Every day seems to be the same, wake up, read scriptures, pray, pack boxes, haul boxes to the staging area in the garage, clean, repeat. The gems of the day are when our friends come over to say good bye and we get to spend good time with them, and in the evenings people have us over for games and dinner. We are so grateful for all the helpers who come to give a few hours.
Something that made this week different was we got to participate in TREK! We made lunch for 60 people, manned a gold mining experience, and put on a ten minute readers theater about a man and woman who came to California on the Ship Brooklyn.
This year trek explored the influence of the members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in California.
For example did you know that when the saints took the ship Brooklyn from New York to Yerba Buena (San Francisco), California they were expecting to be in Mexico? The US government had allowed mobs to drive them out of the country so away they went to find a place to live in their unified communities without people killing, robbing, raping, and beating them. The other saints left Illinois heading west and the two groups were to search for a safe place to settle through inspiration.
Sam Brannon was the leader of the Ship Brooklyn saints. When they had reached the Sandwich Islands (now Hawaii) they were told the US was at war with Mexico and the admiral there insisted that they would be forced to fight the Mexicans for the US. The saints were ANGRY with this and extremely disheartened to find the US flag being hoisted up as they arrived in the bay. The war was over, and they were now in the very country they were fleeing.
Undaunted they began to work anyway to build up community. It was a hard time with everything in great chaos. Leadership was changing, allegiances were changing. They began to bring about stability. They established schools, libraries, printing businesses, farming, and more.
So the kids in Trek were divided into four groups and given clues and they raced around to different points in San Francisco that had to do with the early saints and their influence in California
We were the GOLD Mining station. We had a tarp in the park on the Embarcadero with a hill of sand. Then we hid "gold" some was light glass beads or larger plastic spray painted gold. Then we also had several heavy fishing sinkers (small sized) that we spray painted gold. These were the "real" gold.
Whenever the kids found us we would have them gather around the hill and tell them that gold was 8 times heavier than most rocks that same size and other properties that made it stand above and aside from the rest of the minerals. In the pile they would find many things that looked like gold, but they would only be given their prize if they found the "real" gold. Then they started sifting and digging. Some tried to exchange their light weight gold only to be told it wasn't "real". They were surprised and kept digging for something different...I loved it when I heard, "AHH, this is it", or "HEY, this is different." When they found the tiny but heavy "gold".
As they dug we explained that in life many people, media platforms, and organizations claim to have the treasure they need in life, or the attitude that will make them happy, or what truth was....so many different claims you couldn't anticipate them all. But the truths that Jesus teaches are the REAL gold. The more you study His words and develop a personal relationship with Him the easier it is to discern the fake from the real. It just FEELS different.
Tomorrow is our homecoming!
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