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Trek dos and don'ts


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I remember someone posting a link to something from the Church banning certain prevalent trek practices. I think a lot of the onus for it was the Tucson West Stake in 2012, or something like that?

Anyone know how to find that, or can anyone post a link to policy regarding treks? Our stake is getting ready for one, and it would be nice to be able to shoot down bad proposed trek things with something official. ;) 

I overheard a high councilor having a meeting with someone about it, and discussing the pros and cons of naming dolls after ancestors in the stake. He noted that some boys last time burned their doll on the last night, but boys will be boys . . . 

Thanks!

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3 minutes ago, rongo said:

I remember someone posting a link to something from the Church banning certain prevalent trek practices. I think a lot of the onus for it was the Tucson West Stake in 2012, or something like that?

Anyone know how to find that, or can anyone post a link to policy regarding treks? Our stake is getting ready for one, and it would be nice to be able to shoot down bad proposed trek things with something official. ;) 

I overheard a high councilor having a meeting with someone about it, and discussing the pros and cons of naming dolls after ancestors in the stake. He noted that some boys last time burned their doll on the last night, but boys will be boys . . . 

Thanks!

https://www.lds.org/youth/activities/bc/pdfs/stake/Handcart-Trek-Guidelines-June-2015.pdf?lang=eng

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36 minutes ago, Rain said:

I hope your stake is easier to convince to use the guidelines than a few people I was talking to a couple of weeks ago. They didn't agree with the guidelines.

Which ones?

ETA: From President Monson in 1990:

The sermon had ended,

the priest was descended

Much delighted were they,

but preferred the old way.

---

This, by way of introducing the new budget and reduction in time and money commitments for members policy. Monson, Packer, and Hinckley all pointed out the likelihood that there would be complaints and reluctance to follow the policy. I'm sure eliminating the things from the trek that need to be gotten rid of runs into resistance.

Edited by rongo
ETA Monson quote
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42 minutes ago, rongo said:

I remember someone posting a link to something from the Church banning certain prevalent trek practices. I think a lot of the onus for it was the Tucson West Stake in 2012, or something like that?

Anyone know how to find that, or can anyone post a link to policy regarding treks? Our stake is getting ready for one, and it would be nice to be able to shoot down bad proposed trek things with something official. ;) 

I overheard a high councilor having a meeting with someone about it, and discussing the pros and cons of naming dolls after ancestors in the stake. He noted that some boys last time burned their doll on the last night, but boys will be boys . . . 

Thanks!

Might be worth checking this out too: https://www.lds.org/callings/church-safety-and-health/training-and-video-resources/trek-safety?lang=eng

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11 minutes ago, rongo said:

Which ones?

Quote

Chickens, turkeys, or other live animals should not be
killed during treks.

They felt that "well, no one is required to kill the chickens and it really helps them understand". That was the specific one.

Mostly I find in this area that things must not only be hard on trek, but the kids must be nearly dying hard.  They have a very hard time not only  the difference between emotion and the Spirit, but even that there is a difference.  So it was a general, overall dismissal of safety cautions. I'm not finding anything about sleep in the guidelines (may have missed it), but they thought nothing of my daughter pulling handcarts till LONG after dark (with others coming 2-3 hours later).   

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Anyone going on trek this year?  I've never gone before even as a youth but was asked to be a "Pa" this year.  One guideline for our stake that I really appreciate is they have told the adults to keep quiet during the testimony meeting at trek.  Instead, only the youth should bear their testimonies.  The stake leaders explained that often the youth feel intimidated and hesitant to share their feelings and testimonies when adults are included. 

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30 minutes ago, Rain said:

Mostly I find in this area that things must not only be hard on trek, but the kids must be nearly dying hard.  They have a very hard time not only  the difference between emotion and the Spirit, but even that there is a difference.  So it was a general, overall dismissal of safety cautions. I'm not finding anything about sleep in the guidelines (may have missed it), but they thought nothing of my daughter pulling handcarts till LONG after dark (with others coming 2-3 hours later).   

wow, our schedule shows getting into camp by 6:30 the first night, 2:30 the next day, and only one hour of pulling handcarts the last day.  Everyone is supposed to be in bed by 9:30.  I don't think it serves any meaningful purpose to make the trek insanely difficult.  It's never going to be as authentic as the actual pioneer trek, so it doesn't hurt to compromise on a few things.

