Inspired

Looks like Ella the artist has taken a recent trip to the Southwest! :)

(Oil on canvas)

(Cardboard, shoelace and modeling clay)

Final Thoughts

Though I have no pictures of these things, they are memories I want to preserve, so I will end this series of Rehoboth posts with two of my favorite experiences from this trip.

One night the school's superintendent came to speak to us about what she has found it means to be Navajo and a Christian.  She told of her people's dependence on superstitions and rules to keep goodness in their lives.  She shared the bondage the Navajo people feel in having do things according to such specific tradition, less they get blamed for tragedies that in reality they have no control over.  It is why she said the ministry of Rehoboth is so successful, because the staff is aware of the struggle and works hard every day to show and tell of the freedom that is found in Christ.  Our speaker challenged us by saying, "I get so frustrated when people ask how I can be a Navajo and a Christian.  It can be so easily turned.  How can you be an American and a Christian?  How can you be a human and a Christian?  There is darkness in any culture and we all have to fight to be how God calls us to be."

Instead of finding all the ways her traditions contradict the the truth of scripture, she said she prefers to focus on how she can appreciate and honor her culture, yet redeem it and claim it for the Kingdom.  She told the story of one of the most practiced of Navajo traditions.  The Navajo people will bury the placenta of their babies on the east side of the hogan.  It symbolizes the idea of "home" and is supposed to be a way of constantly calling and drawing a child home.  If their placenta is buried, the child will never become estranged, they will never be in danger or perish, because they need to come back to their home, where a piece of them literally dwells.  She loves the symbolism and beauty of this tradition and had to think hard about if she wanted to bury her children's placentas.  She found peace with an alternative that others in the Rehoboth community had done-- bury their children's placenta on the east side of the church.  If a child is to always feel a call or pull back to something, it should be to God and to His church.

The second story was from the night our group intentionally spent in the dark.  The campus of Rehoboth sits at 6000 ft. elevation.  It is in the middle of nowhere.  And New Mexico enjoys over 300 days of clear skies a year.  It makes it the perfect place for an observatory.  One night we were invited to visit the Rehoboth observatory with the super informed high school science teacher as our guide to the night sky.  He set the telescope for us to look at 5 amazing sights-- Jupiter, Saturn, a super nova, another galaxy, and a nebula cluster.  I can not tell you how mind blowing this was.  When I looked through that lens, I SAW SATURN!! Rings and all!  Jupiter was brown striped and had 4 moons just like the pictures in our books.  And the other galaxy was so far away, the light we saw from it left 250 million years ago!  Psalm 8 says, "When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set into place, what is man that you are mindful of him, the son of man that you care for him?"  The peek into God's heavens was the perfect underscore to what we had been learning all week.  God's children are precious.  Every single one of them.  Regardless of their differences or backgrounds, we glorify God and build His kingdom when we take the time to learn their story and show them love.  Being mindful of and caring for one another, after all, is the model for how God, the great creator of the entire universe, treats us.

Down Time

Dave set an 11:00 pm curfew for each night, but it was not really even needed.  We were so tired from our days of work and exploring that we all fell into bed pretty early and easily.  There was not a ton of down time, but each day a few extra fun things did happen in and around the dorm we stayed in.  

Mrs. P taught Ella to knit!

We all had envelopes to use for writing encouraging notes to one another.  Delia was the queen of this!  She wrote several notes to everyone.  Dave told us to find little things that we appreciated and not miss an opportunity to let team members know.  I got a glance at some of Delia's notes and they were pretty hilarious.  "Dear Jesse, I like the way you pick up the things I drop.  Thank you.  God bless you." or "Dear Mister Fill, you are funny."

As I was uploading and editing pictures here at home, Ella came alongside me and said, "Wow Mom, you have a butt load of pictures."  The evidence and influence of hanging out with teenagers for a week has began!  I realized this was going to be the case when Delia jumped into the daily card game and started yelling, "BS!" like it was nothing!  (BS stands for "Baloney Sandwiches" in case you were wondering or worried! :)

And each mealtime was, of course, an opportunity to visit with one another and hear the stories of the day. Our dorm had a kitchen on the bottom floor, so our group just did our own grocery shopping, then divided up the kitchen responsibilities.  Pastor Bruce was excited to do most of our cooking.  After taking her cooking class, Ella was excited to help him!

