by Cheryl Stewart Osborn

Rick and Sheri Neilson’s family enjoys high adventure.

Together they have spelunked through deep caves, rappelled off high cliffs, and white-water rafted down mighty rivers. They even climbed Mount Kilimanjaro.

But this Thanksgiving, the Green Valley Stake family will embark on their greatest adventure yet - a humanitarian service trip to the impoverished village of Salkantay high in the Incas of Peru.

They will ride up to the remote mountain village on horseback where they will experience the thrill of digging a latrine, the challenge of placing a roof over a stone shanty, the satisfaction of constructing a pen for the yard animals that now live in the houses, and the hard work of repairing aged rock walls for families and orphans who are far less fortunate than them.

Sheri and her daughter Katie Neilson have a pretty good idea of the hardship conditions that lay ahead of them, since they both participated in a previous service trip to Salkantay with the LDS youth humanitarian service organization Alliance for Youth Service (AYS).

“They don’t have toilets except for the one we built for them at the school with AYS,” says Sheri. This is her fourth humanitarian service trip in six years, but the primitive conditions are still an adjustment.

“These trips have changed my perspective of life,” says Sheri. “Because I find it very rewarding, even joyous, to labor in the service of others, I am going back to Peru and taking my family so they can see and experience the difference they can make in true service to others.”

Katie and her brother, Brett Neilson, will have substantial make-up work to do after missing a week of classes at Brigham Young University. But school is not the only sacrifice the Neilsons are making to participate in this trip with the Eagle-Condor Humanitarian organization. They are also foregoing their traditional Christmas presents to pay their own expenses to serve the Peruvian people.

“Our family is so blessed in so many different ways, that what better way to show thankfulness for those blessings than by serving others,” says Katie. “The fact that we are doing this during the Thanksgiving holiday makes the event even more meaningful to me.”

Her brother agrees. “There is something about helping one another that brings things into perspective,” says Brett, who served his mission in Russia. “This is what these two holidays are about: giving thanks for the ‘feast’ of which we partake, and celebrating the life of Christ by following His admonition to ‘Feed my sheep.’”

Sheri, who is an accomplished seamstress and costume designer, will teach the local women to sew so they can make traditional mountain Peruvian costumes to sell to tourists in the marketplace at the base of the ancient ruins of Machu Picchu.

The rest of her family will help repair and clean up the orphanage, which is an old, abandoned mission. The rock-and-mortar walls are collapsing and the surrounding grounds are full of rubble, but the children have nowhere else to sleep.

The Neilsons will also make bamboo roofs for simple houses with adobe walls and dirt floors, and will build a greenhouse enabling the people to grow fruits and vegetables year-round.

“For third-world countries, the drought of education, the narrow funnel of funds, and the plague of indifference are always present,” says Rick, an orthodontist in Green Valley.

“To give up a Thanksgiving without turkey and sacrifice our traditional Christmas so that we can feed His sheep, get our hands dirty, take plenty of Advil, feel the Spirit, grow closer as a family, understand the Savior’s mission more completely, and know Him more intimately makes the sacrifice not really a sacrifice at all.”

The family is joined by friends Jason Gifford and Natalie Gardner of the Warm Springs Stake, and by Sheri’s nieces Kendall and Paige Nisson of the Anthem Stake.

“Giving up my time, money and energy is a small price to pay for the opportunity to make a difference in the lives of others,” says Jason.

Because the week-long trip will require intense physical labor, the group is given one day off to rest – Thanksgiving day. For a high-adventure family like the Neilsons, that is the perfect day to hike to the highest point of Machu Picchu.

Eagle-Condor Humanitarian is a non-profit LDS-influenced service organization dedicated to creating sustainable hope and dignity within people of lesser developed areas through purposeful humanitarian field programs. In addition, the organization endeavors to teach principles of good business practice, enabling the people to be self-sustaining while raising their standard of living.

For more information about Eagle-Condor Humanitarian, visit www.eagle-condor.org.