Jan 10 07

January 10, 2007

Today we sought professional help. We went to the health center and talked to Bettina Begay, a social worker and the director of the clinic. We really like her and wanted her input on how to get people to come to ARP. Besides being smart and educated she’s Apache so we figure she’s a good resource.

We left feeling much better, as we discovered we’re not the only failures in town. Their AA group also has 0 attendees. She said they had some success when they hooked up with a federal program that paid people $32.00 a session to attend, but we suspect we’ll have a hard time selling that approach to the first presidency.

So like we said yesterday we need a new plan. Back to home visits. We’re not even bothering to put our signs up around town any more. Bettina said we might want to get some spots on the radio or ads in the newspapers in the area. We asked if she thought that would help and she said no, but it might make us feel better. So we’re just going to have to seek out people one by one, home by home. We think if we start visiting some homes regularly and find 2-3 people who start talking about quitting drinking, then we could suggest they all get together and start a group. Maybe we’ve been putting the cart before the horse.

So we came back home and walked, where we formulated this exciting new approach, then made lasagna because Alma called and said the baby has been released and we said we’d bring them dinner. We weren’t being totally unselfish. We figured one pan of lasagna would feed us and Gilbert and Alma tonight and the Elders for lunch tomorrow. By the way Gilbert’s last name is Cheney. Then Murphy called and asked Robert to take him to see President Bonito. We assumed he had an appointment with him but no, just wanted to ask if they could use the church for a birthday party on Sunday. What happened to just using the phone? He has a cell phone. Then Robert saw Alma and she needed bleach because I told her to clean her apartment really well when she brought the baby home. Robert went to the store and bought bleach where he also had a nice visit with Pastor Assembly of God, whom we quite like and want to go visit soon. Takes the bleach back to Alma who lives across the parking lot from Murphy and another mom and her daughter asked for a ride to the clinic. Drops them off and they walk up here after their appointment to wait for a ride home. Robert finally gets home and the minute he walks in the door Alma calls…now they need garbage bags. I guess now we’re the local supermarket also. So we took Henrietta and Amber home, they live guess where…across the parking lot from Alma, and delivered the bags.

Finally time to start working on our new plan. We decided to visit the families who have had recent deaths. We started with the family of the boy who was stabbed. His mother is a member but we’ve never met her. Been there many times but she’s never been home. Today she was there but just leaving so we made an appointment to visit with her tomorrow at 4:00. Next to Dion and Verbena, whose baby died from heart problems. Not home. Helpful neighbor across the street who reports on them every single time we stop informed us they went to Show Low. Finally to Goodays, the family whose little girl was run over. The Grandma was there and ready to talk. Then the son, father of the child who was killed, came in and was also ready to talk. We weren’t sure we were ready to listen. They proceeded to tell us that their house is haunted and they have both seen the same demon in the house. They wanted Robert to bless the back part of the house…I guess the demon is welcome in the front room. But I said, let’s wait for the Elders to come tomorrow and help. This is the kind of experience I think it’s only right to share with young, righteous, naïve Elders. So we have an appointment for tomorrow at 2:00. The child’s father is Davis and the mother is Lyviah. Lyviah is pregnant again. The baby is due in July and we think she was pregnant before Daena died. The grandma, whose name we can’t remember, said there’s an old Apache story that if a small child bends over and looks between a woman’s legs it means the woman is pregnant. I’m not making this stuff up. This is what happens out here. Apparently Daena had given her mom the look before she was killed. They also had some pretty weird dreams they told us about. Most of the dreams we’d heard until today were conversion stories. I like those a lot. They had way more stories, but we’ll stop there.

We finished the day with scouts, which leaves us both feeling murderous. We pick them up and take them home and besides that Robert spends 2 hours entertaining them. Tonight on the way home this one boy was so rude!!! I’m just seething. I have the same reaction to boy scouts as I do snakes and spiders.