This is part one of the story of @Thuswesee aka @elkvalleylatterdaysaint. You can also find Todd at @Spiritualcrusade Enjoy!
I got called to be Bishop in November. It was an overwhelming time to be called to be Bishop, but as a Bishopric, we managed to keep our heads afloat and the building is still standing. As we rounded into the new year, I was asked when I wanted to have the annual Bishop Youth Fireside to present the Youth Theme? I figured we’d better do it right away, so I prayed and set to preparing a fireside. It was an open format with lots of questions, counter questions and joking. But I mostly shared some stories and bore my testimony of what life is all about and why we’re are here, and why it’s all made possible because of the love of God.
I want to talk to you about Life and what we want out of it? Why are we here? What is our goal in life? I mean, we had it pretty great up in the pre-earth life. We lived with loving Heavenly Parents. We had friends and family all around us, I mean, we had it good? So why leave? Why come to Earth? To be tested. Why? What’s the point of that? Are tests just stupid exercises a teacher gives us to stress us out? I know as a student, I wasn’t a big fan of tests. But, as an Electrician, when I’m trying to identify the source of a problem, testing is crucial. I need to know which part of the circuits are operational are working and which might not be working as designed.
I gave the youth plenty of opportunities to share their thoughts before I continued.
I want to tell you a couple stories. When I was a kid, the older men and boys in my family would go on Canoe Trips. They’d disappear for two weeks into the back woods of Northwest Ontario. They would pack all the food they would eat, except the occasional fish fry and berry patch. They’d have finite amount of clothes, no electronics and the only shelter they’d have is a flimsy tent or a large tarp if it got particularly bad and they would need to hunker down. I heard the stories and the adversity they would face and Canoe trips did not sound fun.
I’m not telling you this to scare you from ever going on a canoe trip. Because I was all too aware of these issues after my first canoe trip, and I still went on 3 more. There is nothing about the canoe trip that I hated. It was uncomfortable, but even the difficult times helped me to grow. The fun times were great. Snorkeling, Fishing, Stargazing, Playing card games, sitting around the fire, or when there’s be an all-girls group camping on the same lake and we’d go bring them a fish fry.Who has been on a Pioneer Trek? Would you go again? It was tough though right? (Of the 20 or so people in the room, half had been on a Trek and to a person, every single one would go again.)
I think this is a little like how we viewed earth before we came. We’d heard the stories. We’d heard the challenges and the triumphs. We were jazzed about the chance to come down and show our friends what we could do. But, then we get here, and the veil is placed over us, and we forgot. We forgot that we were gonna kill it. We were going to crush this life and return to our Heavenly Parents honourably, the best possible version of ourselves. But we simply forgot.
oint and the hiking alone was enough to scare me from ever wanting to go on one. But after a few weeks of visiting cousins and sleeping in and hanging out, it’d be time to pick everyone up. The excitement from those trips, the stories that were told and the memories made that I would hear about made me want to go. So I prepared.
Regardless, the canoe trip came, and it was hard, and there were days that I didn’t want to be there, and I complained, and I murmured, and I questioned why it had to be so tough. There were rainy days where you were drenched. There were long, muddy, muskeg infested swamps that we had to portage across that left you soaked to the bone and often with a leech or two stuck to you. There were days we paddles 20km, there were sunburnt shoulders or legs. We slept in ½ inch foamies that stuck to your sunburnt shoulders. The mosquitoes in Northwestern Ontario have been known to carry off small dogs and in the back woods, they were relentless. You’d have little food. We’d start the day off with oatmeal or coyote mix pancakes, that were burnt on the outside and raw in the middle, but you ate it, cause there was nothing else. You’d get trail mix or an eatmore bar for lunch and when you’d finally get to your next camp, tired, dirty and hungry, you’d get a small bowl of back woods Kraft Dinner. Not nearly enough to fill you up, but you ate it and savoured it and if you wanted to eat more, you’d go fishing. Limited food wasn’t the worst thing though because, the more you ate, the more you had to go #2… and #2 in the woods is a lot of fun, especially when 10 Trillion mosquitoes in the neighbouring few square kilometres.
Recent Comments