Easter at Martin's Cove

Dear Family and friends:

We were so surprised when Neil, Johanna, Josie, and Bella arrived at our backdoor at 1:30 in the morning on Easter weekend!! It was so exciting to have them with us for the weekend and to show off our beautiful granddaughters. This picture is of Josie and myself dyeing Easter eggs.

The other picture is taken of all of us in front of the Visitor Center.

We were able to get in a rover and give them a guided tour of the cove. It was such fun, then we showed them off at church. All the missionaries were so jealous.

The other two pictures were taken on a trek we took last week. I'm not in the picture but Kaye Freeman is. It was such fun. We are going on another one in a couple of weeks. Tomorrow we are going on a CES bus tour and will be seeing a lot of the landmarks in the area. We will take a lunch and ride on beautiful busses. I love riding on a bus!

Got to go, soooooooooo busy. We love you all and can't wait for this summer when you will come and see us. Our internet is working now so I hope to post more on or blog.

Love, Mom and dad

Hi everyone:

It has been awhile since I have written on our blog site because the internet here at Martins Cove is hard to get. We are 60 miles from any town and are in the middle of Wyoming cattle country. We love it here though and are so happy to be here.

The picture of the deer was taken out our kitchen window. There are about 15 deer who are always roaming around our house and the property. We are getting quite attached to them.

The picture of my gross arm was taken a couple of days ago. I fell three weeks ago on some ice that was tracked into the mall in Casper. I fell on my elbow and broke it. The had to operate on it and wire the elbow back together and put a titanium plate in it and attach that with 6 screws. I am doing well now and started physical therapy yesterday. I am out of the cast and am wearing a splint from my fingers to my shoulder. I hope I don't have to wear it for very long.

Elder Warr is busy doing repairs and maintenance here at the Cove. He remodeled the porch around the office and it looks great. Now he is busy getting the handcarts painted that they built this winter. There are about 320 handcarts here that the trekkers pull around the trails in the summer. We are getting excited for them to get here. By the first of May there will be about 65 missionary couples here. 15 will go 60 miles over to the Willie site and the other 50 couples will be here.

I will try to post more pictures as the weather gets better. It is in the 50's today and three days ago it was -22 degrees. The weather changes so fast here. You never know from day to day how it will be.

Love, Mom & dad, Elder & Sister Warr

P.S. If you haven't read the book "Fire of the Covenent" by Gerald Lund you need to get it. It is an incredible story and really lets you know the struggles of the handcart pioneers.

Hi Family and friends:

We haven't had the internet since the first part of January and it is still pretty weak. They are going to put up a taller pole to try and get better reception. I tried to download some pictures but it is too weak so I will do that next week.

We are doing great here. The Freemans, our new Directors, arrived around the 18th of January and it is fun having them here. There is always lots to do even though there are only 5 couples plus the couple who work on the ranch. We are getting things ready for when the other 59 couples arrive the middle of April. Then the Treks will begin in May along with lots of school classes that come here.

Anyway, we are fine and I will write again when they fix the internet. We have a great picture of a herd of deer who were in our backyard. They let me walk up quite close to them.

Love, Mom and Dad, Glen & Cherie

Dear Family and Friends:

The holidays are over and we are starting a new year. We are so excited for the coming events starting in the spring with the new missionarys arriving and then in the summer when the trekkers arrive. They had about 70,000 visitors and trekkers here last summer and expect that many again this year. We have been learning the scripts and stories we will need to know when they arrive.

In the spring they have trek seminars for the leaders of the groups that will be here in the summer. This is a time when they train them and let them know what they will do with their groups. They also make them familiar with the Cove and other sites here. There is a womans pull that is very important. When the pioneers were coming across here many of the men were gone because they had been called to march in the Mormon Batallion. The United States asked them to help with what was anticipated to be a war with Mexico. The womans pull here is done at a steep hill and the young men in the trek groups stand at the top of the hill and the young women have to pull the handcarts to the top of the hill alone. The men aren't able to help the girls at all. It is a difficult hill and it shows the young women how hard it was without the men to help. It shows the young men how strong and courageous the women were in having to do it by themselves.

There are only five couples here during the winter but we stay busy. I have about three days in the office and we have one or two days a week in the Visitors Center. There aren't many visitors this time of year but we do stay open 7 days a week. Your dad has a lot of work projects for the men and they have done a lot of cleaning and organizing in the shop and painting some of the apartments. They are also working on building more handcarts.

We have moved into the apartment that is attached to the office. We may be here permanently or we may move back to the original one depending on what the Freemans decide when they get here. The pictures at the top are of the view out our back door. We are right on the Sweetwater River which is mostly frozen this time of the year. The next picture is of our little house. It looks pretty big but most of that is the office. It is very comfortable and I love the view of the river.

