VIM VA Beach: A Productive Week

"You are the light of the world. A city on top of a hill can’t be hidden. Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a basket. Instead, they put it on top of a lampstand, and it shines on all who are in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before people, so they can see the good things you do and praise your Father who is in heaven."  Matthew 5:14-16  CEB

We've come to the end of a very productive week, happy with all we have managed to accomplish.  But weariness has definitely set in and I write this as we are on the road, heading for home.  It has been a rewarding experience for everyone, VIM veterans and first timers both.  With the week coming to a close, we took time off on Thursday evening for a well earned break and took a drive to the actual beach of Virginia Beach and spent 45 minutes walking the boardwalk at sunset. Afterward we then returned to St. Luke's for a dinner of leftovers then turned in early after devotions, clean-up and discussing logistics for Friday.

Pastor David, Robin, Anita and Jim finished their painting at the 2nd home. There is still work to be done there but the homeowner is very pleased.  He wished they could stay longer and begin work on the other portions of his home that have yet to be done.  He planned on recommending them to everyone until he was gently reminded that they are not professionals!

Since they finished on Thursday and we only planned on working a half day on Friday, Michelle then asked them if they would take on a small project at a 3rd home.  So today David, Jim, Robin and Dennis repaired, patched and painted a cracked ceiling and began painting the kitchen.  This is the home of a retired pastor and his wife, both facing health challenges and recently moved back into their home after 10 months.  UMCOR and the Virginia Annual Conference had made arrangements for folks displaced by the flooding to be housed in hotel rooms and unused time shares.  Unfortunately this meant that they were forced to relocate every 5-7 days, carrying limited clothing and personal items.  They were very grateful to be back in their home and for the brief work our team was able to do for them on our last day.

Anita and Carol stayed behind at St. Luke's to paint a few doors and to get a jump on packing, cleaning up after ourselves and preparing the place for the next team coming in behind us a few weeks.


Doug took Steve, Martin, Bonnie, Norm and me back to the house we have been working on all week.  Yesterday Steve and Dennis dug more roots and stumps out of the yard while Doug and Martin cut and placed baseboard in 4 rooms.  Norm and I followed behind caulking while Bonnie trailed the two of us and began painting trim around closets.  By quitting time today, all baseboards and trim were caulked and painted.  The powder room has a base coat of primer and Doug and Martin began sanding the main bathroom that up until today had been left untouched.  We then swept, vacuumed, tidied up the work site and sorted and packed tools to bring back to the supply and tool closets at St. Luke's.  Then finally packed up, we took group pictures and bid a fond farewell to Michelle and Janet, who we met on Thursday.  Janet is training with Michelle in order to be backup liaison and custodian at St. Luke's.

We stopped for a final dinner together as a team at Pierce's Pitt BBQ in Williamsburg.  This is a local favorite in the area.  When Norm and I lived in Hampton, the restaurant was little more than a trailer on the side of the road and people drove from miles around on Friday nights to pick up takeout for dinner.  The place is a little bigger now, with a few fixed fast food style tables but it is still doing a booming business.  A steady stream of customers came in the entire time we were there.  We parted with Jim here since he drove separately and has farther to go to get home to Towson but we are grateful for his presence and hard work all this week.

As we slowly make our way home, negotiating the inevitable stop and go traffic on I-95, we are all thankful for the wonderful week we've had.  The weather was perfect, the rain only coming in the evenings or overnight.  We were blessed with cooler temperatures later in the week and comfortable and pleasant ocean breezes.


To God be the glory!  With Him all things are possible.

VIM VA Beach: The Gift of Labor and Laughter

"Peter said (to the crippled beggar),'I don't have any money, but I will give you what I do have.  In the name of Jesus Christ the Nazarene, rise up and walk!'"   Acts 3: 6. CEB

At our evening devotions tonight, Pastor David used the passage above to remind us that money is not the only way to help those in need.  This week the individuals on our team are giving of their time and labor as well as paying their own way to be here.  And even though this is only Wednesday and we have only one full day tomorrow and a half day on Friday, we have made great progress.

