Survivors

A couple of weeks ago, I went to Girls Camp with our beautiful and amazing Young Women from church.  If I don't post about anything else that I experienced, I want to write a post about the hike.  It was the hardest part of camp and it was my favorite part.

For starters, our camp theme was Spiritual Survivors:  Envision, Engage and Endure.  We set out on our hike on Wednesday.  The 1st and 3rd year campers were supposed to hike 3 miles and the and 2nd and 4th year campers were supposed to hike 5 miles.

I started out the hike, with our 1st year girls, Penny and Claire.  Jaiden also was with us from the beginning.  The hike was hot and we walked in a single file line for much of the beginning of the hike.

The scenery was beautiful and the company was nice.  The girls were sweet and positive.  Sydney always has a great way of keeping everyone positive.  We sang songs and talked as we walked.

The hike was nice and flat, so there were no complaints about the terrain.  We got to a certain point and we were able to fall alongside our entire ward.  Up until that point, the 1st year Beehives had been hiking together along with Jaiden.

At this point, we shuffled around and I ended up hiking with Katelyn, Jaiden and Anndie.  Those three weren't feeling super awesome.  Two of them were struggling with allergies or a cold or something like that, but they were troopers. 

Then, we were told that we needed to hike a little bit more to complete our 3 miles.  Up to this point, we had been on flat land.  To me, they took us up a mountain.  To the rest of the world, it was just a rocky hill.  We hit a watering station, but discovered that there was no more water.  My three hike mates were not feeling very well and moving slow.  We started realizing that our stake leaders weren't quite sure of where we needed to be going.  They kept telling us that we needed to go just a little bit farther.  Some of the stake leaders would radio to other stake leaders and ask question, but it was apparent that there seemed to be a little bit of confusion.  Everyone remained calm and positive, though.  The common consensus was that they were setting us up to get lost so that we could learn a lesson, since our camp theme was "Spiritual Survivors:  Envision, Endure and Engage." (That was not the case.)

My three hikers found an area with a lot of flat rocks and decided they needed to sit.  As we sat, we started seeing most of the groups pass us by.  I kindly but firmly let them know that we were going to get left behind if we didn't get moving.  Even though they felt terrible, they bravely started moving.  They hiked on even though we didn't seem to know where we were going, have enough water or feel good.

I had rationed the water in my water bottle and would open it up and pour it into the girls' water bottles.  They were so thankful.  Every time I would do this, Jaiden would get so upset.  She didn't want me giving away my water.  I had to make her take my water.  This touched my heart so much that sweet Jaiden would worry about me when she needed that water more than I did.  We hiked and hiked and finally ended up with a small group and made our way to a road.  We ended up outside of camp.  We sent word of where we were at.  (We weren't the only group that ended up in an oddball spot and had to be picked up and bused back to camp). We sat on the side of the road with girls we didn't know - hot, thirsty and tired.  But, my sweet trio - Jaiden, Katelyn and Anndie were so amazing and positive. They made sure that we took a Survivor Selfie while we waited.  We decided that we had lived the camp theme on that hike - "Spiritual Survivors - Envision, Engage and Endure."  That hike was hard and sometimes miserable.  But, we learned that we can do hard things and it is so much easier if we keep a positive attitude when we do them.

I sure do love those Young Women!  What a great example they are.