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1 hour ago, gopher said:

wow, our schedule shows getting into camp by 6:30 the first night, 2:30 the next day, and only one hour of pulling handcarts the last day.  Everyone is supposed to be in bed by 9:30.  I don't think it serves any meaningful purpose to make the trek insanely difficult.  It's never going to be as authentic as the actual pioneer trek, so it doesn't hurt to compromise on a few things.

The Trek our stake did here in SoCal last year had a ton of activities apart from the actual "trekking", so there might be a lot going on after 2:30 on the second day and last day.

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1 hour ago, gopher said:

wow, our schedule shows getting into camp by 6:30 the first night, 2:30 the next day, and only one hour of pulling handcarts the last day.  Everyone is supposed to be in bed by 9:30.  I don't think it serves any meaningful purpose to make the trek insanely difficult.  It's never going to be as authentic as the actual pioneer trek, so it doesn't hurt to compromise on a few things.

When my daughter went the stake kind of bragged about being the hardest one they know about.  I agree with you.  She actually said she felt that at times she was so exhausted that she felt it hampered her ability to feel the Spirit.  

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16 hours ago, cinepro said:

The Trek our stake did here in SoCal last year had a ton of activities apart from the actual "trekking", so there might be a lot going on after 2:30 on the second day and last day.

According to the top secret trek handbook that I'm not supposed to allow the youth to see, there will be "pioneer games" such as stick pulling, leg wrestling, and knife/ax throwing.  But they claim the most popular activity is hair washing.  The youth are supposed to wash each others hair?  How am I going to get the young men to do that?

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16 hours ago, Rain said:

When my daughter went the stake kind of bragged about being the hardest one they know about.  I agree with you.  She actually said she felt that at times she was so exhausted that she felt it hampered her ability to feel the Spirit.  

Thanks, that will be good to keep in mind.  I don't get the impression our stake is trying to make it unnecessarily difficult.  We are supposed to watch the youth closely for any signs of "trail sickness", which is mostly heat exhaustion and dehydration.  I think the first day is the hardest, with around 5 miles of trekking.

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1 hour ago, gopher said:

According to the top secret trek handbook that I'm not supposed to allow the youth to see, there will be "pioneer games" such as stick pulling, leg wrestling, and knife/ax throwing.  But they claim the most popular activity is hair washing.  The youth are supposed to wash each others hair?  How am I going to get the young men to do that?

That was actually a sweet experience for my daughter who had long, tick hair at the time. I don't know what it's purpose was. I'll have to ask her why she liked it,but I do remember she commented on that he talked about how he appreciated taking care of his own much smaller amount after that.

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1 hour ago, gopher said:

Thanks, that will be good to keep in mind.  I don't get the impression our stake is trying to make it unnecessarily difficult.  We are supposed to watch the youth closely for any signs of "trail sickness", which is mostly heat exhaustion and dehydration.  I think the first day is the hardest, with around 5 miles of trekking.

That's good. 

My daughter naturally gravitates to spiritual things. It's just in her nature. She was really expecting a spiritual high from trek. She did feel the Spirit, just not the high. 

So I don't know if it was that she is naturally spiritual and so didn’t feel as big of a high as others, just exhausted and didn't feel Him as much, her understanding of the differences in the Spirit and emotion, a combination of them all, or just plain timing - it really bothered her afterwards that she didn’t get that high after looking forward to it for years. This may be something to watch for as well. It took her a good year, year and a half afterwards to work out that it was ok that she didn’t have the high. Some kids will get the high, but some kids won't and how spiritual they are is not what makes the difference. It is just not the right time for some of them. 

So don't spend a lot of time doing it where it sounds contentious obviously, but if there is a lot of hype about how this will be the most spiritual experience then consider sharing with the kids that it won't be that way for some and that is ok- there will still be things learned.

