, we went without as much food as we might have wanted to have. We were hungry quite a bit of the time. And as weird as it sounds, we bonded through that.
Also, yes, at one point the boys and men were told to stop pushing/pulling the handcarts and to let the girls/women take it solo. We had to walk along next to the carts, watching those sisters struggle to pull it. We got them water and shouted encouragement. That experience did two things – developed a whole ton of sympathy and empathy among the men for the women, and it also showed the women that they were strong enough and tough enough to do something physically difficult and challenging that they didn’t think they were capable of.
I agree with what others have said – the attitude towards physical health that you’re describing seems to be an invitation to massive civil liability if something goes wrong.
Hope this helps.
Trek isn’t brainwashing. Contrived, yes. Inherently negative, no. Negative for some, yes. Rich and empowering for some, yes.
Brainwashing, no.
Old-Timer wrote:Trek isn’t brainwashing.
Contrived, yes. Inherently negative, no. Negative for some, yes. Rich and empowering for some, yes.
Brainwashing, no.
Well, I don’t see it that way…today.
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I loved being Ma during a Trek. I cannot believe the organizers you have with that information. Not sure where you are going but where we went the owners of the land insisted on water for the kids. I took a full bucket of extra food and handed it out liberally. Whether you search or not, you can tell if phones, ect. are brought. This may be the only time I think our stake got something right. My husband had a harder time than I did with the stories along the way, but as a “family” we talked about how we could apply the lesson or whatever happened in life today. We also made it a point to be respectful of pioneer heritage as well as anyone’s journey. There are pioneers everywhere.
I would say to make it whatever you want when you are with your kids. We both truly loved our kids and that was the memorable part, not all the “stuff”. The women’s pull was really cool for us to work through. I know my husband does not feel that way from the men’s side.
We did a handcart thing for yc one year. Each ward was supposed to build their own handcart. One of our leaders owned a machining shop so we had slick wheels with ball bearings. They didn’t search us for anything. One of the kids in my ward even snuck weed in… At night we snuck across the camp past the guards to the girls side and harassed them with laser pointers all night. They had cabins and guys were in tents… We had bags of flour that were supposed to be babies but when we got to the part where the baby dies the young women in my ward said they’d gotten tired of carrying it and left the bag on some rocks like a mile earlier. We were supposed to hike part of it barefoot through the desert but my entire ward including leaders said that was completely unsafe so we didn’t. When we got to camp, they had so many ill that the medical tents they’d set up were overflowing and 2 girls had to be taken to the hospital for heat exhaustion (It was august in Arizona). If they’d tried to deprive me of water I don’t remember it because I had enough redbulls to make up for it. Oh and a kid in my ward got caught sleeping with the bishop’s daughter from the next ward over in a medical tent at night…
So thats my experience. The whole thing was completely unspiritual for me. Was a lot of fun though…The adults got mad we weren’t playing along with their lessons a lot. But I guess you get out what you put in spiritually.
Also your daughter might be all into it but be careful of the kids like we were. That was 10 years ago. I wish I had a good experience but even then it seemed manipulative. I hate anything where people tell me when or how to feel the spirit. I also just don’t think god rewards stupidity, and hiking barefoot through the desert with limited water dressed like a pioneer for no good reason is stupid. Pioneers did what they did so we don’t have to go through what they did.
I would never encourage my son to go. My parents forced me.
Quote:I also just don’t think god rewards stupidity.
Yeah, there is that.
:clap: Wuwei….ha, ha, ha. Your post had me laughing. Sounds memorable at least.I wasn’t all those things but I was some. Maybe why we had so much fun, we weren’t looking to manipulate kids, just wanted them to feel loved and enjoy some part of the experience. At night we did some debriefing on all the stories kind of like we have to do after church. An added bonus I didn’t expect wase the best part of the entire thing was to spend time working with my spouse. I feel we would have been awesome pioneers. Husband even kept his cool in the midst of his faith crisis, may be one of the only places.
Quote:Maybe why we had so much fun, we weren’t looking to manipulate kids, just wanted them to feel loved and enjoy some part of the experience.
It’s important to realize, no matter how anyone feels about treks, that the statement above applies, probably, to at least 99% of the people who lead and supervise the treks. Even with things that we would label as manipulation, almost nobody who runs them sees it that way. Yes, that is a concern in and of itself, but it also is something that we ought to understand and view charitably, as well.
I am the Pa that was lucky to have “God is Love” as a Ma with me on a Trek (Hello dear, nice to see you posting your usual uplifting stuff, you are a good balance for my pessimism). I am way sensitive to anything that seems like coercion or propaganda and that was the hard part of Trek for me, as some of it was that. There was none of that crazy water or food depravation stuff like the OP listed on our trek. If there had been, I would not have complied with it anyways. I have no problems standing up for myself or those in my charge. In fact I didn’t comply with anything I didn’t feel good about. It was a good experience overall and we love(d) our kids and still enjoy seeing them around the community. We were the “no-pressure family” as one of our trek kids put it to his actual father who was also a Pa on the Trek with us. We just tried hard to help them feel accepted and show them you can be good people without having to be zealots.
The best part was the quality time with my wife. It was fun to spend that many hours in a row with her, something that hasn’t happened since. I don’t know if I’ll do another one of them or not but I have no regrets about the one we went on.
Quote:We were the “no-pressure family” as one of our trek kids put it to his actual father who was also a Pa on the Trek with us. We just tried hard to help them feel accepted and show them you can be good people without having to be zealots.
