More from Zach & My trip…

It’s been over a week since Zach & I returned from our trip to New Mexico and Arizona.  It’s been a too busy of a week.

I am going to try to go back and recap, finally.

Started out early Saturday morning & driving over 2 hours to the airport.  Waiting at the airport for quite awhile after going through security… Zach bought a Monster drink that spent most of the $5 bill I gave him…

We flew to Phoenix, direct flight… Spent a short time in the warm weather, mostly just getting some lunch & then driving in the 3 large vans we rented for the week, to higher elevations.

I had never seen cactus like this before.  It was quite interesting to see how they grow in the wild.

As we drove to higher elevations the tall cactus changed to the small ones.

We went to the hotel & checked in.  I thought that if this was what “mission trips” were, I think I could handle it! :)

I was joking of course, but the hotel was very nice & I got to have a room to myself since the others traveling with us were either a couple or men traveling without their wives.  It was pretty nice the first couple nights, then we went to the next hotel and I got a little scared there. 

After spending some time in Prescott AZ, making some new friends, and going to church with them, went went hiking on Sunday after church.  Most of the kids chose to go up the mountain the hard way and most of the adults choose the easy way… Me… easy way… didn’t take my camera either too steep and that whole “easy” thing, yeah right whatever.  (but we blamed our breathlessness on the elevation)

I am waiting for pictures to be shared with me from the top from those who had small cameras and had them up there.

We had a dinner at a park with the Prescott church & then most of the kids played kick ball with the adults & some of us just talked and tried to keep warm in the high elevations with the sun going down & the wind picking up.

Monday morning, had us driving 4 hours into New Mexico.

Kids went a little stir crazy in the vans… (Zach & Ben)… played a lot of cards & games while we drove.

After checking into our hotel in Gallup, we went the last 45 minutes to the church we were going to be working with at the reservation.

The guys went to check out their work sites & we met with Fran, the pastor’s wife who was going to be working with us as we tried to run a 3 day Bible School for the kids in their area.

We had went on the trip with plans to be doing Bible School with 3 different age groups.  When we got to Prescott we found out it had changed & we were only going to be working with one age group.  When we got to the church we found out their plans had changed again. 

We knew we had to be flexible.  And I am pretty good at flexible.  It wasn’t too hard for me to be told we had to be flexible, but it was a stretch for even me. 

Our cultures are so different.  We came in with our all our plans & ideas and they had theirs.  I am sure that we stretched them just as much as they stretched us.  It was difficult at times to have the right “servant” heart when things were so chaotic, unorganized, & unknown.

As far as the Bible School went, we ended up seeing about 100 little head start children from the area.  Most of them came with their class, some parents & grandparents came along too.  We had 3 buses one day, 1 the 2nd day, and 3 more busses the last day.

The second day it was cold. It snowed.  We went to Walmart & bought more clothes (including all these beautiful knee socks!) & the guys were digging through the donated clothing for coats & hats…

We had set up “stations” for them to do different things, snack, craft, story, parachute game, bubbles, jelly bean pass.  Fran had some games to set up too, a ducky game, yo-yo playing, & Fran had lots of prizes & things to give out to the kids.  We brought each kid a t-shirt & a Bible Story book to take home with them.

We guessed that out of all of these kids about 10 of them had heard the name of Jesus before… now all of them have had the name of Jesus spoken to them & seeds have been planted.

It was tiring.  It didn’t feel like we made much of an impact while we were there.  God only knows.

In the afternoons we took food out into the community & offered to pray for the people.  We were split into 3 groups & each were hoping to visit at least 3 homes.

The first day we went with Rhoda out to the site.  We had a lot of fun getting to know Rhoda one on one & she was much more talkative in this smaller group.  I liked her a lot.

The first family we found home was an older couple.  They did not speak English, they began telling Rhoda something in Navajo & she translated telling us that she was so sorry to have brought us there, but she did not know.  This family had lost a granddaughter 2 days earlier who had been pregnant with twins.  All 3 of them had died.  They were so sad.  We wanted to pray for them & comfort them, we did & then we sang to them & cried with them. 

After we left, Rhoda told us that their grand daughter was her son’s age.  Eighteen.  No mention of a husband was made.

Rhoda told us how “she had had her children late in life, 22, her friends all had children at 16”

The second place we went to we walked in and the smell was more than I could take.  Rhoda translated that this lady “had guests, and it was not a good time for us to visit” (THANK YOU JESUS!!)  She had SO MANY cats in that house, they were everywhere in the little one room house.

Then we visited another lady who lived in a one room “Hogan” that was very neat & clean.  She also didn’t understand English & Rhoda translated, she was a sweet lady & let us take pictures with her.

 

The second afternoon we visited a few more elderly ladies.  On our way up the ramp to one of their homes we heard “baa-ing”.  And walked in to find that she had 20 sheep in the bedroom of her home…

It smelled, but not like the house with the cats in it!  We spent some time with this lady praying & singing.

The elderly seem to be quite receptive to the church sharing Jesus with them and coming to church.

The young people seem to be very lost, distant, and hurting.  Crime is high.  Unemployment is 60%.  Lots of poor people with not a lot of hope.

On our last day on the reservation we went out to the market area and took boxes of clothing that had been donated to this church to pass out.  People walked up and took the clothing that they needed & fran would announce that they were from church and they were welcome to come to church…

It was interesting. 

We walked along the market and bought a few “souvenirs”.

We said our good-byes to the ladies at the church & then headed back out to where the men had been working all week to pick them up & to see their finished work.

They had 3 different projects going on.

Adding a water line in the church building

By the time we left they had installed a sink for them in the kitchen, but the water was not turned on yet because they were waiting on the inspector to come… pray he does, sometimes it can be years before these things happen (really)

The second job was to put a new roof on the house next to the other house they were working on. 

 

This is the lady who’s house they put the roof on…

And they worked on this family’s house.  This is the son of the above lady.

They had a trailer with an add on & an roof on the top of both that they were living in…

The old house…

So they pulled this trailer out & there was already a roof there that was attached to the other part of the house & they replaced the trailer with a new addition…

Zach learned how to lay cement block, use power tools, put up walls, put up siding…

They worked hard…& ate hard…

The adults did too actually…

On the way back to Phoenix we all had to make a choice.  Travel the 8 hour way and see the Grand Canyon or travel the 5 hour way and go to Sedona.

I thought we would go to the Grand Canyon, since we’ve never been there.  But, when Zach heard that it was windy, cold, chance of snow in the Canyon & visibility might be limited, he chose Sedona.

I said I would go wherever there was room.  I went to Sedona.

It was so beautiful.  And warm.  And summery.

 

Zach made some good friends better & was a lot of fun (you know unless you found him annoying)

 

He even wore out his shoes…

And I took lots of pictures…

Pam