Martin's Cove

At the end of the week at EFY on Saturday I was hanging out with Evan and his sister and friend from Manteca, California. They complained about how once they got home their bishop would commence the torture of selecting someone to talk about their “EFY experience.” We played at the games center, ate at the Subway, and hung out at the dorms lobby. Evan talked a bit about how things were between him and Brooke. Before long my mom showed up and I had to say goodbye to Evan.

As we drove home, my sister reminded me that the second I got home I had to pack for Martin’s Cove.

“Say what?” I was so winded after EFY and I had totally forgotten about Martin’s Cove. The youth in my church’s area were going to make a trek to a historical church site in Wyoming where many early Mormon pioneers had lost their lives. The place was just west of Devil’s Gate and adjacent to Jones’ Cove.

Packing was a nightmare, because there were three different lists and none of them were complete, so it was very much up in the air what to take. I was scrambling all over my house and in the process I lost a key that’s very important to me, and my EFY contact list of everyone that was in Joy Is Full.

The next Tuesday I found myself up at 3:30 am to board the bus. Everyone met at my church and before long we were on our way. I sat in the back and it was living heck trying to get to sleep because there were these girls that refused to shut up! One of them being Richard’s sister.

When we got to the site we had to start pushing the handcarts all the way to our campground, which was three miles (I think). It really wasn’t bad at all, until later in the afternoon when the wind starting pulling an Indy 500 on everyone. It was hard to cook and pitch tents. Some tents even ripped. I say that the wind wasn’t so bad, but maybe that’s because I’ve been in a stronger winds while sitting in a sandblasting canyon at Lake Powell.

That evening half my group was missing so the remainder of our group, mostly girls and the two adult leaders and I, decided to eat dinner in the women’s “faucilitation room” about twenty feet away from camp. So, I guess it’ll be an interesting thing to tell my kids that I once at a spaghetti dinner in the girls’s bathroom in the middle of nowhere of Wyoming.

The next day we trekked to Martin’s Cove. Most of this next day will be talked about in my “Confessions” blog, so you can refer there for most details. My young men’s leader held a contest for the best dressed pioneer, and I won because I went out of my way to collect pioneer clothing from a neighbor of mine. (And shopping at Saver’s.) No one else really cared anyway about winning. I got an MP3 player, which makes me really happy since I don’t really have any other way of listening to music.

At night Richard and I stayed up late talking about…well, literally everything. He told me how he looked up to me, which I didn’t see coming, and I really wished that he didn’t. He told me a ton of stuff and I think that we were closer friends after that night. Also, something that I kinda wish now that I didn’t know, he told me something concerning Harry’s girl problems. I really strayed from that corner of the world but now it seems that it’s coming back to haunt me.

The following day we headed home. That Sunday my bishop selected me to talk about my “Martin’s Cove” experience. I thought about how I laughed at Evan a week ago. Now two sets of pioneer clothing, one handcart, and a plate of sandy spaghetti later here I was at a pulpit.

As the “Irony” song goes: “It figgurs.”