Four days since landing at the Albuquerque, New Mexico airport, two days of accumulating eighty-four VBS children alone not to mention the adults, and many days of delicious home style cooking, the Lord has been consistently challenging and simultaneously blessing us. Here in the mission site, we have our wonderful AIM leader, Pat, our California staff team of Kat, Ken, Jonathan, Anna, Grandma Sandy, and Grandpa Pete. On the other hand, my church (Atlanta Chinese Christian Church North) has a team of thirteen youths and three team leaders, whose names are Jonathan, Job, Sunny, Natasha, Jaime, Willa, Jessica (two of them!), Jason, Alex, Joey, Sammy, Edward, Trish, Teresa, Kevin, and Rebecca. We are a team, all of us who have been on previous mission trips. Praise Christ for our calling to out of everywhere in the world, New Mexico with the Navajo, or as they say it, the Dine.
Day 1: Saturday
On our first day coming in from the airport, the very first thing we noticed was the dry heat, meaning scorching temperatures with no sweating, especially compared to humid Atlanta weather where one sweated in houses with air conditioning. The thing was that even after all of our plane trips to the Albuquerque airport, there still remains a three hour drive through straight dirt roads to the mission site. As we drove in three hours later, it was captivating to simply view the landscape. A lot of us had the previous thinking that the desert would be flat plains of sand spotted with cacti, yet it surpassed our expectations. There are shrubs, trees, and a horizon that would take away your breath. There were many things to get used to at the mission site. Close toe shoes are a must as there are rattlesnakes on the grounds. We were all surprised by the spaciousness of the building and its facilities, an unexpected blessing.The water here is soft, meaning that it takes ten times the water to wash off soap, shampoo, or conditioner and it will still feel slippery. The big event of the night was when the water was cut off due to electricity problems. So many prayers were generated that night over water, especially by the girls. We were limited to one flush per toilet, and we were ready to go without showering, when praise the lord, water came back before midnight. We ended the remainder of the day we had left with dinner and a night of worship.
Day 2: Sunday
I do have to say that out of all of the prayer requests in the beginning circles, the most belonged to fears of lacking sufficient energy and teaching the actual classes. For some of us, this is our first cross-cultural mission and others have never taught VBS before. The big event of the day was attending the Navajo church ceremony. It took place in their gymnasium, with a circle of chairs facing the stage and most importantly the drum. To sit in the circle around the drum is a coveted spot, and two of our boys, Kevin and Sammy luckily had the chance to sit and beat the drum with the other Navajo churchgoers. To be said, their unpracticed arms were very sore by the end. The drum is their form of worship music, though our team had the chance to bring up our guitars and give them a sample of our own form of worship. When talking to the people, some of the Navajo turn their face to the side or to the ground as it is their custom to direct their eyes away. After meeting and greeting some, groups split up into four to go and distribute flyers to let the children know of our VBS camp. We were told that because there is usually so little to do, the kids are almost certainly looking forward for the mission teams to come. At this site, there is a mission team that holds a vacation bible school almost every week. This is good in that God’s work is continued here every week, not just a one-time deal, as well as the fact that we cannot put undeserved glory onto ourselves, because the only continuous factor is God’s work through the teams. The landscape is full of cows, oil rigs, and shrubs. As we drove to the houses, there was a two hour time span for reaching about seven or eight houses because of the enormous spaces in between each. Many of the houses are small, fitting many family members as cousins and extended family all live together. Dogs litter each house as protection and pets, and in my group, we saw chickens and geese in the dirt lots. Our group actually encountered a drunk man on our first stop, making us aware of the heavy influence of alcoholism in the community, so much so that there is a Hangover Park littered with beer bottles. That is one huge prayer request we would like for the Navajo people. We began our sports ministry of the week with a night of volleyball, unaware of what God would challenge us with the next day.
Day 3: Monday
The very first day of VBS, all of us had a previous plan of going through what is called the wordless book, representing the Gospel. In order, gold is God and his glory, black is sin, red is the sacrifice, white is the cleansing of our sins, and green represents growth in God. I do have to say that except for Kevin&Teresa’s and Alex, Joey, & my group, most groups had it pretty hectic. And all of us were deadbeat by the end of the day. All groups had their troublemakers as well. Natasha had a deep problem with one of the boys Dante, where he would not participate and only responded to threats of being left out and the like. Jaime and Willa had the most trying experience with the pre-teens. It was hard for them to command the respect of the middle school boys especially with both of them being girls. Both Jaime and Willa were just frustrated, losing patience, and clearly very very tired. There were incidents where kids were running rampant, taking unauthorized showers in their clothes, and just testing us to see how much they could get away with. We were all challenged with finding how God worked that day and also the task of praying for someone else. There were about eighty kids in the facility, and just playing with them, giving countless piggyback rides, and throwing ball after ball after ball. It was definitely God doing the work, pushing us, because my feet would have given out hours before. Personally, I feel such a great affinity towards the Californian Gilbert family because of all the obvious love they have for us, complete strangers yet brothers in Christ, and for God himself. I remember Mr. Ken tearing up the past two nights after our praise and worship sessions, just from the sheer joy of praising our God. They have been nothing but caring, considerate, and serving to us, always thinking about how to lessen their comfort to give us more, through just the little things: waiting for our entire seventeen man group to eat first, supplying us with extra crafts, providing the girls flashlights for nighttime, and simply loving on us joyfully all the time. Later in the night, we engaged in more sports ministry, except in basketball this time. Our group was severely humbled as the Navajo men AND women alike showed their balling talents. One of our boys Sammy severely twisted his ankle through landing on my leg, so please pray for his healing so that he can give his physical all in ministering to the kids and city.
