I went to Youth Conference for a fewdays at the beginning of August. We were in the mountains above Park City,Utah. We were divided into groups and we did activities that were related to the Book of Mormon.

One of the activities we did was climbing a wall. The wall was between twelve and fifteen feet high, with aframework of two-by-fours on the inside and particle board nailed on theoutside of the framework to make it smooth on the outside.  The requirements were that everyone had to get over fromthe outside to the inside, and we couldn’t use ropes or ladders or objects tostand on. We had two of our guys climb onto the shoulders of others in ourgroup, and everybody on the ground boosted them up until they could grab thetop edges of the wall and pull themselves up. Then it was my turn.

     I have cerebral palsy. I cannot jump orgrip and pull myself up. My group devised a plan. Since we had to come inancient Israelite-like costumes, my group leaders incorporated two long piecesof material into their costumes because they knew they would need to make asort of harness for me. They put me into the harness, which was determined tobe legal by the people who made the rules, and my two teammates pulled me upthe side of the wall. When I got to top, they helped me get out of the harness,and my feet disappeared over the wall, like I was falling headfirst into theinside. But actually, my teammates pulled my legs one at a time so that I couldstand on one of the two-by-fours. I was holding onto the top of the wall allthat time with my one good hand.

      One of the supervisors came up thescaffolding on the inside so that he could brace me from behind, and he liftedme down to the waiting arms of several other leaders.

     Going up the outside of the wall in theharness was fine. But when I got to the top, I was nervous about being that faroff the ground. My teammates had hold of me, but when they took the harness offand before my foot was securely standing on a board, I could have fallen.Having almost never been in situations where my parents didn’t have control ofme, I had to learn to trust other people. I didn’t then know that my parentswere both watching.

     When the supervisor got hold of me andstarted to help me climb down the scaffolding, at first I couldn’t move my legwhen he asked me to step down to the next board. Then I tried, but I couldn’tfind the next board, as it was a lot lower than I expected. I pulled my legback up, and he said, “No, Sean! Lower!” and I had to trust him and find itwith my foot. I got down that step, and then I was within reach of my leadersthat were standing below. I was over the wall.

After that activity, my teammates learnedto help me with all the physical obstacles, and I learned to rely on them overthe next two days. We learned to trust each other. I would observe the funnythings that happened, say something, and they would then see it too and laughwith me. It ended up they thought I was a pretty funny guy. I learned otherlessons from the other activities of teamwork and planning, of how to makesmart choices, and of friendship.

     We did another activity that taught usall the value of teamwork. We had to cross a field of weeds up to a dirt roadusing a stack of step-sized boards without touching our feet to the ground, andgetting all the boards across with us. That meant that we had to move oneperson onto the first board, then hand him a board to put in front of him so hecould move to that one, and the next person got onto the board behind him. Wehanded the boards from the stack to him as he moved one at a time, and we allmoved one board at a time behind him. When we had all the boards out in aline, and we were all standing on them, the last person in line had to pick upthe last board behind her and hand it up the line to the first guy, who put itdown in front of him and then moved onto it. I don’thave much balance, and so the two people on either side of me held my hands tokeep me on my board and help me step to the next one when it was time to dothat. We were supposedly crossing a river filled with piranha fish, so that waswhy we couldn’t step off the boards. We really had to use a lot of teamwork todo this.

     I believe that when people worktogether, they can accomplish anything. It is only when we isolate ourselves orfail to take part that we keep the group from moving forward. Sometimes we haveto overcome the obstacles of our own disabilities, or of our inability torecognize the way someone else can contribute to our success, that keeps usprogressing. I learned that people helping people is powerful.