Ma Blankenagel - Trek Day 2: Family Challenge

Well, we all know that I don't write as well as "Pa," but I would like to let you know about the family challenge we recieved on day two at lunch break. I was expecting to be spiritually uplifted with my family but got it in a different way than expected.

I knew before the trek that each family would get a challenge that they had to participate in. However, I didn't know what our challenge would be. I decided to go and get a scroll that I was to read to my family. As I pre-read it, I was okay, but as I read it aloud to them the tears started flowing: I died during childbirth, leaving an eight pound "rice baby" with the family and not being able to be with them anymore. It was hard to read and I don't know why. I had only known "my family" for a day or so but I felt like they were really mine. I didn't want to say goodbye to Brandon and leave him to do so much hard work. I wanted to help out. I was looking forward to this day. I guess that we never want to die. I remember my mom saying something to the fact that she's not scared of death but of not being there to help out her family when we needed her. Looking back, that's how I felt.

I gained composure and walked away with the dead. We headed down the trail to an air conditioned truck which we rode in back to base camp. There we were greeted with sandwiches, fresh fruit, lemonade, salad, and chocolate cake. "So this is what celestial life is like!" was the joke of the day. We sat around in chairs on a shaded porch for about an hour and were then hauled up to the camp where we would meet our families again. We decided to hike a little up the hill closer to where they would be coming around the bend and found out that we would have about an hour before the families would be there. We baked on that mountain side! It was mentioned that we could sing to the families as they came around the bend to boost their spirits and tired bodies so that they would make it to the camp.

After A LOT of practice, the songs which we sang were "Come, Come Ye Saints," and "How Firm A Foundation." This was the other spiritual uplifting I recieved from my Heavenly Father because He knew I needed it. The singing was okay for the first few families. But as my family came around the corner I could no longer sing. Emotions took over and tears flowed freely, again. Here was my family that made it and especially my husband! It made me think about how loved ones who have passed beyond the veil must feel as they once again see their family that they left behind. To see them "make it." It was overwhelming. And I must say that I wasn't the only dead one who had emotional problems along the same lines.

Then to see my oldest sons, who had been taken for the Mormon Battalion, come around with other families who had lost both parents or who needed strength to pull the handcarts; was rewarding. They could have just stayed with their family, letting others struggle but decided that they had enough energy left to help out. I was proud!

I will never know what my family went through on day two. I still to this day wish I hadn't died, but I recieved the spiritual manifestations that I was hoping for on this trek; just in a different way. I would gladly go again if they asked me!