At our primary work site, Steve, Jim and Bonnie have finished as much as possible in the front, side and backyards.  Although the worst portion of the overgrowth and fallen limbs were removed before we got here, they have raked the remaining debris, pulled weeds and vines, cut roots and mowed the sparce grass.  Yesterday Michelle's supervisor, Bob came and hauled away over 30 bags of yard waste and the remains of a rusted children's play set.  By the end of the day they had filled another 5-6 bags.  With that taken care of and the threat of rain in the forecast, today Bonnie and Steve have joined the rest of us inside while Jim went with David, Robin and Anita to work on the second home.  

Inside the house is also really starting to look good.  All day long this place echoes with the sounds of industrious work and occasional laughter. Team members call to each other for help or to offer advice.  The sounds of hammers and saws ring thru a home which is slowly being made whole once again.  People shift from room to room, trading tools and paint, working on tasks each feels most comfortable at doing, a complicated ballet playing out in cramped spaces but somehow executed with amazing grace and efficiency.

By the end of today, the 3 upstairs bedrooms and closets have been completely primed and painted and ready for baseboards and trim.  Doug and Martin began framing one of the closets which Carol then primed.  Carol and Dennis have completed painting in the living room and it also is ready for the trim work.  Bonnie, Carol and Doug have also finished painting the 4th bedroom on the lower level, Martin has finished repairing the baseboard in the utility/HVAC room and has mudded the seams, and Doug and Steve then began measuring and cutting baseboard for the small family room.  Tomorrow we hope to get baseboards cut and installed, finish framing the rest of the closets and to start painting and caulking the baseboards.

At the second home, David, Robin, Anita and Jim have been busy painting the living room, a bedroom and hallway.  The homeowner has been so pleased that although no work was planned for tomorrow because he needed to be away for a funeral, he has asked them to come back and continue working and they hope to be finished by the end of the day.

Although everyone is pretty tired by the time we return to St. Luke's each evening, our spirits remain high.  We've grown closer as a team which makes a big difference.  And after dinner we relaxed and sang old songs from a songbook collection Jim has put together then played a hilarious few rounds of good old fashioned Charades.  We are giving of our time and labor to brothers and sisters in need of help to repair the damage to their home.  And we have given each other the gift of laughter and fellowship, to lighten our spirits and our weariness at the end of a long but rewarding day.

"I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me."  

Philippians 4:13.  NKJV

VIM VA Beach: Everyone Has a Story

"Carry each other's burdens and so you will fulfill the law of Christ.  Let's not get tired of doing good, because in time we will have a harvest if you don't give up."   Galatians 6: 2, 9  CEB

Everyone has a story.  At our devotions and reflections this evening at the end of our second day of work, we shared why each of us felt called to join this team and give up a week to come here and be in service to others.  Some of us are veterans of other mission trips, while for others this is their first mission experience.  For many of us, although this week is far from over, we are already feeling called to look ahead to Houston and Louisiana, still reeling from Hurricane Harvey's catastrophic flooding.  Each of us came here for different reasons but all are united in spirit and purpose - to do all the good we can while we are here.

Likewise the people we are serving each have their own story.  The elderly lady whose house we have been working on, locked her home last October and fled to safety ahead of the storm.  Unfortunately after the flood waters receded, the water damage led to a bad case of black mold, which in turn resulted in the house being entirely gutted before any reconstruction work could begin.  We learned today that the lady has been widowed for 20 years and has been struggling to care for her home since that time.  She's currently living with her daughter in Richmond and we will not get an opportunity to meet her.

While this woman and her daughter work with UMCOR to repair her home so she can return, her neighbors for the most part have completely recovered.  Her home still needs a lot of work and stands out in the neighborhood of similar homes that are already complete and once again whole.  The neighbors in the house directly behind her's managed to keep the flood at bay by staying awake for over 19 hours, using a shop vacuum to suck up the water as it was running into their home and then dumping it back outside - an almost unfathomable achievement.  