My girls were in heaven hanging out with their teacher Mrs. P. and these cool highschoolers all week.  They spent more time in other girls' rooms than our own.  God bless those wonderful high school students for working a full day with campers and then having enough energy and patience to do things like help my girls hike or make up silly games to play with them.  I think we have about 11 new babysitting recruits on our list now!

Native Dance Demonstration

Oh man, this was another awesome night!  One of the Rehoboth staff members has a brother who competes as a professional Pow-Wow Dancer and a husband who accompanies him with native chants, drum and flute playing.  They met us in the school's choir room for a private demonstration.  This presentation was phenomenal!  These men are Christians, so they made it clear that their music and dance was not sacred or ceremonial, it was just for fun and education.    

Alvin, the dancer, demonstrated three common native dances for us.  I liked his Grass Stomping Dance, Dave liked his Prairie Chicken Dance.  In between the dances, we were treated to just music, including a beautiful version of "Amazing Grace" on the flute, and the telling of old native stories.

Our performers were delighted to take our questions.  They gave us an up-close look at his incredible performing costume (all that beadwork is done by hand by members of his family, and on his head are porcupine quills!).  And they happily posed for a picture.   We were really blessed by the enthusiasm with which this duo shared their art.  Over and over this week we saw and appreciated the beauty of this culture!

Trading Post and Shaved Ice

On this particular afternoon we got to visit a man who owns one of the largest trading posts in Gallup.  He also sends his grandkids to Rehoboth, so he was very welcoming and eager to tell us about the pawn industry in the Southwest.  This was informative and crushed any of my preconceived notions about pawn shops!  Trading your handmade goods or valuables is extremely common among the people of this area.  Our store owner (and other pawn shops) function as a kind of bank.  He'll hold your saddle or turquoise jewelry while he loans money for you to buy the plane ticket you need to see your family.  Or, he'll buy your elaborately woven yucca reed basket and then try to sell it to someone else.

After describing his business, he gave us each a necklace made of dyed corn kernels.  Then he invited us to look around.  He had an entire warehouse full of tagged saddles that he held as collateral.  Again, super interesting!
 

The girls were able to find their NM souvenirs at this trading post-- handmade dolls to add to their International Doll Collection.  They loved the bead-work and details on these Navajo dolls!

And after the trading post, it was off to patronize the business of another Rehoboth family-- SHAVED ICE!! Our team worked and hiked hard each day in this dry, hot region.  These cups of sweetly flavored ice shavings were the most refreshing and delicious thing we ate all week.  We returned to give this family our business the next day too! :)

The afternoon stops on this day both taught and treated us.  Before we returned to the dorm to make dinner, we stopped for a quick group picture at the entrance to the school.

Crevice Hike

When asked at the end of the week what the students' favorite thing was, "THE CREVICE HIKE!" got the unanimous vote.  This was a hike I had done 16 years ago and one of the things I was most looking forward to revisiting on this trip.  

When you hike the crevice, you battle winds blowing sand into your eyes and mouth, you walk through amazing red rock valleys, you ascend and descent steep cliffs, you have to do some "wall-sit walking" across a crack in the earth not quite a quarter of a mile long, and you end by taking a huge leap off a rock about 15 feet in the air.  You'll never get the full appreciation for how strenuous, scary, and satisfying this hike is, but here are a few pictures for a small taste...

Climbing the cliff walls required four points of contact.  The last time I did this hike, we used ropes to get up.  But, that was January and I'm thinking it was probably icy.

We made it!  You had to just approach this hike in pieces and take a moment to celebrate the achievement of getting up or down another wall.

Delia started the hike at full throttle.  I had to get her to stop leaping from cliff to cliff.

Probably the best views any hike has ever offered us!  I liked watching the people around me just take it all in.

A break to breathe and drink!

After scaling walls and climbing up, up, up, now we start to make our way down again.

And here we enter the crevice.  Now, the best way to get across the crevice is to put your back on one side and your feet on the other and shimmy across.  But, let me say that if you were to fall or just not want to do this (like Ella and Delia), you could also just let yourself down a ways and walk through the crevice.  People like Grandma should know that there was never any danger of falling into a crack in the earth and disappearing! :)

This is my favorite picture of the trip. It's a group shot.  Most of these students have already made their way through and out of the crevice, a few of us are literally still hanging off the walls of it!

