Cowboy Up!

It has been 12 years since I was a priest; however, I still have such fond memories of the blessings and joy that come from fulfilling my priesthood responsibilities (if going on super activities is a priesthood responsibility).
Here’s the story-
About nine months before I turned 16, there were only a couple of teachers in our ward. My bishop at the time (Bishop Trone) decided (I am not making this up) that since the Church believes that life begins at conception, I was old enough to go with the priests on their super activity. That year, their activity was riding poorly trained horses into God’s country. This place brought us young men closer to God (because of the exquisite beauty and the 1000’ foot vertical cliffs that screamed certain death with every shaky step of our untrained horses). We never prayed so much in our lives seeing as we were always one misplaced hoof away from meeting our creator.
Now the one thing we did have on our side was experience. We were all told that if we did not come out and work with our assigned horses, we were not going on the trip! I made sure that I worked with my horse. I wanted to be comfortable standing on the saddle while my horse galloped across the wide open grass fields. I also wanted to make sure that I knew how to jump onto the horse from the rear (in case I needed to expeditiously escape any masked bandits) just to name a couple of horse trick musts.
Well, I didn’t get much time to work on all of my sweet tricks, seeing as I spent most of my time trying to catch my horse.
Ray (owner of the wild horses)-“What are you doin’ you dummy?!?
Me- “I was hoping to eventually saddle this horse”.
“Yi do it like dat and dat harse ill’ kick you right in yur twig and berries. Here let me do it!”
Ray proceeded to tie the horse’s feet together with rope. He then threw a saddle onto the half bucking and hobbled horse.
“Dar yi go, hop on.”
“Ohh…ummm… can I see someone else do it first?” I asked with my lips quivering.
“You aint in the Girl Scouts are yi?!? Just hop on!” he snapped.
Trying to keep the high pitched shrills suppressed, I sealed my lips and cautiously force myself to put my left foot into the stirrup. The horse then began to jump up and down as if he were riding a pogo stick (apparently I had a horse with a fondness for kid’s toys).
I leaped back.
“Aww, dat aint nuttin. All harses do dat. Wir’ burnin daylight, hop on.”
At this point the horse seemed to have gotten all of his “Pogo sticking” out of his system. I was able to put my foot into the stirrup and throw my leg over the saddle.
I spent the next 20 minutes getting used to how the horse moved and how it would repeatedly try to catapult me over its head. That was all I could take of the horse trying to whip my head around like a punching bag. It was time to call it a day.
For a first time rider, I thought I did pretty well. No major injuries and I still had all my body parts. I was now an experiences horseman. You might say “NO WAY! Not after just one lesson!
Well you are wrong. I was an experienced horseman. I had to be. The horse trip was 5 days away and that was my first and last training session.

To be continued…