As I'm writing this, I can look out across the plateau and see the sacred Navajo mountain named Tse Bit Ai, or the "Rock with Wings," looming on the horizon. Shiprock mountain is the town's claim to fame, due to the cliffs that jut more than 1500 feet up into the air from the flat desert floor. My friend described the view like "the landscape of Mars" - flat, erred, rough, and dusty.
Today is day two in Shiprock. We arrived here late Saturday night and spent Sunday sleeping off the jet-lag and settling in to the nice facilities the ministry has provided for us. We went to Shiprock United Methodist Church that morning and listened to a wonderful sermon about the sower and the seed from Frank Harnage, who is also one of the leaders of the Four Corners Native American Ministry. After that, we drove a couple blocks to the flee markets and browsed tents filled with delicious fried bread, beautiful native jewelry, and old Conway Twitty Cds. This was our first taste of the modern reservation culture, but was nothing compared to what we saw today.
For those who are familiar with the Appalachian Service Project, (which is the missions project our church has participated in in years past) I'll try to compare this to ASP. It is similar in the way that we operate from our base center and crews come every week to work on the project sites. The biggest difference is the structure of the mission ministry. Fairfax UMC is the only crew here and the ministry is not as structured as ASP. They are able to be more flexible with the projects because the land is leased from the Navajo government. In fact, all land on the reservation, commercial and residential, is leased from the government. Because the ministry does not have as many guidelines to follow as ASP, work crews are challenged with more in-depth construction to undertake, such as installing electrical and plumbing systems as well as usual roof and floor repair, insulation and drywall installation, painting, etc. This results in crews having to really think on their feet, problem solve, and use all their resources to finish the job.
So this morning, we broke up into three work crews, two groups of six kids and one group of four kids. I was a part of a group of six - Charlie Clouse, J.P. Clouse, Bobby Doyle, Paris Ervin, and Kara Tribbie. Our adult leaders, Mike Hensley and David Peacock, herded us into our white rent-a-van, packed up our lunches and tools, and embarked towards our worksite.
As we turned onto a dusty, bumpy road to our house, I began to turn over in my head what I was going to expect. We had been told a plethora of information at the center: "There's a lot of dry-walling involved." So I said a little prayer asking for today to going to go well and readied myself for anything.
The house was no bigger than a typical master bedroom back in Fairfax. There was no plumbing. The house had no kitchen or bathroom. There was a hallway that ran the length of the house, connecting the front door to the three 10 foot by 10 foot bedrooms. This living space is going to house a single mother and her six daughters.
The work crew from the week before us had insulated the walls and had dry-walled the first bedroom. The electrical system was installed, but we had the rest of the house to drywall, sand, and prep for painting.
We got right to work, measuring the sheets of drywall and putting them up. We discovered that the room that had been dry-walled the week before was poorly done. Paris and Charlie spent a good two hours re-screwing the drywall into the frame.
We worked from nine in the morning to four-thirty in the afternoon. Only stopping for lunch, we screwed, measured, and laid drywall left and right. By the end, we had three walls of the second bedroom done, the ceiling of the second bedroom was finished, and the ceiling of the third bedroom was partially complete.
As we climbed back into the van and pulled out, I was thinking about how tedious dry-walling is. It is very detailed and your measurements have to be exact. I gained some appreciation for how much work and effort goes into building a home. Mike decided to drive through the neighborhood directly down the road from our house. The lot where our house is on is an open hill. At the base of the hill, a neighborhood built with grant money from the federal government stretches about six blocks to the main road. It looked like a typical suburban neighborhood. Multiple single level houses with arched doorways and two car garages lined the street. As we drove past, we stared in shock as every house stood vacant. All the windows had been smashed; glass splintered from the square frames. Gang art and profanity was spray painted on every white garage door. Looking through the broken windows, we could see the drywall had been kicked in, ripped out. The last houses on the block were chard black from arson. A whole neighborhood of beautiful new houses, torn to pieces. None of those houses ever got the chance to become homes for the residence on the reservation.
It was at this moment that I really appreciated every screw and every cut I made in that drywall today. It is going to a woman in true need. The house far from enough, but it's better than nothing. In a neighborhood that was destroyed by anger, in a place where domestic violence, drugs, and alcohol are common community problems, it is God working through me, my work team, and our mission group, to spread hope and love to one home at a time.
- Elliot Meyer, 18
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