:clap: This, I belong to a number of volunteer and Eco awareness corps. Zealotry (fanatical ism) is not a good thing in any form.
Just as the church, I love to participate in loving passionate events that don’t go radical. That don’t use coercion, white propaganda or only the worst imagines or descriptions to “scare” people “straight”.
I prefer the natural evolving approach. I see a lot of similarities between those and us and for many of the same reasons and “logic”. Still there are importances to both and if we remain Unfanatical we can enjoy and feel good about ourselves in helping others connect at the same time.
Love that statement.
It was memorable! 
I did have one spiritual experience I forgot to mention…
Since we were up for a weekend on the trek/YC we had church services outside. Taking the sacrament in a meadow by a creek surrounded by red sandstone hills with beautiful trees, birdsong in the air, deep blue sky with clouds floating by, and little butterflies everywhere, was an incredible experience. Something about communing with God both through the sacrament and through experiencing his creation at the same time was amazing. I wish I could always take the sacrament in a place like that. Our sterile building make me sad sometimes.
Oh, and when i said I wouldn’t encourage my son to go… it’s not that I wouldn’t let him go, or discourage him per se. Just that I would explain that he needs to be safe and not do anything that he doesn’t feel right about and not give in to peer pressure from the other kids OR from leaders. Basically what I hope to teach about church in general.
Quote:Taking the sacrament in a meadow by a creek surrounded by red sandstone hills with beautiful trees, birdsong in the air, deep blue sky with clouds floating by, and little butterflies everywhere, was an incredible experience. Something about communing with God both through the sacrament and through experiencing his creation at the same time was amazing.
wuwei channels the inner-Uchtdorf.
:thumbup: We really have missed the boat when it comes to tapping into the divine using nature. You would think we would have remembered the lessons from the likes of our spiritual models… JS and Jacob and Nephi and Moses…they never found God in the “sterile” environments of church houses.
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Old-Timer wrote:Contrived, yes. Inherently negative, no. Negative for some, yes. Rich and empowering for some, yes.
Brainwashing, no.
Speaking of contrived… It is well understood that music has significant power to stir emotion. Many churches use music to effect to assist spiritual experiences. Maybe it is impossible to schedule true spiritual experiences and that all communal exercises are contrived to a certain degree. Certainly I wouldn’t advocate the discontinuation of communal services – but it does seem that there are tradeoffs that all participants seem to make.
Yes, the pioneers made sacrifices, both spiritual and physical, while crossing the plains. Yes, there are many stories that can teach us about perseverance, courage, faithfulness, obedience, and other positive attributes from the lives of those who had to experience this part of our history. But it seems to me that we Western United States Mormons see these events as something we want to keep passing on to the upcoming generations as if there aren’t other members and non-members who have equally encouraging stories from around the world to tell and lessons we can teach and learn from them as much as those few thousands who hauled their belongings in wagons and handcarts. In other words, does the teaching and providing a growing experience for our youth have to be through a contrived “trek” experience – aren’t there other ways to get good experiences into our youth for the messages of a modern world we want them to learn? Do we have to haul all our kids out into the Wyoming wilderness under a blazing sun with little food and water and make them physically uncomfortable to teach them important life-lessons to make them more faithful to the church? What about the members in non-Christian countries who still maintain their membership and their faith in the face of incredible opposition from friends, family, and strangers who persecute them for their decisions and their beliefs when it would be so easy to stop and give in to the peer pressure? Why must we visit 19th Century history to get a sense of how people respond to challenges in their environment and choose whether to stay or to leave in response to the difficulties they face? What if the “bloom where you are planted” doctrine had been in place in the 1840’s rather than “leave the world and come to Zion?” What if those pioneers had used their bravery to withstand persecution and build up the church and their families where they lived rather than leaving the boundaries of civilization to be able to live their religion (i.e. polygamy) in peace? There would be different stories to tell I think, just as there are stories today that we hear from G.A.’s in conference, talks in church, articles in church mag’s, etc. about people today who are examples of bravery and courage. Faith promoting rumors and stories from our “history” are not well standing the test of time as many of them are checked out and found to be lacking in truth or accuracy in some cases.
I just don’t see the efficacy of pointing our kids to one or two decades of a specific area of the world where these activities took place while at the same time great dedication and sacrifice was also taking place in Great Brittan, countries in Europe, and other places where one-by-one people would respond to the message of missionaries and sacrifice everything to go be with the “saints” in Zion. Does hauling a wooden handcart help teach our kids to be better members of a GLOBAL church, or just reinforce what great-great grandma and grandpa’s parents did when they came to Utah (what about all those who are members of the church now who had no connection with the pioneer migration and don’t feel the connection any more than a historical recreation of a Civil War battle or revolutionary war recreation on the East Coast that so many people there participate in just like a trek today)?
Trek and handcarts are “a” way to teach the youth. If there are better ways (someone suggested different kinds of youth conferences), shouldn’t those be pursued as well or more than something that is increasingly dated in growing in irrelevance in the being part of a global church with global challenges? That is the kind of activity I would like to see my kids be part of. They can get sunburned and water parched pretty much anywhere else, not just on a trek.
Personally, I see trek as being akin to stake road shows. The time will come where their efficacy will be questioned and finally dropped because the benefit they provide is not as real as the effort being put into them to make them happen.
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