The next picture is of the Visitor Center. It was the original homestead of the Sun Ranch in 1872. There are 7 door because each time Tom Sun purchased a homesteaders ranch he would bring that little house and add it on to his. The last picture is of one of the handcarts. They have over 200 and they are building about 10 more this winter.

We are so happy to be here and to feel the spirit that is all around us. It is like a dream come true for us. The other missionarys are so special and we are developing such deep friendships with them. We have only had one real snow storm and that was a week ago. It was only about 6" of snow but we loved it. It was so pretty for two days and there was NO WIND! Then the wind started and now we have snow drifts. It doesn't bother the deer or the rabbits, they are all around us here.

We love you all and look forward to seeing you this summer. Mom and Dad

Merry Christmas!!

Merry Christmas to all of you, we hope you are having a wonderful day. We have had a very nice day even though we miss all of the family. We had a fun party for Christmas Eve . The man wearing the Grinch shorts is our Director Elder Longson. It was his white elephant gift and they dared him to put them on. We all had such a good laugh over this. They will be leaving for their home in Lake McCall, Idaho, the first of next week and Elder and Sister Freeman will be replacing them and will be here the middle of January. The Longsons have been here for almost three years.

This morning we had a big breakfast all together and then we put on our warm clothes and drove up into the Cove in the rovers. This is the Longsons last week here and they really wanted all of us to go up there and remember the pioneers. It is about 30 degrees today and the wind is blowing so hard. We bundled ourselves up in our new hats and gloves and scarfs and socks and headed out into the cold.

I am still having trouble figuring out how to place pictures so I will have to work on that. The pictures from the top down were taken in the cove. The first one was taken in the area where those who died were buried. Sister Longson is reading comments from one of the Apostles. A few feet from where we are all standing was where Pres. Hinkley walked and stood for a long time and then turned and said, "this is very sacred ground, many are buried here." After her reading we all knelt on the ground and a prayer was said. What a special moment that was. We then walked down through the Cove. If you look to the left of where we are walking you can see the area where they camped for four days and nights. The temperature is warmer in the Cove. As we walked out of it you could really tell the difference.

The picture on the right is the view as we were walking out of the Cove. The next picture is of the big buck deer and his lady friends that were watching us. We see so many deer and antelope here.

We love you all and are so excited to have you come this summer so we can share all of this with you. Try and plan ahead and give us a date so we can make arrangements for treks. It is pretty crazy here in July so June might be a better month to come. Guess we had better go, we have another party tonight!!

Love, Mom and Dad

Happy Birthday Easton!!!

Hi Easton:

