March 3, 2025, 11:48am MST
A group of young Australian Tasmanian people set aside their daily comfort and skill in October, building their faith through sacrifice, courage and hard work.
The Church’s Pacific Newsroom recently reported that after six months of dedicated preparation, Australian and Devonport Australian stake leaders and more than 80 teenagers gathered to begin a reenactment of the pioneering late-day saints created in the mid-1800s.
Young people and leaders in pioneered 19th-century style smashed their shelves aside four days over a wide variety of terrain, in an activity designed to build faith through sacrifice, courage and hard work.
The purpose of Trek’s reenactment is to experience firsthand the faith and decisions of the pioneer, as explained at Churchofjesuschrist.org.
“In the midst of hardships and suffering, faith was built,” Elder Evan A. Schmutz, 70, of the ruling authorities, said at a Pioneer’s Day event in Salt Lake City last July, in commemoration of more than 70,000 pioneers heading 1,000 miles westward in the early days of the restoration.
Rachel Sayers and Steve King were two Trek organizers who aimed to help young people experience the pioneer faith and the lessons they learned. They saw young people work together as they walked up and down rocky slippery slopes through mud and puddles.
Sayers recalls trekking participants “working in unity.” Serve each other; give you time, sweat, energy. Share their faith and testimony – no comfortable places to sleep, no jealous, no tweets, no conflict. ”
King added: “It’s difficult to describe the energy and teamwork that sparkled when young people and mentors became one of their goals and moved in as a body to take on a painstaking journey.”
Along the trail, the handcart business took time to remember their hometown pioneers. Church missionaries first arrived in Tasmania in 1854. Elder David R. Ford, a senior correspondence missionary, told Church News that the first baptism of the Tasmanian area took place in 1899.
The group stopped at a small stream in Glenhuon, where the first members had been baptized. They learned about the faith and sacrifice of those who came before them.
The news release said young people face trekking challenges as a group as a whole and are willing to step in to encourage each other and help where it is needed. Sometimes the front company stops to allow other handcarts to catch up and help those who are behind.
Last July, Young Female General President Emily Bell Freeman shared a message that encouraged members to remember examples of pioneer faith and sacrifice and apply it to their lives.
“Our own journey, our own trekking, what we demand at our expense to penetrate, are trying to change us,” President Freeman said. “We are trying to give up on more details in order to pursue something bigger.”
Isabel Yost, one of the young Tasmanians, learned the values of the entire group they work with through their challenging journey.
“It was difficult, but it gave me a new experience, and it brought me closer to feeling the spirit in me and knowing that I can do anything through Christ,” Jost said.