And yet, just 2 houses down and across the street, lies an empty cement slab sitting at the end of a concrete driveway, on a lovely well cared for corner lot.  The lawn is being meticulously mowed and tended, the trees trimmed and mulched.  But the home that once stood here was condemned and demolished.  While the rest of the neighborhood looks completely normal and representative of suburbia anywhere in the U.S., this empty lot is a sad reminder of what happened here.  For Norm and me, it brings back heartbreaking memories of the Lower Ninth Ward in New Orleans after the levees broke after Hurricane Katrina.  There, entire neighborhoods were razed after the disaster.  We drove thru empty streets, seeing lots similar to this one, empty intersections surrounded by fields of grass, cement pilings and steps leading to nowhere where row after row of houses once stood, a sad testimony to the breadth and scope of the tragedy.  While the physical extent of the damage here in Virginia Beach pales in comparison to New Orleans and Houston, the toll on the lives affected cannot be compared or measured.

And finally, 3 of our team worked for the first time at the 2nd site we have been assigned this week.  The gentleman here is caring for his aging mother who is recovering from a stroke.  They are living in their home, moving furniture from room to room to accommodate the volunteers coming in to repair and paint.  In a brief conversation Pastor David had with the homeowner, it is apparent that the aftermath of Hurricane Matthew is hardly the worst thing this man has had to deal with over the last decade, it is only the most recent.

Everyone has a story and hardships to bear.  But a joy shared is doubled and a grief shared is halved.  We are blessed to be a blessing.  How blessed and much better off are we all when we follow Christ's command to love one another and St. Paul's advice to carry each other's burdens.

VIM VA Beach: Labor Day Labors

"If I your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you too must wash each other's feet.  I have given you an example: Just as I have done, you must also do."   John 13:14-15 CEB

Our Volunteers in Mission team of 11 departed church Sunday afternoon and caravaned down to Virginia Beach, VA to begin 4 and 1/2 days of reconstruction work after Hurricane Matthew struck the area in October last fall.  Returning to this area is a bit of a homecoming for Norm and I.  We lived here in the Hampton, VA when we were first married nearly 32 years ago and haven't visited since 2012.  As we drove thru Hampton and Newport News, we both got a little nostalgic, recalling many happy memories and noting how things have changed over the years.  The region is rich in history, with Yorktown, Wiiliamsburg and Jamestown forming the historic colonial triangle.  The famous Battle of the Ironclads, the Monitor and the Merrimack took place in Hampton Roads, not far from where we once lived and the Monitor is now being restored at the Mariner's Museum in Newport News after sinking off Cape Hatteras and being recovered from the "Graveyard of the Atlantic" about 15 years ago.  We got to see 3 aircraft carriers in port at Norfolk Naval Base as we crossed the Roads via the bridge-tunnel from the Peninsula cities of Hampton, Newport News and Poquoson to the Southtowns of Norfolk, Portsmouth, Chesapeake, Suffolk and Virginia Beach.

We met our 12th team member, Jim from Towson, once we arrived at St. Luke's UMC, our home away from home for the next few days.  Jim is a friend of Pastor David and his wife, Robin and this is his 2nd trip to VA Beach on a VIM team. Michelle, our Virginia Annual Conference/UMCOR liaison and project coordinator was waiting for us and gave us a tour of the facilities and restaurant suggestions for dinner.  So after quickly unpacking, we headed off to Cracker Barrel.  Spirits were high as we shared laughter and hopes for the week ahead over a delicious dinner.

St. Luke's congregation was in the process of merging with another church nearby when Matthew struck.  Afterwards the sanctuary, classrooms and community hall were turned into a dormitory to house the many VIM teams that have come to help the area recover.  Matthew hit Forida as a hurricane but raked the Atlantic coastline as it came north and was only a tropical depression by the time it reached VA Beach.  However the area had already endured several severe thrunderstorms in the few weeks prior and by the time Matthew moved on, VA Beach had received 51 inches of rain.  Many neighborhoods were flooded and houses were inundated with anywhere from 6 inches to 3 feet of water.

In the aftermath, a number of faith based organizations came to help the area recover from the damages.  And while some demolition work began shortly after the storm, most of the work began in earnest early this year.  Approximately 17 homes have been finished with another 30 or more still in various stages of completion.  Michelle says that elderly, young single mothers with children and handicapped residents have been given priority in the reconstruction efforts.

