Aug 11 07

August 11, 2007

Last week sometime there was a rock slide on the highway up to Show Low that blocked the road for a while. We went to Show Low today and saw the huge boulder that came off the mountain. It looked like a quarter of the mountainside slid onto the highway. We’re glad we didn’t go to Show Low that day.

The big event today was the Memorial Dinner for Richard Colletata, Myrna’s son who killed himself a year ago. These poor families. When a person dies, the family feeds the whole community for the four days of the Wake. Then a year later they put on another dinner for all the people who came to the funeral or helped in any way to thank them for their support. It’s a nice idea, but so expensive. Myrna told us she invited 500 people to the dinner today. They served chicken, mashed potatoes, fry bread, tortillas, green beans, acorn stew, rolls, and the ever-present cake and jello. That’s a lot of food for 500 people. And we haven’t mentioned the bottled water and soda pop. We gave Cheryl and Ricky a ride to the dinner.

They had the local Christian band providing music during the dinner. Ouch! It’s not only bad music but so irreverent. We tried to stop listening after they screamed “Baby Jesus” about a hundred times. Then they asked one of the band members to say the blessing on the food. Why we’ll never understand. The young man who died was talking about going on a mission and attending church regularly. His grandfather was at the dinner, and he’s a member of the branch presidency. Also, President Bonito and Robert were both there. It was just inappropriate to have this guy raise his hand and scream the prayer into the microphone and then applaud before he even said amen. Bizarre, at best. Blasphemous is probably a better word. Our spirits just recoil. Robert says this is living a telestial law. Makes me want to be a better person.

We needed gas and groceries so after the torture, oops, I meant dinner, we went to Show Low. At least that was our rationalization. It was really therapy. Seriously, we filled the gas tank in Mesa, so we had about a quarter of a tank left. That’s plenty to get to Show Low but not home again. The Elders are trying to have Holyon’s baptism Sunday, so we either had to get gas today or on the Sabbath after a baptism. That seemed tacky, so we went today. Could we have bought gas out here? Yes, but we simply refuse to pay the exorbitant prices the tribe charges. And we managed to get in a movie. We saw “Stardust” and really liked it.

The other reason we needed therapy was that one of the mothers we know grabbed us just as we were leaving the dinner and told us that her 13-year-old son has an STD. He says he’s never had any sexual experience, the clinic says that’s the only way he could have contracted the disease, and they ran two separate tests to make sure there hadn’t been a mistake. The poor mother was distraught. We just talked to her for a while, and assured her that we had put his name on the prayer roll. As we left I gave her a big hug and she said, “I’m so glad I got to know you.”