It happens every summer.
Mormon teens forsake cellphones, iPads, makeup and video games, don long dresses, aprons and bonnets or pants with suspenders, and set out on a grueling, exhausting, heat-smacking three-day wilderness experience. Organized into "families," with mock siblings and an assigned "Ma and Pa," they pull wooden handcarts for miles over uneven terrain, sing old-time hymns, munch beef jerky and saltwater taffy, jot in their journals, read scriptures by campfire and sleep under the stars — sometimes in hailstorms.
Many come back from this exercise in planned deprivation and shared suffering proclaiming it the most spiritually invigorating time of their young lives. Even the adults who go along on these pioneer treks often feel profoundly moved.
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