Blessed be the day!

School Starts!

Monday, August 18th
6AM Abby leaps into our bed and says, “Does school start today?” It does indeed! Jerry jumps up and gets dressed for the 6:45 AM school bus departure. I get up, get breakfast ready. For the first day of school, we have sausage and biscuits for breakfast. Abby loves these. Thank you, Nana, for the canned sausage that makes them so quick and easy to make for breakfast. Kelcy wakes up closer to 7AM. Jerry is already gone, of course. The first day of school Jerry was riding the bus with Mr. Bill and the bus was running down to a community call Bird Spring, along with the stops in Leupp.

I get all three of us girls dressed and fed. Then I pack us all lunch for the day and we walk over to school about 7:45AM. Abby & Kelcy play on the playground until Miss Springer arrives and then they run inside the school building. Bill, Kelcy and I stay there for the opening programs, where we say the pledges to the American flag, Christian flag and the Bible and sing a few songs. The Bill, Kelcy and I leave to go to the mission and Abby and Jerry stay there at the school. The school children walk up to the mission for lunch time around 11:30AM. Abby comes in and give me a hug and then goes to sit with her class. She has a hard time the first day at lunch and wants me or Jerry to sit with her while she eats. After lunch is recess for half an hour and then back to their classes. School gets out at 3PM, Jerry drives up the hill and let me know that Abby is riding with him on the school bus to take the kids home.

This pattern is pretty much how our week days are continuing. Up at 6AM, school by 8AM, I’m at the office by 8:30. Then, at 3PM, Jerry picks up me and Kelcy and we all ride on the bus to take the kids home. I have become the school bus children monitor/rule enforcer.

The school is doing really well. All the kids at the school are very respectful and very nice. Jerry likes teaching, especially science and history. Jerry is teaching sixth and seventh grade, so he has to teach all of the subjects, whereas teachers at this grade level normally teach the same subject to different classes of children all day long. He has had one field trip, walking around the mission property to observe the weathering process. He has an unassigned student, which is our dog Josie. She goes into his classroom some days and hangs out. She always comes up to the mission for lunch, too.

Abby is doing well in school. She is making friends with the Navajo girls in her class. She is learning a lot and comes home with probably 10 papers each day that she has completed, along with art projects and puppets. Abby’s class has two pets that I have seen. One is a hamster; the other is a guinea pig. The kids all love the pets, including Abby. I cannot remember the name of the hamster or guinea pig, but I am sure that Abby knows. She has gotten to hold one of them. Abby did indeed get her ears pierced and she didn’t even cry! She picked out pink flower earrings to wear. She is doing well at taking care of her ears and they have healed very well.

Kelcy is adapting to going to the mission with me. I think she would rather go to school, if the entire truth is told. She loves to go to Abby’s room in the mornings and see the class pets. At this time, the board is interviewing a lady who may begin a preschool program here at the mission! This is very exciting and would be a blessing to all of the Navajo children and to all of the Navajo mothers who work outside the home.

I began my job the same day as classes started. I have gotten a lot of work done and am making some changes. The bookkeeping has been done very meticulously in the past and I am certainly trying to follow that pattern. I am working on an estimated budget for the mission for the coming year. We are now officially hooked up to the internet at the Navajo Trails Mission. Mr. Bill acquired internet service for us and it is working very well.

Thursday August 28th

Jerry was preparing to go on the church bus route so that he could learn where to stop and learn the route. So, God sent him an idea. We all (10 of us) went on the bus routes! We piled into the church van and on Thursday, drove toward Winslow for the church bus route there. We stopped at the individual “stops” and handed out a flyer with the church information on it, a pen from Navajo Trails Mission, a coloring book, crayons, stickers, and candy for any children there. If the stop was at one of the school children’s house, their teacher would get out and go to the door to drop off the packet. Sometimes, we all got out and visited shortly.

Friday night, we drove the second bus route, which went to Tolani Lake on the Navajo Reservation. This route is 70 miles in one direction. At one point, we went down a dirt road for seven miles. It was very dusty and very hot (the van has no air conditioning). We didn’t get too many people to answer the door on this trip, but we left packets where we thought people would find them. We plan to make another visit to Tolani Lake and see if we cannot visit more people there. Tolani Lake is a small group of houses in the middle of the desert. It appears that there used to be a lake there, but now there is just a dry lake bed.


I will end this one for now, but I have another big update soon.