Last month I took the youth on a journey that I will never forget.
I drove 1200 miles in 4 days with a car full of teenagers.
It was painful but awesome!
We left Little Saigon on a Wednesday afternoon and drove 250 miles to Primm, NV. It should have taken us only a couple of hours, but it somehow it ended up being one of the longest drives of my life. It may have something to do with the fact that we had a caravan of 4 cars holding 35 people, one of which was towing a trailer filled with the luggage for 35 people. Needless to say, there were gas stops, food stops, and pee stops galore!
This is me trying to stay strong
and my trusty co pilot. Paola is one of my old YW whom I enlisted to
help out on the trip since the other YW leaders weren't able to come.
She made the trip!
car full of happy kids
finally making it to the hotel.
we all crammed into our rooms and got about 3 hours of sleep.
No joke. We had a 7am temple appointment at the Las Vegas Temple and I had to get those girls out of their rooms at the crack of dawn. This is our hotel hallway at 5am.
We made it though and had a wonderful experience at the temple.
Back on the road.
Going from Vegas to St. George
and stopping for ice cream that saved our lives.
after the ice cream we got back on the road for another million hours with 30-40 stops and finally made it to Manti, UT where we camped out in a friends' backyard right next to the temple.
That night we were so tired. Here are some of the girls journaling before bed.
I love this look from Ruby- "Are you really taking a picture of us?"
The next morning we had a little pow wow right when we woke up, and for some reason thought it would be fun to take a picture
We spent the day at Palisades Lake playing on boats like this one.
We had so much fun in the freezing cold water, trying to cram as many people as possible onto these boats.
Later we cleaned up and did baptisms at the Manti Temple
and watched the Manti Pageant that night.
After another night of sleeping under the stars, we packed up and started the drive home.
We stopped at Cove Fort where we toured the fort founded by Mormons in 1867.
Then back on the road and one of the vans broke down. It was a million degrees outside, and luckily my aunt lives about 20 miles from where the van broke down. We were able to shuttle kids to her house where they jumped in the pool, fully clothed, and swam the entire time the van was being repaired. It was the best road side disaster I have ever seen.
We were back on the road that evening, and spent the next several hours communicating with the kids in the other cars via "paper held up to the window". Since we had a strict no cell phone rule on the trip, this proved to be highly entertaining for everyone. No joke- this went on well after the sun set, and the kids had to hold flash lights up to the papers so we could read them in the dark- all while going 60-80mph.
In the end, we really did have an awesome time. There was so much driving but we made it fun. Between listening to music and singing as loud as possible, having water fights at gas stops, locking my co pilot out of the car at every opportunity, and just being silly, we were always having a good time. I am so glad that I had the opportunity to do this with the kids. Last week at church, so many of them got and talked about how this trip brought them all so much closer together, and how they cant wait for the next one. I couldn't ask for anything more.
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