And this is how you get out: embrace your inner Spiderman, say a prayer, and take a leap.  Phil stood at the bottom to help catch us.

By the end of this hike, my girls were definitely done!  They will tell you the crevice was NOT their favorite part of the trip.  It was interesting to watch all the different reactions to the elements of this this hike.  Some love, love, loved it.  Some conquered it with tears and shaky legs.  Some even asked to come back the next day and do it all over again.  Many of us left it with achy muscles, scratches from the rocks, and bruises.  It's the kind of thing that makes our students jokingly yell, "CREVICE!  YOLO!"  and gives us each a huge sense of accomplishment.  We're super proud of our girls and our group for being willing to tackle this big hike!

Visiting the Weaver

Another cool opportunity to learn about Navajo culture came when our group was able to visit a traditional weaver.  This sweet old woman does everything by hand and took the time to walk us through each step.

Step 1: Run the wool through the carding combs several times to clean and soften it.  The wool was passed around to touch and smell.  Surprise, surprise, it smelled like sheep.

Step two: Spin the wool on the spindle to make huge balls of yarn.

Step three: Use wild plants like rabbit brush, sumac, cliffrose, and juniper to naturally dye the yarn different colors

Step four: (and here she kindly let anyone in our group who was interested jump in...) Start weaving the yarn through the loom strings.  The pattern she creates is totally unique each time.  No two Navajo rugs are ever alike because each yarn strand is placed based completely on what the weaver feels.

She said she weaves mostly to make gifts for people.  One of her favorite things to do is weave names into her designs.  Dave and Phil were laughing about how she'd weave our last name into a rug!

Step five: Push each strand down with the combs.  These combs belonged to our weaver's mother.

As a mom and leader on this trip, it was stuff like this that made me smile.  What a cultural experience for these kids!  The appreciation that comes from doing something like this.  And how to cool to be able to say that they've tried weaving on an authentic Navajo loom with an instructor who has had this art form in her family for generations!

Window Rock and Cross Canyon

We did work 7 hours each weekday with the kids, but every afternoon and evening, as well as our first Sunday, we had an itinerary full of fascinating activities!  The goal was to not waste a moment of time that could be spent exploring this gorgeous piece of creation or learning more about the Navajo culture.  We were worn out, yes, but every person on the team said they would not have skipped a single thing we squeezed in. 

So, this was our first full day in Rehoboth-- a Sunday.  We went to a tiny church that focuses on outreach to the poverty-stricken community.  We worshiped with them, helped lead the music, and then served a free lunch afterwards.  A sign on the door of the church that said, "No drunks! Please only enter if you are sober!" tipped us off that this would be a church service very different than any we were used to!

Then we headed across the border back into Arizona to visit Window Rock, the tribal council, or capital, of Najavo Nation.  The Navajo Reservation is the largest in our country.  It was really interesting to learn about how they elect leaders and make decisions.

A staff member at the school has a father and brother who live on land given to their family generations and generations ago.  They graciously allow Rehoboth groups to visit them and see their traditional (and very rustic!) living conditions and then hike around the incredible canyon that lies in their 3 miles of property.  It was such a contrast to me to see families so rich in land, yet residing in hogans with no electricity or plumbing, living in what we would consider such poverty.  This canyon is literally their back yard!

In the cliffs of this canyon are some ancient ruins of old cliff dwellings.  This property is private and not open to the public.  Only a very few people have seen these ruins, so they are perfectly preserved.  To get to them required some very intense cliff wall climbing and nerves of steel.  Dave took a few brave students up to check them out.

 This is their view looking down at those of us who were perfectly happy to just see pictures of the ruins!

 The man who owns this property is in his 70's.  He had such a generous spirit to spend the day leading us around his land and telling us interesting stories.  It was connections with individuals like this that gave us the best appreciation for this culture so different than our own.

This family owns a bunch of mohair goats, so Ella and Delia spent a good amount of time trying to charm, pet and feed them.

And if allowing us to hike around their canyon was not gift enough, this family had dinner waiting for us when we returned!  We feasted on homemade blue corn meal mash and Navajo Fry Bread (like an elephant ear or funnel cake) topped with taco ingredients.  This was our first taste of Rehoboth and it was fun to see the something special about this place start to make its way into our team members' hearts, the way it did mine 16 years ago!