Oct 10

October 10, 2006

This was the kind of insane day that only a Charlton would even think of. We fixed breakfast for the Elders then left the house at 8:00 AM. We wanted to go to Snowflake and pick up the food order for the Enriques family. A good plan, except we had an appointment to have lunch with the couples in Whiteriver. That meant we had to drive 60 miles to Snowflake, get the food order, drive 60 miles back to Cibecue to deliver the order, visit with the family and then drive 40 miles on a different road to Whiteriver, all by 12:00. And it’s not like this is freeway driving. It’s all windy mountain roads. The really insane part is that we did it.

There are 3 missionary couples in the Fort Apache/Whiteriver area. One is a CES couple (Petersons). They teach 1 seminary class a day and have a 3-bedroom house to live in. Another couple is the proselyting couple we met yesterday (Remingtons). They work their behinds off and have a trailer to live in. Go figure! And the third is the other family services couple that visited with us last Tuesday (Lefkowitz). We just had a potluck lunch…mostly salads, some rolls, cookies and zucchini bread. Very informal. We ate in the Fort Apache church building, which is a huge building but only houses 1 branch. There were 2 wards in the building once, but activity has dwindled down to 1 branch. That’s why Remingtons have such a big job. There are 1200 members listed on the records for that area. They’re trying to update the ward list and find out just how many of those 1200 are still around and then trying to re-activate those they find.

We can’t honestly say we enjoyed the day very much. These couples are really discouraged. We think they’re just burned out, but they were so negative about the people here. This culture is definitely different than ours and it’s easy to get discouraged. But it wasn’t what we needed to hear right now. I got discouraged because all the women talked about was their quilting projects with the women and how many quilts they make and give away. Then they moved on from that to the neat sewing project they’ve done with the young women. Well, that’s 2 strikes for me. We finished up with a neat tour of their gardens and stories of all the food they give to the people from their garden. Well, 3 strikes and I’m out. I can’t do any of those things. I just came away thinking I don’t belong here. Why doesn’t the missionary committee find out a little about what we know how to do before making the assignments? I could do a Visitor Center, or even CES, but I can’t teach the women to quilt and sew and garden!

After lunch the Lefkowitz’ took us on a tour of Whiteriver, which is really the center of the reservation. This is where all the tribal government is located. They have a wonderful hospital here, nice elementary and high school, and an activity center. These are all nice buildings. But they also took us to a homeless shelter, which was awful. I was so uncomfortable “touring” the place, not just because it was horribly dirty and depressing but because it seemed such a violation of the residents’ privacy.

We went to the grocery store and a man came up to Robert and held out his hand. He said, “See this hand? It’s kind of old now but it shook the hand of the president of the Mormon Church.” Seems had met President Kimball in Mesa when they re-dedicated the temple. He was on the placement program and his foster family took him to the temple. He was 16 years old. We don’t know if he’s a member, but Lefkowitz’ didn’t know him so he’s not active.

The Elders were still here when we got home. The two Elders who stay here with us are adorable. They are Elder Thompson from Logan and Elder Itri from Philadelphia. We told them about our day so they told us how they felt at the beginning of their missions. It helped a lot. They are so easy to be around, fun, polite. Their mothers should be proud!

We had 3 more kids come and visit tonight. They live right next door so it was fun to meet them.

We were happy to come home to Cibicue tonight. We feel at home in the trailer now and Cibicue is sort of isolated from some of the problems in Whiteriver. President Benito said last night that Cibicue is the hidden garden spot that’s really the best place on the res but few people even know it’s here. We certainly felt that way as we came back to town tonight. It’s not quite as oppressive here and the people are much more welcoming and friendly than in the bigger town.