Written by Bishop A. Kelsey Chatfield, June 2013
I was assigned as an uncle to a handcart trek
family made up of Ma and Pa Teebles (a really great couple from a neighboring
ward) and 11 youth of varying ages. One of the young men was a 320 pound
high school senior named Isaac who plays line for his high school football
team. Isaac was great right from the start, being front and center on the
handcart and doing lots of hard pushing on the first day. At that point
none of the rest of the Teebles family really knew him or each other, but we
quickly came to admire Isaac’s quick smile and his willingness to do a lot of
pushing that first day, when we were scheduled to go about 10 miles.
Isaac maybe did too much that day; by about mile 7
he was really red faced and sweaty, and he asked if he could just walk instead
of pushing. He then began to drop back, walking very slowly. Turned
out that he had both heat exhaustion and was getting big sores on his legs from
chafing. Our stake first aid person finally decided to put him in a
support vehicle to let him cool off and to give his raw legs a break.
That night Isaac did a good job of forcing fluids
and taking it easy, and by the morning of day 2 he said he felt pretty
well. It was decided that he should ride in the vehicle until lunch time
at least. By afternoon he was walking with the family again, but was
going slowly and was not pushing the cart. But as the Teebles family
continued to bond, he was right in the middle of all the trail talk and evening
activities.
On day 3 Isaac walked the whole day with the
family and took a few turns on handcart pushing and was otherwise like any
other part of the family. In the afternoon we stopped and set up camp,
then had pioneer games against other trek families. Isaac was pretty good
at log sawing and cheered the rest of the family on at other games, but really
came into his own in the stick pull competition. He quickly threw all
comers and qualified for the camp-wide stick pull. With 200 youth
gathered around, Isaac easily won his quarterfinal and semifinal matches, with
our family cheering him on. He ended up losing the final match and
placing second, but he had solidly established himself as a strong man in the
camp and as a favorite in the Teebles handcart family. That night in our
family testimony meeting, Isaac bore humble testimony of Christ and His church,
and of the love he felt for, and from, his handcart family. Others bore
similar testimony.
At the start of the last day of our trek (because
he felt better, but probably also because he was now a camp strongman), Isaac
was back pulling the handcart with all of his great strength. That was OK
for the cool morning hours and the first few miles, but after a couple of
serious uphill stretches and in the heat of the day, Isaac sadly reported that
his chafing was very bad again, and that he needed to drop back and ride with
the support vehicle again. In a quiet voice Pa Teebles said that that was
not the way that family does it, and he ordered 320 pound Isaac to climb up on
top of the gear in the handcart, that his family would take him home.
After much urging, Isaac clambered up on the handcart and found a way to settle
in. At that point 3 miles and some very steep hills were between us and
the end of the handcart trek.
Once we began to pull, Isaac again began to worry
that he was burdening the family too much, especially seeing the big hill that
we were nearing. Pa Teebles had the answer for that too. When we
got to the bottom of the hill (and after 25+ miles of handcart trekking over 4
days, including a few hard hours that morning), out of nowhere our Pa yelled,
“let’s run to the top!,” surprising the rest of the family and jerking the
handcart as he started to run. We all followed, and someone even started
yelling, causing all the rest of the family to yell too. Bouncing and
rattling, up that steep hill like crazy people we ran, and over the yelling you
could hear Isaac laughing and yelling too.
Word began to spread up the handcart company of
Isaac’s wild ride and the Teebles family togetherness, and soon other families
began to send one of their strong people back to help push our handcart.
The young man that beat Isaac in the stick pull finals even helped on the last
stretch. The last mile I simply walked beside the handcart because there
were so many people pushing it that there literally was not a place to get a
hand on the cart to help push. Up on top, Isaac smilingly rode like a
king.
There were lots of great opportunities to feel the
Spirit and to learn during our youth conference handcart trek, but one of the
best happened last.
