Canyon De Chelly

Yesterday was an awesome day. Most of our day was spent experiencing God's beautiful creation at Canyon De Chelly in Arizona. After our morning worship we headed to the canyon that was about 70 miles away from where we are staying.

We took 6 Navajo teens from the youth group here as well as their leader. Even though they live so close to the canyon, they had never been. When we got to the canyon we stopped at two overlooks, ate lunch, and then began our hike down to the canyon floor. The hike was so beautiful. We even had a quiet reflection time during the hike and we all really felt God's presence. Once we got to the canyon floor there were some Navajos selling handmade jewelry. Our way back up the canyon was quite an adventure. It started down pouring and by the time we reached the top we were all soaking wet. The rain made for an amazing experience and the canyon looked even more beautiful than before!



After the canyon, the Navajo teens invited us to attend their weekly Wednesday night worship program. It was nothing like we had ever experienced before. We sang worship songs, said prayers, and read scriptures all in the Navajo language. It was pretty difficult to pronounce the words but it was so cool to be able to worship God together with our new Navajo friends.


We are looking forward to the rest of the week.

-Zoe(:

Note from Nick: we got to see the place where Ansel Adams took this picture.




Here's my version:



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Openings and Windows

Monday proved to be a great start for us. After opening the day gathered in the Presence of God we headed down to a trailer park here on the mission grounds. The need was obvious. The area had become a trash ridden, dog infested dump. The church needed to clear out the area to move others in as well as demonstrate the love and care attested to in the Gospel. Enter our team.



We spent hours throwing away trash, sorting reusables, removing an old porch. The particular moment of grace in this story comes in the form of Anna. Anna is a Navajo woman whose trailer borders the trash pile we were tackling. When we first arrived Anna was removed, stand offish, not open to our help. She would only appear to claim items she wanted from her neighbor's yard. However over the course of the day her shyness weakened. Soon she began asking us to do things, then she began interacting with our team. The true moment, though, came when a group of girls being silly while cleaning shared a laugh with Anna. This may sound small and surely is. But this moment was our small step onto her world. Today we are planning to build a fence for her. Giving us more small steps.

After cleaning and a short rest it was adventure time. We headed to Window Rock, the capital of Navajoland. There we hiked up to the actual Window Rock.




Here the students were given time explore but also wrestle with questions about spiritual distraction and dilution. More many this was the highlight of the day. How could it not be?

We finished the day with dinner served by the local youth ministry in Fort Defiance. We indulged on Navajo Tacos. What are those? You'll just have to ask us when we get back.

Its powerful being here. We read the story of the Good Samaritan this morning. As we marinated in the Scriptures, Tanner pointed out that we had become the neighbors of the Navajo. Though they are a different people in a different country, they don't live on our block or go to our schools they are our neighbors because we have become neighbors to them.




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Location:Old Red Lake Rd,Fort Defiance,United States

Lost And Found

We arrived last night after almost 12hrs of driving the remote location forced us to spend time in other towns purchasing suppose for the upcoming week. Though the team was tired they were excited to finally be here. I think it is safe to say that none of us expected what we found. Here in the heart of The Navajo Nation we found a well situated, well established church and mission. I think for all of us the thought entered our minds, "what are we doing here if the Church has been here for so long?" The answer came later that night when Rev. Chan explained the situation.

Since 1868 the Navajo have been a sovereign nation existing within our borders. Currently they boast over 200,000 citizens and 27,000 sq miles. They are the largest Native American group in the US. In almost every since we are doing foreign missions here.

Historically the US government has pursued an agenda of reeducation with he Navajo utilizing primarily schools and often times churches. The once powerful testimony of the church has been corrupted here and turned into a message of bigotry, hatred and disrespect. It is in this story that the Church lost it's way and the Navajo lost their faith.




The Navajo hate and are terrified of death. Typical Navajo practice, when a death occurs, is to burn the building in which the deceased died, remove the body secretly, bury the body secretly and never speak of them again. To die is to be lost and forgotten. They are keenly aware of the desperation and hopelessness of death. So aware of their powerlessness over death they seek to remove all signs and reminders of death. Yet sitting in the old church's yard lies a cemetery. A screaming reminder of the reality of death. The Navajo allow this reminder of death for one reason. The message of the Church has always been a message of conquering death through the resurrection of Christ.

Our calling here is to help repair the relationship between the Navajo and the Church. To selflessly speak the truth of the Gospel through our service to the neighbors living on the missions grounds. Our Scripture this morning was Matthew 25. As Mike, our Wonder Voyage guide, read the passage two things jumped out. First, all nations will stand before Christ as a gift from the Father, that includes the Navajo. Second, our witness is ministering to the least through the practical needs of the Navajo.

Our hope is simple. That that which was lost will be found.




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Location:Dawes Rd,Fort Defiance,United States

Surprise

While squishing peaches, karate chopping cucumbers, and picking corn was fun, going to a water park and celebrating what a great week we had beats all of it. Today we went to a local Kansas city water park called "Oceans of Fun". We had no idea we were going to a water park. The night before we were told that we would do one more service project in the morning and eat dinner together in the evening. But instead we went to serve ourselves a little fun at the water park. It was a total blast.


