Saturday, June 26, 2010

MARTIN'S COVE STAKE TREK

David and I were asked to serve on the Martin's Cove Stake Trek Food Committee. The trek was held at Martin's Cove in Wyoming on June 10-12th. What a perfectly miserable, cold, wet, wonderful, spiritual, faith prompting adventure we had the opportunity to be a part of!
Below, is David and I standing by the monuments to the young rescuers who carried the frozen, sick, near dead pioneers over the Sweetwater River time and time again. The food committee headed up to Martin's Cove on Wed. night June 9th so that we could get the kitchen set-up and ready for when the kids would arrive the next day. Just outside of Rawlins Wyoming, about 20 minutes from Martin's Cove, David and I got caught in this amazing, scary summer storm. We watched it moving closer and closer.............
And then it hit with such fury, it was amazing.....hail so hard that I seriously thought that the truck windshield was going to break! I was screaming at David to stop, but the sound of the hail pounding on the truck and trailer was so loud, that he couldn't even hear me, and I was sitting right next to him!

We were able to take our 5th wheel up and park it in the Missionary Village Campground. We had a beautiful rainbow as we were getting the trailer set up...but once we got inside of the trailer, we realized that the hail storm had broken every single one of the trailer vents and also the big skylight over the shower!
You can tell from all these pictures, that the weather was less than perfect.....below we are trying to get lunch ready for the kids arrival on the first day! That is David on the left, stirring the pots of taco meat.

The food committee is ready to go...but the kids buses were a little behind schedule...which ended up working for the best, because we had did get our only sunshine of the weekend, long enough to serve them lunch! At each meal, the food committee prepared in the rain and cold and wind, and cleaned up in the wind, and rain and cold....but the rain always stopped just long enough to get the kids fed!
We were tasked with serving 500 people each meal! It was an amazing experience of small miracles of the mysteriously multiplying sack lunches, when after counting and counting we were 30 sacks short, but miraculously ended up with 2 to spare! Or the hot cocoa, which I had personally bought 4 servings for each person, but we just kept the hot water coming at every meal, due to the wet and cold conditions, and the hot cocoa never ran out...in fact we brought home several cases to spare! It truely was like feeding the 5000!

It is hard to imagine.....but the weather only got worse from here on.....
I kept thinking, "Oh, I will take more picture when the weather gets better!" Well, the weather never did, and sadly the camera didn't come out much after the first day!

This is our Stake youth, treking along the top of the ridge! I thought that this was a cool view!