Oct 4

October 4, 2006

It’s raining tonight. We have heard that this is a flash flood area and that it’s possible for the road out of here to be blocked for up to two weeks. Good thing we got groceries in Show Low yesterday.

For the information of those children who served in third world countries, believe us when we say that this is also a third world area. As you will guess the biggest adjustment for me is the time element. Yesterday we signed up for our post office box and then the lady said come back tomorrow and I’ll give you the key. Why not now? So today we got a cell phone and after all the paperwork was done the guy says come back in an hour and I’ll have your phone ready for you. We’ve always been able to stand right there and have the phone programmed. So we went back today to get the keys to the post office box, not once, but three times, and the postmaster was on break, or busy, or ran home to check her kids. We went back in an hour to get the phone and were told come back at 4:30. Crazy! We finally got the cell phone, but still don’t have keys to the post office box. Sigh! The cell phone is an interesting thing. Cellular One has a plan where anyone living on the reservation can get a cell phone for $42.00. No monthly payment…just a flat $42.00 fee. The trick is you get 500 minutes per month for up to 60 months. That’s it. No more minutes. If you use all your minutes, you just can’t make any more calls until next month. The Elders were here Monday and they were really excited because it was the first of the month, so they could call people. They said everyone uses all their minutes the first two weeks of every month and then it’s a pain to get hold of anyone for the last two weeks. Also, we can only make local calls on our phone. We can’t call any other cell phone company, but they can call us. That means that you guys can call us on the cell but we can’t call you. At least we can call 911 if we need help. We don’t get our land line until Friday.

We had more company today. Robert Ivins visited for about 2 hours this morning. He brought us a traditional Apache breakfast. When he gave it to us it was wrapped in foil, so I said, “Thank you. What’s in an Apache breakfast?” He answered, “Lizard tails, bats’ wings and …” a few more things that I can’t remember. I said, “Let me guess. You’re teasing me, right?” it was good…just a tortilla filled with potatoes and ham. We had quite a visit with him. So many people have nothing to do, they just come and stay and stay and stay. It’s hard to fit that kind of visit into my to-do list. But he was a very interesting man. He’s a member but doesn’t come much because he can’t give up his beer – Budweiser. He had lots of stories to tell and he was very entertaining. Then just before dinner some kids, 6 boys and 1 girl, all elementary school ages, came to the door. Guess they got curious about the funny white people in the neighborhood. They were adorable. I put up the grandkids’ calendar today and they were fascinated by their pictures. Then they wanted a drink of water. Then they asked if they could play kickball on the lawn in front of the church. We couldn’t see any harm so told them they could play until dark. As they left each one gave us a hug and said how nice it was to meet us.

In between all this excitement we cleaned and cleaned and cleaned. The maintenance people in the stake worked really hard to repair this trailer, but they sure didn’t clean it. Apparently, neither have the Elders done any cleaning when they’ve stayed here. It was sadly in need of a good scrub…that’s our way of saying the place was filthy. We cleaned in the kitchen last night and again until 3:00 today. I couldn’t believe people actually ate food out of the refrigerator. The egg holder was filled with dead bugs. The ice in the freezer was so thick it sounded like a plane crashing when it fell off. The floor was greasy, the microwave was stinky, and I never did get all the crud off the oven racks. We washed every pan, glass, dish and piece of silverware in the place. Robert cleaned up outside and cleaned the dresser drawers so we could put our clothes away. Then I started on the bathroom. No details here as any description I could give would be x-rated. However, the bright side is that by 7:00 tonight we were able to cook dinner in a reasonably clean place and the bathroom was safe enough that I actually took a bath and dared lay my towel on the floor. That took some work and a bit of a miracle.

I was pretty discouraged when I started the day…the most down I’ve been since I left home. Part of the problem is that we can’t communicate with anyone. Verizon has no service here and we don’t have our land line or e-mail yet. So we are completely isolated from our family. That’s been really hard. We’re used to staying in close touch and we miss hearing their voices and knowing everything that’s happening. The dirty trailer certainly didn’t help my mood, but the visits from Bro. Ivins and the kids helped a lot. I still miss my family. Tomorrow we plan to go to Show Low, if we’re not flooded in, so I hope I can talk to someone while we’re there. We love our family so much and really miss them all today. The other thing that finally cheered me up was finding the grandkids calendar and putting that on the wall in the kitchen.