There were tube water slides, normal water slides, lazy rivers, crazy water structures, and log rides. My personal favorite ride was a giant tube slide where you went pretty fast and went up on walls. Every one went on rides, even Zoe, who made a personal record of doing 4 rides in a water park trip . After we left the water park however the fun was just beginning. Nick and Jason took us out to an amazing celebration dinner. The restaurant's name was T-REX. The decor on the inside was amazing. It was a prehistoric design with a lot of real looking dinosaurs, mammoths, and fish. In about every room, there was a very large fish aquarium with fish to fit the room theme. It was very amazing and a great to addition our day of rest, fun and celebration.


All week we went without any technology, such as cell phones, ipods, and TV. So obviously were craving some TV. Drew found a remote and Clara became a TV. It was a VERY entertaining half hour filled with lots of laughs and jokes. However, the day ended on a more quiet spiritual note. We did something called pass the candle. We had two candles. When somebody received the candle they told everyone their moment of wonder for the week, and then told everybody the name of someone on the trip that they saw God in this week, then passing candle to them. Everybody was picked and given recognition. We also did it in the dark, making it the perfect end to the week.



Brought to you by Emma and Carly



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Gettin' Corny in Kansas

So today wasn't as fun because I couldn't karate-chop bad cucumbers in half, but anyways, today was fun too. We got to get up bright and early to pick corn! Who doesn't want to pick corn on a Thursday? Most people.

So the harvest was plenty but the workers were few, so as you can imagine we didn't get all the work done,not even half the field but we still had a great harvest. First, we were very comfortable because the coordinator brought wash cloths and a bucket of ice water to soak them in to cool us off. Also Nick bought slushes at sonic during a bathroom trip. We harvested literally a ton of corn, over 2,000 lbs. All of this corn the market would have turned down because it was smaller and not the big ears of corn.


Nick harvesting the small corn.How many corny things can you find?

Through most of the picking day we were wishing that we could go back to a.c, while twisting, pulling, plucking, buckets of corn off the stalks. Some people loaded them into the truck after people picked them. We stopped around noon. Then we delivered some of the corn to a local community outreach. While the rest of the corn was given to Harvesters Food Bank. We came back to our cabin for lunch. We had to be silent for two hours for monastery time in which we attempted to play frisbee (which didn't work in total silence) There was also some serious napping!!!

Next, the spirit of Kansas City BBQ brought us to Arthur Bryant's BBQ. That was some of the best food I had all week. Nick says Texas was much better but anyhow it was great anyway.

Finally the city of fountains brought us to a fountain in Mill Park. It had well - "artwork"- and it was a pretty cool fountain. We had some time to relax and bring ourselves closer to God.


It was pretty wonderful today.



~ Mark & Katie(cousins)

PS check out our picture on the newspaper's website. It's number 14: http://www.kansascity.com/2011/07/20/3026511/star-shots-best-photos-from-july.html#slide-14





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Location:NW Hwy 45,Parkville,United States

Rotten Cucumbers Rule

Hey this is Clara and Carly we will be switching off telling the day

Clara: Today was awesome, we got to sort through rotten produce! It started out when we left at 8:45 to Harvesters food bank. We were greeted by a grumpy lady who didn't want to do anything with us. (great start right?)
Carly: we headed to the conference room and learned all about how fast calories add up and how bad it is to eat out at McDonalds and burger king.
Then we headed over to the packing warehouse.
Clara: We were then told to sort through about a billion boxes of produce to look for rotten or squished food.
Carly: the first million boxes were full of cucumbers. Although most of them were covered in hairy, squishy, white, rotten mold.
Clara: About 5 hours later (really) we got to sort through barf-able cilantro. As shown in this picture it was as disgusting as my brothers feet...



Carly: the next dozen boxes were full of ridiculously gross peaches. Almost every single peach was thrown away and will be given away to pig farmers in Missouri.
Clara: Before we left the food bank, we had to help with rotten onions, which we later found had 5 hours old mice babies that had infested the onions. One was squished, one died of being poked by a little kid with onion gloves, and one was still twitching when we left. :P
Carly: after we were on the road again we went to a small ice cream shop where Nick and Jason bought us delicious shaved ice with custard.
Clara: Dinner was interesting. Not the best food I've ever had but food was brought to us by a miniature train on a railroad track. We had a fun time goofing off.
Carly: after a delicious dinner everyone went across the street and cooled off in fountains. I thought that today we didn't get quiet enough of a thank you from the people we served. But while serving we helped a lot more people (about 11,000) today than we could of helped out at the shelter in 10 days. I think we were awesome today.
Clara: Overall, today was ok, yesterday truthfully was better for me because we could see and hear the thanks, when today we got a simple thank you which was hard from me because I usually expect a lot more. But as Christians we don't work for thanks but for GOD.




This is obviously not a usual blog but Nick said to write what happened during the day so that's what we did! :-D


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Giving Hope through food

Today we went to the Metro Lutheran Ministry and we got to restock the food pantry, but my favorite part of the day was when we got to carry out boxes of food out to the cars of the elderly, every time I went out to a car I said God bless you, it felt good to say that because I would never do that at home! But I hope that everyone I said that to believes it, when somebody says to me God bless you I feel happy because I know that it is true because I am very blessed and have more then I need. I just have one more thing to say... I am ready for tomorrow!!


Love Jesi Smoot


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Location:Kansas City, MO