Edited by Rain
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Our stake did a Trek a few years ago. Two don'ts I would add. The first is don't bury pretend dead babies, that is something out of a Rob Zombie movie, plus it's kind of a I don't know a bit insulting to people who actually had to bury a real life child along the way. The second would be don't give talks about trek in Church, the rest of us who didn't go don't want to hear about it or hear more about it, I don't want to hear about what you wore, what you ate, who you pretended to be, what flowers you picked, what birds you saw, what it was like to go a few days without a phone-I don't want to go to church and hear about a hike :(

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5 hours ago, Rain said:

That was actually a sweet experience for my daughter who had long, tick hair at the time. I don't know what it's purpose was. I'll have to ask her why she liked it,but I do remember she commented on that he talked about how he appreciated taking care of his own much smaller amount after that.

If she really had long, "tick" hair, I can certainly understand her appreciating having those ticks washed out of it. ;)

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I haven't checked the links to the lists of do's and don't's, but I would certainly include the following on the "Don't's" list:

Do not include blatantly anachronistic or historically misleading elements in the trek activities.

For example, the Mormon Battalion enlistment happened in 1846, during that initial exodus of the Mormons from Nauvoo to the Mountain West. The handcart period of Church history occurred some 10 years after that, and it only lasted for about three years. T

So don't include an episode where young men are going off to war and leaving the young women behind to pull the handcarts. That never happened.

Which leads, I guess, to a corollary for the "Do's" list: Do conduct a modicum of proper research and reading before undertaking the activity so you don't do dumb things like re-enacting the Mormon Battalion enlistment.

Edited to add: I have now checked the link, and I see that the historical anachronisms point is covered, as is doing proper historical research.

One thing that was interesting to me: avoiding theatrics such as having mobs waken sleeping youth at gunpoint.

I participated in a trek a few years ago, not a youth trek, but an event uniting descendants of the Martin handcart company. One of the things that did happen is that some of the missionaries there staffing the Martin's Cove historic site jeered and taunted the departing handcart trekkers to simulate the persecution that went on. I don't know whether this would have been considered too theatrical under the guidelines in the link.

 

 

Edited by Scott Lloyd
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53 minutes ago, Duncan said:

Our stake did a Trek a few years ago. Two don'ts I would add. The first is don't bury pretend dead babies, that is something out of a Rob Zombie movie, plus it's kind of a I don't know a bit insulting to people who actually had to bury a real life child along the way. The second would be don't give talks about trek in Church, the rest of us who didn't go don't want to hear about it or hear more about it, I don't want to hear about what you wore, what you ate, who you pretended to be, what flowers you picked, what birds you saw, what it was like to go a few days without a phone-I don't want to go to church and hear about a hike :(

The dead babies thing is fraught with problems from what I have heard. On one trek I heard about, some of the young men had to be reined in because they were using the baby doll to play football with.

On the post-trek talks in Church, I hate to contradict you, but I'm going to contradict you. Some of the most reverent and spiritually moving meetings I have been in are those in which many of the teenagers bore a fervent testimony of the spiritual witness they felt incident to their experiences on the trek.

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Just now, Scott Lloyd said:

The dead babies thing is fraught with problems from what I have heard. On one trek I heard about, some of the young men had to be reined in because they were using the baby doll to play football with.

On the post-trek talks in Church, I hate to contradict you, but I'm going to contradict you. Some of the most reverent and spiritually moving meetings I have been in are those in which many of the teenagers bore a fervent testimony of the spiritual witness they felt incident to their experiences on the trek.

I'll trade you those teenagers for what we got.....i'll even deliver!

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12 minutes ago, Duncan said:

I'll trade you those teenagers for what we got.....i'll even deliver!

One of those teenagers was my own son, and he's not up for trade. And he's no longer a teenager.

But I'll grant you that it's less than spiritually stimulating to hear about flowers one picked or birds one saw or the water fight one had after arriving in camp for the evening. We get enough of that in priesthood meeting the Sunday after Scout summer camp.

Edited by Scott Lloyd
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