I haven’t written a word to print
in weeks, at least four since it was a week or so before Mission Arizona (MAZ)
2012 and it is now two and half weeks after. It seems a lifetime ago that we
were frantically painting the last of four brick walls the team built so that
we could get on the road, packing strategically so that the truck and trailer
with Paul and Jacob could head straight home, and making our way to the
wonderfully refurbished church sign for our team photo. Much of the emotional highs
of the trip for me have already faded with a couple of weeks of turmoil at the
office, two road trips to the north, and a weekend in Santa Barbara for Teya’s birthday with my parent’s
down from Oregon for the festivities. Most of the hardships of the trip
filtered away during affirmations while both the kids and adults said things
about each other that showed the spotlight on all that was good about this
short mission trip and service week; it was like a kalidascope of great aspects
of each person. People often ask if I’m going next year after each trip and I always
respond that I don’t start thinking about it for at least a month after the
highs and lows have evened out to allow for a more objective time of
consideration and prayer. I like to draw a parallel for my participation in MAZ
to Walter Alston and his tenure with the Dodgers as manager of the team. I
understand that he always had a one year contract and met after each season to
determine the owner’s satisfaction with his performance and he managed the team
for 23 seasons. I have a year to year agreement with God on weather I go and
how involved I’ll be. The process will likely be kicked off with this post and
last a few months. I have much to do and need to make some significant progress
on them before I’ll know for sure.
This trip was full of surprises
just as each one of the twenty trips I’ve done; even the one I stayed home on a
couple of years ago held a surprise which was the simple fact that I believed
He wanted me home that year. This year’s biggest surprise was a dog that I just
could not be mean enough to in order to keep it away; the mantel of the stern
task oriented timeline driven discipline guy has worn thin. I would much prefer
to laugh, play, and goof off with the kids and joke around with all the adults
but that role has not been mine to play. This is not to say that I don’t have
fun, I have plenty and great memories with a number of very cool kids and
friends. Naynay, as the dogs shortened name came to be, was well ensconced with
the early group by the time I arrived with the bulk of the team on the Monday
following Easter and it was too late to impose the rules of “outside the camp”
for the reservation dogs. No petting, feeding, or otherwise fraternizing with
the dogs inside our sleeping area is the way I like it so that we can avoid
distractions and the keep the specter of an animal coming home with us away. Dashed
beyond all recognition was my resolve to stick to the plan and I have to say it
must have been God’s plan with Naynay; to what purpose still remains a mystery
to me.
We did a lot of work on the
reservation at the Vah Ki and Stotonic Presbyterian churches. If you’ll excuse
the run on sentence we replaced the floor tiles in both bathrooms, poured a
concrete slab equipped with a finished block wall for seating, replaced seven
or eight windows in the 1890s adobe church building, broke out bad concrete and
re-poured them to make the walkways more usable to the wheel chair and walker-bound
folks, installed a drip watering system to two new trees, filled in three
sections of a wall to the meeting area to hold back the desert sands, painted
over graffiti, restored the church sign with the artful Paige and Delany as
primaries and covered it with Plexiglas to protect it from graffiti (brilliant
idea Todd), repaired numerous toilets, closed in and added windows to the mud
room entrance to the fellowship hall, added another sand barrier to the other
entrance to the hall, sanded and painted the floor of the other 1890s adobe
church and replaced about fifty feet of eight inch baseboard, cooked a meal and
held a mini-VBS for the neighborhood and church folks, and dozens of other
little things that escape me now. We did a lot of work and that was all good
but the thing that stands out for me as special was the mini-VBS that Ashley
Adamson thought of and the impromptu testimony from Kenny, the nineteen year
old son of the lead elder from the Stotonic church. After sharing his heartfelt
story of how he came to be saved he had each of us share something about
ourselves and that was fantastic even if we kept it simple. The exchange
between the Pima people and our group that evening was very gratifying. Kenny
then presented our kids and adults with some reusable lunch bags with water
bottles and a cool logo from an event called “Mul Chu Tha”, running in Pima is
the simple translation although there is more depth to it. Then Kenny and his
dad, Lenny, presented me with a tee shirt they had from a special event
celebrating and depicting the flag raising on Iow Jim with the phrase “Uncommon
Valor was a Common Virtue”. As with many American Indian tribes I’ve seen, the
Pima deeply honor their veterans; one of their own, Ira Hays, was part of the
flag-raising, last in line and closest to the flag itself. I am very humbled by
this and feel undeserving since I escaped the horrors of the Viet Nam War by
the luck of the draft and did not serve in the armed forces.
I was at MAZ ‘12 with 35 fantastic
kids and adults and thought of them often while riding to Sacramento a couple
of Saturdays ago. Each of them played a significant role in this trip and it is
they who make it worthwhile, their smiles and friendship gave me miles of
pleasant riding along Highway 5, a long and boring route for some. I’ll have to
make an attempt at listing each one and something special about them in a post.
It may not surprise some to hear this next part but most of you will raise an
eyebrow to it. As much as I love the Pima people of the Gila River Indian
Community and cherish serving them, the biggest reason I can think of for doing
this trip are the kids that go. Being a part of the opportunity they have to
serve, learn to live in community in adverse conditions, seek God in new and
refreshing ways, exposing them to the plight of the poor and disadvantaged, and
preparing them for other avenues of service is, for me, the most rewarding
aspect of the trip. It is, as it always should be, about them. All right, we
can throw in all the advisors into that mix as well since we all are children
of God and have much to learn. I’ve run way past my blog post length limit and
still have so much to relate…