This is another special birthday for you. Grandma and Grandpa love you very much. You are 6 years old today so we found a story about a 6 year old boy that we thought you might like.
Peter Howard McBaride - 6 years old - Martin Handcart Company. When Peter was a little older he wrote this story about what had happened when he was 6 years old.
Peter was born May 3, 1850 in Scotland. He came to America with his family. He had four brothers and sisters. From Peter's and his sibling's writings, we pick up some of the stories of what they experienced on their heartbreaking trek across the Plains:
"We had to burn buffalo chips for wood, not a tree in sight, no wood to be found anywhere. Just dry earth and rivers. We children and the old folks would start early so we wouldn't be too far behind at night. A great many handcarts broke down, oxen strayed away, which made traveling rather slow. Quite and undertaking to get nearly one thousand persons who had never had any camping experience to travel, eat, and cook over campfires. It took much patience for the captain to get them used to settling down at night and to get started in the morning.
We saw a great many buffalo as we traveled up the Platte River. The people were forbidden to kill them, as it made the Indians angry. One time our company met three thousand Sioux Indians, all warriors and all in war paint. Our people were much frightened, fear held the whole camp in its grip as they all expected to be killed. But their fears were groundless. They told our interpreters they were going to fight the Pawnee tribes. They wouldn't hurt us because we were mostly squaws and papooses. It would be cowardly to fight us, so they let us go by.
"My baby sister and I were really hungry. Our teams gave out and died, and we were glad to eat the meat. I remember some men passed us one day and stopped to talk. They gave my baby sister some cookies. She carried them in her little pocket, and I was always with her and would tease for a bite. She would give me a taste once in a while, and it was so good. The exposure to cold, rain, snow, and ice, pushing carts all day, the scarcity of food and wood caused many strong men to die.
"My parents both became very ill. It was very difficult for this young family of children to take care of each other, as well as their sick parents, and the brunt of the responsibility fell on the two oldest siblings who were Janetta 16, and Heber 13.
On October 19, 1856, as the company crossed the Platte River for the last time, it began to snow. Peter's father made the supreme scarifice here. Even in his weakened condition, he worked all day pulling, pushing, and wading through the icy water. He made an estimated 25 trips across the river, helping to get all the people and carts across. By the next morning there was 6 inches of snow on the ground. Peter's father was so ill he could hardly sit up. "We had to travel that day through the snow and we managed to get Father into one of the wagons that morning. That was the last we saw of him alive. We only made one mile, as it began to snow very hard. When we camped the snow was getting very deep. My sister and I had to pitch our tent and get some wood. After we had made Mother as comfortable as we could, we went to try to find Father. The wind was blowing the snow so bad, we could not see anything and the wagons had not yet come into camp. It was then dark, so we did not find him that night. The next morning, the snow was about 18 inches deep, and awfully cold. While my sister was preparing our little bit of breakfast, my older brother went to look for Father. At last he found him under a wagon with snow all over him. He was stiff and dead. It felt as though my heart would burst. He was buried the next day in a common grave with 14 other men who had died.
We camped at the Sweetwater River and it was decided that we could go no further, the snow was so deep and no food. We were doomed to starvation. They gave me a bone of an ox that had died. I cut off the skin and put the bone in the fire to roast. And when it was done some big boys came and ran away with it. Then I took the skin and boiled it, drank the soup, and ate the skin, it was a good supper"
"The next day we had nothing to eat but some bark from trees. Later we had a terrible cold spell; the wind drifted so much I knew I would die. The wind blew the tent down. They all crawled out but me. The snow fell on it. I went to sleep and slept warm all night. In the morning I heard someone say, 'How many are dead in this tent?' My sister said, 'Well, my little brother must be frozen to death in that tent.' So they jerked the tent loose, sent it scurrying over the snow. My hair was frozen to the tent. I picked myself up and came out quite alive, to their surprise.
"That day we got word that some teams were coming to meet us from the Valley. Three teams came that night. No one but a person having gone through what we had suffered can imagine what a happy moment it was for this belated handcart company. Men, women, and children knelt down and thanked the Almighty God for our delivery from certain death. It put new life into all the Saints. The next day several more teams arrived, and there was room for all to ride.
"We finally arrived in Salt Lake City, November 30, 1856. All my life I have worried for fear my children might get as hungry as I was, but thank goodness they have never wanted for food.
Peters family settled in Ogden first, then later in Eden. He grew up and became the father of 22 children. He later moved with his family to Gila Valley, Arizona, where they had a 160 acre farm and he taught vocal classes at the St. Joseph Academy in Thatcher. He served in the bishopric for 20 years.
We hope you enjoyed this story Easton. Peter was just your age when he was a pioneer in a handcart. We love you very much and are happy that you had an "awesome" birthday.

Love, Grandpa and Grandma

"When The Angels Come"

This is a picture that we saw several days ago and with the snow blowing around us here and the below zero weather we get, it really makes my heart ache for these incredible pioneers. If you click the picture it will enlarge it and you can see the pained looks on their faces. You can see the men, women, and children trying to make it through the storm and you can see the angels helping them. The story behind this painting is as follows:
"The Cart Began Pushing Me"
President David O. McKay, in an address given at an annual Relief Society Conference in 1947, the centennial year of the Saints' arrival in the Salt Lake Valley, talked of the criticism given by a teacher conducting a class, who commented that it was very unwise to have even permitted the Saints to cross the plains under such circumstances, and they were talking about the Willie and Martin handcart companies who left later than they shoud have. President David O. Mckay said:
"Some sharp criticism of the Church and its leaders was being indulged in for permitting any company of converts to venture across the plains with no more supplies or protection than a handcart caravan afforded.
An old man in the corner (and this was written by Pres. William Palmer, who was present) sat silent and listened as long as he could stand it, then he arose and said things that no person who heard him will ever forget. His face was white with emotion, yet he spoke calmly, deliberately, but with great earnestness and sincerity.
In substance, the gentleman above mentioned said, "I ask you to stop this criticism. You are discussing a matter you know nothing about. Cold historic facts mean nothing here, for they give no proper interpretation of the questions involved. Mistake to send the handcart company out so late in the season? Yes. But I was in that company and my wife was in it and Sister Nellie Unthank whom you have cited was there, too. We suffered beyond anything you can imagine and many died of exposure and starvation, but did you every hear a survivor of that company utter a word of criticism? Not one of that company ever apostatized or left the Church, because everyone of us came through with the absolute knowledge that God lives for we became acquainted with Him in our extremities!
"Ihave pulled my handcart when I was so weak and weary from illness and lack of food that I could hardly put one foot ahead of the other. I have looked ahead and seen a patch of sand or a hill slope and I have said, I can go only that far and there I must give up, for I cannot pull the load through it." (And a wife with a baby in her arms by his side.) "I have gone on to that sand and when I reached it, the cart began pushing me. I have looked back many times to see who was pushing my cart, but my eyes saw no one. I knew then that the angels of God were there.
"Was I sorry that I chose to come by handcart? No. Neither then nor any minute of my life since. The price we paid to become acquainted with God was a privilege to pay, and I am thankful that I was privileged to come in the Martin Handcart Company."