Propped up on a silverware box, sitting on the bed of a truck, is a computer, where President D. Todd Christofferson, second counselor in the First Presidency, spoke via a video call to the Eagle River Alaska youth stake camp.
Four hundred youth and leaders — the most of any Eagle River Alaska Stake camps in history — huddled together to watch his remarks on a projector screen.
“The biggest thing he talked about is that you as youth need to take care of each other,” said Cristy Jones, stake camp director. “Some people have bad days, some people have good days, but you need to bind together. You need to be together like the children of Israel.”
The children of Israel were a particularly touching topic for the youth, as the camp — titled “Camp Hesed” — divided campers into tribes, each camping around a custom-built, life-sized tabernacle in June.
Building a tabernacle
Nine months before the tender fireside-like conversation with a member of the First Presidency, Robert and Cristy Jones, local Latter-day Saints, had members of the stake presidency set them apart as stake camp directors.
In the prayer, a stake presidency member’s “exact verbiage was: ‘We will change a generation’,” recalled Robert Jones.
“This is going to be big if we listen to the Spirit and we follow [its] direction,” he thought to himself.
There were minimal directions from local leaders: The stake felt inspired to host a camp with young men and women and cater an experience focused on the Old Testament. It didn’t take long for Jones to make the decision to hand-build a life-size tabernacle replica himself.
The months preparing for the camp would not be simple. “I basically took time off from my full-time job and worked this about 25 to 30 hours a week for about four months,” said Robert Jones. “And then at the end, this was a full-time job for me to build all this,” referring to the tabernacle.
He and two young men built the tabernacle, including all of its intricate pieces with help from other stake members. Though the task seemed large, Jones felt the blessings pointing to divine help were undeniable.
“It was one of the most large tasks to ever try to figure out — put together — but everywhere we turned, things just seemed to fall into place,” he said. “Month after month, time after time, and it changed our lives dramatically.”
Reminiscing on the experience, Robert Jones recalled multiple witnesses of divine intervention, however small they may seem:
While building the tabernacle replica, he found a perfect reproduction of the Ten Commandments tablets while at a car show in Las Vegas, Nevada, to put inside the Ark of the Covenant. He also got a hold of the man who created the mercy seat replica for the Indiana Jones Raiders of the Lost Ark movie, who sold him all the needed components to recreate it — which, to him, were small miracles.
Weeks later, while listening to General Authority Seventy Elder Matthew S. Holland’s October 2025 General Conference talk: “Forsake Not Your Own Mercy,” a name for the camp came to mind: Camp Hesed.
The Hebrew word “Hesed” represents “God’s special covenantal love for us, and how it would make you mighty to deliverance from any setback, any sin, any disappointment in your life,” explained Cristy Jones. It clicked; everyone agreed.
Impacting the youth
The camp’s purpose, shown through its name, was to help the Alaskan youth feel God’s covenantal love for them through the Old Testament stories. As the youth gathered in twelve tribes and pitched their tents toward the newly built tabernacle replica, many leaders said the camp accomplished its goal.
Stacey Moncur, the Eagle River Alaska Stake Young Women president, said that as she worked in the temple the Tuesday after the camp, her heart was changed as she remembered the sight of the youth camped facing the tabernacle.
“That’s where our heart needs to be, is to face the temple. We all need to turn to face the temple and spend more time in the temple,” she said. “I live 20, 30 minutes away from the temple, but I want to make sure that my heart is turned toward there and turned toward my Savior.”
In addition to the tabernacle experience, the camp featured five activities highlighting individuals in the Old Testament: Joseph, Esther, “Fire Friends” (Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego), David and Moses.
“We wanted to have experiences that the youth could really be immersed in, and actually be like the children of Israel,” said Cristy Jones. “We didn’t want them to go and sit and just listen to a presentation.”
In the Moses experience, the youth walked through a 400-foot barn, stopping occasionally to listen to a presentation about the plagues of Egypt — each video clip shows different modern-day prophets. At the end, there was a musical number centered on the miracles the Hebrews experienced in Egypt.
“With Moses, here was someone who felt like he was really inadequate,” explained Jones. “He said he wasn’t a good speaker. He didn’t feel like he had the skills necessary to lead the people out of Egypt. It was a tremendous task, and yet the Lord enabled him and helped him to find all these talents that he had, and he had the faith to go forth and do that. That was very powerful.”
She said that she and her husband are “different people” than they were 10 months ago when they began planning and prepping.
“I’ll never look at Exodus the same,” she said. “Now we have a whole different outlook after studying and reading every detail.”
Thinking back to the day President Christofferson spoke, she said she felt his remarks encompassed what the youth had learned at Camp Hesed. “Be there for each other,” she said. “Lift one another up. You’re all here together. Here we have this huge gathering. We’re all gathering in Christ, so lift one another, help one another, be friends.”
