A group of youth in Tasmania, Australia, set aside their daily comforts and technology last October to build faith in Jesus Christ through sacrifice, courage and hard work.
The Church’s Pacific Newsroom recently reported that, after six months of dedicated preparation, leaders and over 80 teenagers from the Hobart Australia and Devonport Australia stakes gathered to begin their own reenactment of the long and arduous journey Latter-day Saint pioneers made in the mid-1800s.
Youth and leaders, wearing 19th-century-style pioneer clothing, pushed handcarts for four days over widely varied terrain in the activity designed to build faith in Christ through sacrifice, courage and hard work.
The purpose of trek reenactments is to experience firsthand the faith and determination of the pioneers, as explained on ChurchofJesusChrist.org.
“In hardship and suffering, faith was forged,” Elder Evan A. Schmutz, a General Authority Seventy, said last July in a Pioneer Day event in Salt Lake City that commemorated the 70,000-plus pioneers who trekked 1,000 miles westward in the early days of the Restoration.
Rachael Sayers and Steve King were two of the trek organizers who aimed to help youth experience the faith of the pioneers and the lessons they learned. They saw the youth work together as they walked up and down rocky, slippery slopes, through mud and puddles.
Sayers recalled trek participants “working in unity; serving each other; giving their time, sweat and energy; sharing their faith and testimonies — without a comfortable place to sleep, without jealousies, without murmurings, without conflicts.”
King added: “It is difficult to describe the energy and teamwork that shone forth as the youth and leaders became one in purpose and moved out as a body to take on the arduous journey.”
Along the trail, the handcart companies took time to remember pioneers in their homeland. Missionaries for the Church first arrived in Tasmania in 1854. Elder David R. Ford, a senior communications missionary, told the Church News the first baptisms in the Tasmanian region were performed in 1899.
The group stopped at the small creek in Glen Huon, where the first members were baptized. They learned about the faith in Christ and sacrifices of those who came before them.
The news release said the youth faced the challenges of the trek as a whole group, encouraging each other and willingly stepping in to help out where it was needed. At times, the front company would stop to allow other handcarts to catch up and help those who were lagging behind.
Last July, Young Women General President Emily Belle Freeman shared a message encouraging members to remember the example of the pioneers’ faith and sacrifice, applying it to their own lives.
“Our own journeys, our own treks, the things that require us to sacrifice and to pull through are going to change us,” President Freeman said. “We are going to give up our finer things in pursuit of a greater thing.”
Isabel Yost, one of the Tasmania youth, learned the value of the whole group working together throughout their challenging journey.
“It was difficult, but it gave me a new experience, and it brought me closer to feeling the Spirit and knowing that we can do anything through Christ,” Yost said.
