I love camping!

Cami, Kaisha, Marye, Ashley, Brooks
EEW!!! They fly to!
My "broken leg"
Tribe Sharkbait
Look at my beautiful girls!!!

This summer I have been forced into loving to camp! I spent a week at Heber Valley Camp with the Young Women in my ward & it was absolutely wonderful! Of course, they have cabins at that camp! (Who doesn't love camping when you can sleep in a cabin!?) I had a different experience this last weekend at Camp Timberline! I went with our Stake for Youth Conference... It wasn't exactly the luxury camp I was hoping for! I slept in my car & there wasn't a thing you could do to keep the nasty bugs off of you! All of that aside, it was an amazing experience!

The theme for Youth Conference was Spiritual Survival. They taught us survival skills like building a fire, first aid, etc. We were separated into Tribes & I was with a lot of different kids for my stake. We were off on a hypothetical rescue, or so we thought, & they surprised us & told us that we were actually the ones who needed to be rescued! They told us that "we had been a terrible rock slide & there were a lot of injuries!" They assigned me to have a broken leg! REMINDER- at this point we were already at the top of a mountain! We all sat down to "fix" our injuries while a small group went to get help from camp! This might have been the most challenging experience I've ever experienced up until this point in my life. I really struggled with the fact that I was a leader & I was assigned an injury when I would've been able to help so much more if I was able to help carry someone else! So, because I didn't want to burden anyone else I decided I would do all that I could to make it back to camp without help! WOW was I wrong! Have you ever tried to HOP down a mountain? It didn't go well! It didn't take long until I was completely exhausted! My legs were killing me! I had to have help! The youth helped me for a while, then I try on my own again, & then they were back to help! I was not doing well. I was so physically exhausted that one of the Young Men leaders fireman carried me for a while! (Not a pleasant experience... but I was desperate!)

You may all be wondering why I did this! After I had a while to sit and relax & recover a little bit I realized that this experience is a lot like my own life. I am very independent & try to do everything I can by myself, even if it is difficult! When I was talking with the Youth about my experience I related it to all of us & how Heavenly Father is always there for us. He is there waiting for us to ask for His help! But we have to ask!