Since Monday was Labor Day and technically a holiday, Michelle arrived early to give us some basic instructions and then took us to our work site.  Today the entire team worked on a single house that is currently empty, its elderly owner is still living with her daughter in Richmond until she can move back in.  But 3-4 of us will break off tomorrow and go to a 2nd site that is closer to being finished and is presently occupied by a gentleman and his mother.  Michelle says that the house today had to be completely gutted inside and teams have been working on it all summer.  It is a cozy split level home and sits in a modest neighborhood of similar homes that were built in the 1960s.

After we received our "marching orders" from Michelle we paired off and picked various tasks.  The front and back yards have been mostly neglected so Steve and Jim set to work raking, mowing the sparce lawn and pulling down vines and weeds, later joined by Bonnie.  The rest of us divided up inside to mud and sand drywall, prep and paint.  There is plenty of work to be done but by the end of the day one room downstairs has gotten a 2nd coat of paint on both walls and ceiling and will be ready to install baseboard and quarter round before the end of the week.  Two rooms upstairs will get painted with primer and will be ready to paint by mid-week.  Doug and Martin tackled a little demolition work in the utility room while the rest of us did some sanding, spackle and plaster mud repair work to touch up a few spots missed or needing to be touched up after previous teams.

Carol, Robin and I left the site a bit early to do some additional grocery shopping for the rest of the week and to prepare dinner for the team.  Then after a delicious meal of turkey BBQ, fresh garden green beans, watermelon and cantaloupe and both lemon zucchini cake and banana cake with caramel frosting, we shared in a few moments of reflection and devotions, led by Pastor David.  Praying on the passage above from John 13, we look forward to a night of rest, renewed energy and servant hearts reinvigorated for the work in the days ahead.

Hopi VIM 2015: Blessing & Being Blessed

"Dwell in possibilities"  - Emily Dickenson

A large part of going on a mission trip is emptying oneself before the journey and leaving yourself open to experience everything that happens.  I have found that when I do, I invariably find myself filled to overflowing before the trip is over.  God has a way of moving between the empty spaces and filling them with unexpected joys and blessings I can never anticipate.

Early in the week Bill and Joyce found out from our friend, Kevin, that the HOPI Substance Abuse Prevention Center was about to lose their lease on their current facility.  They are being forced to move by the end of this month.  Since land ownership is a complicated affair in Hopi, requiring complex land use agreements between clans and villages that often take months or years to finalize, we were dismayed by the thought that such a vital program might be forced to shutter its doors.  Kevin assured us however that temporary space had already been located and that discussions were also underway to give the program long-term land use rights to a piece of property behind the Hopi Cultural Center on Second Mesa.  But Kevin also told us that the piece of land in question had a very sad and troublesome history.

The property had once been the site of a small trailer park and the residents of the community gradually fell victim to serious drug and alcohol abuse.  Eventually the site was abandoned and no one knows exactly why.  People simply left and moved on, leaving behind their homes and in most cases, all their earthly belongings.  The trailers eventually succumbed to the elements and collapsed, many of them looking like they had been flattened by a great wind, and were left to rust and crumble away.  Before the HOPI Substance Abuse Prevention program can build on the land, it will have to be cleared of the debris and remnants of the trailer park.  Troubled by the sad history of the place and having known and worked with us for several years now, Kevin asked us if we would help him cleanse, bless and anoint the property while we were here.

So early Friday morning, not long after sunrise, we gathered with Kevin on the site.  Bill led us all in prayer in an United Methodist ceremony and then distributed bowls of water to each team member.  Silently adding our own prayers, we wandered through the remains of what was once a community of family homes and sprinkled water over the place while Kevin in turn blessed it in Hopi fashion.  It was a moving and humbling experience.  We felt blessed to be asked to be a part of the healing process both for the land on which it will eventually sit and for the new wellness center that will be a place of sanctuary and healing to many in need.  Kevin hopes that by this time next year the land will be cleared and made ready and our team may be part of the building process as well.

