Dec 7

December 7, 2006

After two twelve hour days in a row, Robert faced a major mutiny this morning. The crew informed the captain that she simply refused to get in the truck for any reason before 6:00 PM when she would have to pick up people for the activity night. That meant Robert went to the store alone, got the mail alone, talked to the Tribal Office personnel alone. Actually, as grumpy as his crew was it was probably a relief to leave her at home.

The maintenance people came from Show Low and worked on the lights around the church. They made a great improvement. Some weeks ago they put a motion sensor on our porch light, so we no longer had to worry about getting into the trailer in the dark or leaving the porch light on all the time. They also put motion sensors all around the church, but had no light that stayed on all the time. The first night they changed all the lights we drove right by because it was all dark. We got up the road a ways and said, “Hey, we don’t live here.” Today they put a big light up on the eaves on the front of the church that turns on at dusk and off at dawn. It’s so nice to have the church lighted all night. There’s also a street light next to the trailer and one in the parking lot (also known as a dirt area that’s been leveled) that don’t work. We worry about children playing out there when cars are around like at the dinner next week, so Robert has been talking to the tribe about fixing them. Today he finally talked to the right person and they said to call Navapache Power in Show Low. He did that and found out that the LDS church has 150 accounts with the power company. However, they were very nice and just told us to have Sam Chamberlain, the head of the facilities office in Show Low, call and verify which account the lights are under and they’ll try to get them fixed.

Because we got so discouraged Wednesday we decided to give ourselves some therapy this afternoon. We watched a silly video called “Continental Divide” and I wrapped Christmas presents. It was wonderful. A good break to get us ready for tonight.

I was nervous all week about this project. Obviously everyone knows that crafts aren’t my strength and I was afraid too many people would come and I wouldn’t be able to show them what to do. I can only say now that once again my faith was lacking. The project turned out to be a HUGE SUCCESS! We had 14 women come. We picked up 5 of them and the rest actually came by themselves. They were so cute and so creative. Every table runner had a different design and they were really pretty. I ran out of glitter so have 3 women I have to visit Saturday and spray their table runners with glitter. A blessing, really, because one of them is a nonmember and it’s a good excuse to stay in touch with her. We started at 6:30 and I had 4 women to take home, so I got home at 10:15. I had also during the day fixed lunch for the Elders, left dinner in the crockpot, and got chili all ready to put in the crockpot for dinner tomorrow. So I was a little tired, but so delighted that these women came to the church and had a good experience there. One of the older ladies I took home, another nonmember, said, “Well, what we gonna do next Thursday?” I explained that the activity next week will be the Branch dinner Wednesday night and told her we’ll come and get her for the dinner. She also informed me that we need to start our activities a little earlier because this was pretty late for her to be out.

We had two young women come and 2 girls about 10 years old come with their mothers. They even made table runners. It’s such a great feeling when something works out so that we feel like we are serving the people in a way that we’re supposed to. They have so little and it’s such a great feeling when we bring a little bit of joy into their lives.

When we were spraying the glitter on the table runners one of the ladies said it smelled like the glue all the kids sniff. I made some comment about well, don’t get high on it, that’s not what we’re supposed to use the church for. They thought that was so funny. They laughed about that all night. They kept telling each other not to sniff the glitter because then Pres. Bonito wouldn’t let us have activities at the church any more.

We realize it’s trite but have to finish this with saying that we are learning to love these Apache people. We only need an occasional success like this to make us glad we’re here.

And finally thanks to Heather for the great craft idea! She sent me the table runner that was the inspiration I needed.