Dear
Friends,
On
Monday we took advantage of a Fee Free Day at the National Parks and visited
the Petrified Forest, taking along a
couple of the single gals that we lovingly call our daughters. Roger and I,
being older more mature, have
“adopted” the twenties – thirties crowd,
so we have sons and daughters from WVA, NY, AZ, IA, IL, etc. We are enjoying
this new role in our lives.
A
couple of our other staff members also blog their thoughts and observations, so
I have borrowed from Alice and Gail today. (Gail is also the one who provides
us with many of our photos.) We are often surprised by the kids’ questions and
the things they do not know--such as: no one in my class knew how to use a
three-hole punch, but yet they know a lot about animals and restraining orders
and drinking problems.
Alice
wrote: "I should mention how this afternoon we went out and fed all the
animals on campus... with the girls telling me all about each animal and what
they like to eat and how they like to be touched/held. The horse loves carrots
and to be brushed, but be careful in the sensitive spots. The horse also
doesn't like loud screaming (as two of the girls had to leave the corral for
screaming). The goat likes everything and can be pushy. The sheep like bread.
The llama doesn't like girls and runs away (but will watch us from afar and
won't eat the food we toss toward her before the goat and sheep get it). The
chickens like to be held once you catch them (which I'm not totally sold on,
but the girls are convinced) and like bread. It's a different kind of world these girls live in.
Gail
wrote: This hogan has electricity. Someone told me out here that
sometimes people would put electricity in. Some Natives live in their hogans
with or without electricity. I read an article today about Navajo getting
some free housing. Someone commented on the article saying, ‘make them
get a job and pay for their own house.’ Well, wouldn’t that be awesome if they
could! How does one get a job when he is uneducated? When the
overall graduation rate is around 50%?
To
get a job one requires a marketable skill. She has to be able to function
in the world. He would need a car to get to work. There is a book entitled
Bridges Out of Poverty that a social
worker loaned me. It was eye-opening because I’d never thought that much about
the gaps in society. One can’t take a third or fourth (or even second)
generation welfare recipient, who knows no other way of life and who has no
high school diploma, and expect him to function in a world that abides by a
different set of rules. Not only rules but nuances like speech, non-verbal
communication, expectations, and priorities… If I were to be dropped off
in Beverly Hills and expected to know how to interact with people there, I
could do it to some degree, but right away people would know by my speech,
clothing, shoes, and mannerisms that I didn’t belong there. A worker, even
at McDs, has to be able to talk to people. He has to be able to make eye
contact, something I notice the Navajo don’t to a lot of. It’s a
different social expectation. I hope I make sense to someone. The
old Proverbs says: Give a man a fish, and he eats for a day: teach him to
fish and he eats for a lifetime.
Well,
friends, we are fishermen who are not only fishing for the Kingdom, but are
attempting to teach life skills to our students and maybe do a little mentoring
for the younger staff also. Thank you for your consistent prayers.
