Jan 25 07

January 25, 2007

Last week Bettina Begay came by and suggested we start attending the Apache Ministers’ Alliance. She said their next meeting would be this morning in Whiteriver. We’re really enthused about being part of the ministers’ alliance (seriously, no sarcasm intended) so we got up bright and early and were in Whiteriver a few minutes before the meeting was scheduled. We introduced ourselves to the receptionist and a few minutes later a nice lady came out to speak with us. She explained that there was no meeting today…the meetings are held the 4th Thursday of each month. Since that would be today, we were a bit confused. She then said, well, this month’s meeting was cancelled but they would meet next month. So no meeting. But the lady, whose name was Sharon ( no wonder she was so nice) turned out to be an important contact. She agreed to put us on the mailing list for future meetings and said they’ve been inviting the ministers from Cibecue for months but couldn’t get anyone to come and would really like a representative from Cibecue. We’re happy to be the ones who represent our little community. Bet once we start going some of the other churches might decide to show up. Unfortunately, the next meeting is Feb 22 when we will be in Arkansas. Oh well, we’ll try to make the March meeting.

Since there was no meeting we took advantage and did some much needed shopping. We went to Show Low where Robert left me at Wal-Mart for and hour and a half. I felt like a true Apache…shopping that long at Wal-Mart. Robert was at the car wash trying to clean up the truck after scout night. Since the snow has been melting around the church we had mud everywhere in that truck.

We had to be back in Cibecue by 1:00, so we ate Wendy’s Frescata sandwiches in the truck. Our first appointment was with Davis and Lyviah. Neither one was home but Davis’ mother, Carrie, was there. We talked to her for almost an hour. Apparently Davis and Lyviah had a fight and Lyviah took off to be with her mother and Davis went with his druggie friends for the day. Nice! Carrie is very concerned about both of them. She said Lyviah doesn’t do any work…she lets Carrie do all the cooking and doesn’t clean their room or wash their clothes. Carries seems to be a bit tired of this arrangement. She says her younger son is also using drugs and wants us to pray for him. This son, Delton, is Bethany’s boyfriend, and Bethany is our neighbor Josephine’s daughter. Bethany is pregnant, but we don’t know if Delton is the father or not. She has another daughter, Ariana, who has come to visit us as she stays with Josephine most of the time.

When we left there we went to find Lyviah at her mother’s house. Her sister said she had just gone up to here grandmother’s, so we went there. Some man we didn’t know answered the door and said she wasn’t there she was at her mother’s. Robert said we were just there and they said she had come up here. OK, we can take a hint! At least we’re learning to recognize when we’re getting ditched.

Next we had an appointment with Thelma to talk about her taking the temple class. Her husband answered the door and said she was sick. So we wanted to visit Serafina and Maxine, neither one was home. Next we went to see Cheryl and Ricky. We had talked over their request for money and decided we would like some more beadwork from her. We won’t give them money but we are willing to buy stuff from them. So we gave her $50 to make us matching bolos for Bob and Lynda. That’s a total of $100 we’ve given Cheryl this past week. That should be her limit for a while we think.

Also had an appointment with Dion and Verbena for another temple prep lesson, but Verbena was late getting home from work so we had to reschedule. Came home, had dinner with the Elders, and then went with them to the basketball game at the high school. After that we wanted to make a couple more visits. First we went to Deoma Henry, the Primary President. I’ve been after her ever since we came back from Christmas, but again she wasn’t home. Our luck wasn’t so good today.

One more visit, this time to Myrna, our pregnant Young Women’s president. Myrna is 43 and we knew she was having some trouble, so felt we needed to visit her. We were right. She’s 5 months along and had her first prenatal exam a week ago. They did an ultrasound and blood tests and told her there’s a good chance it’s a Down Syndrome baby. She needs to go to Phoenix for more tests. She’s also diabetic, can’t think of the name but it’s the pregnancy induced diabetes. Such a high risk pregnancy. This is the woman whose son committed suicide last spring. Poor woman. Robert gave her a very nice blessing. Remember her in your prayers along with all the others we’ve written about. Better just pray for all of Cibecue.