On Saturday morning the team rose well before dawn and drove up to a village on Second Mesa to see the first portion of a day-long Home Dance.  This is the time of year when the Hopi katsinas prepare to leave the Mesas and return to their home on the San Francisco Peaks, north of Flagstaff.   They will remain there until late January or February.  Out of respect for my Hopi friends I can't say any more about what we saw.  No photography, video or audio recordings, or sketching is allowed.  The Home Dances are religious ceremonies and I feel honored, privileged and humbled to have been allowed to witness it.  It was a very spiritual experience for us all.

I write this as I am flying home, reflecting on all we were given and experienced.  It's been a full and fulfilling week.  Every mission trip has its own set of challenges and bumps along the way but this was indeed a week full of blessings.  We had an awesome team, each person bringing their own unique gifts to make a glorious whole.  We were fortunate to have rain several times while we were there, which kept the temperatures cooler and more comfortable for us all.  We shared our dinner table every evening with friends new and old, each meal filled with joy and laughter.  For me, this is the real reason why we are here; to make those connections, to listen and to learn as well as to serve.

It was very hard for me personally to drive away from the Mesas yesterday but I leave with a full heart and overflowing with the Spirit.  For those members on the team for the first time, they have only seen a glimpse of what Hopi VIM is all about.  I hope and pray they will feel called to return and continue the work they became a part of this week.  For those of us who began this journey in 2006, this week is just a small slice of that journey.  We've added but another few stones to the path that only God knows where it will ultimately lead.
 

Lomatalangva!  (It's a beautiful day!)

Hopi VIM 2015: Going Fishing & Pulling Weeds

 

After taking it easy the first few days in order to acclimate to the altitude and heat, the team got down to business early on Monday morning with all hands on deck in order to set up for VBS.  Thankfully the three members of the team who caught some sort of stomach bug right after we arrived in Arizona are now feeling much better and are back to normal. Thane, the school's principal, Annie the new assistant principal and all of the teachers are away taking recertification training so in their absence, our liaisons this week are Paige and Katie, two young ladies interning here at Hopi Mission School as well as at the Hopi Health Care Center in Polacca and the Hopi Wellness Center here in Kykotsmovi.  Both are in health science programs at Furman University in Greenville, SC and are here for the summer.  They are both delightful and fun and we've more or less adopted them into the team.

Our VBS theme this year is "Going Fishing", focusing on a different "fish themed" Scripture story each day.  Monday revolved around God's promise to Noah and the story of the ark.  Tuesday was about trusting and obeying God through the lesson of Jonah and the whale.

 

As in past years, the week starts out slow with only a few kids attending at first but this usually gets better as the week progresses and the word gets out.  This year we are feeding the kids a light breakfast of a hard boiled egg and fruit before the fun and games of VBS begins in earnest and each day features crafts, games and songs, skits and snacks.  Monday's snack was an ark made out of half a banana and animal crackers, arranged two by two of course.  :-)

 

While most of the team are helping at VBS some of the rest of us divided up to work on other projects.  Steve, Andie and I began tackling the weeds that have taken over the playground.  In that respect the rainfall has been a mixed blessing.  The crops are doing well this year but the weeds are also flourishing and are pulled up in order to discourage any snakes, poisonous or otherwise, from getting too close to the school.  Reinette, Ann and Lynn went to work in the school library, cataloging the schools books and adding them to an online database/card catalog.

 

Since VBS is only held in the morning and it's too hot to work outdoors in the afternoon, we usually reserve the time between lunch and dinner to rest, recoup, reflect, prepare for the next day's activities and partake of various cultural experiences.  On Monday a small group drove up to Hotevilla on Third Mesa to visit our friend Bob who runs the Hopi School or Hopitutuqaiki.

 

Bob is a pahana (non-Hopi) educator and music teacher who came to Hopi to do his post graduate work on Hopi music and essentially never left.  He has lived in Hopi for over 40 years and the Hopi School has been in existence for 11 of them.  It is primarily an arts and crafts summer program but Bob hopes the school will eventually be able to hold classes year-round.  Their teaching philosophy is based on the traditional way Hopis have always learned things, in a master/apprentice relationship rather than in a more modern classroom setting, so classes are limited to between 3-6 students.  In addition to teaching traditional Hopi crafts such as kilt weaving, sash and belt making, basket weaving, etc., they also offer classes in glass blowing and stained glass, cooking, quilt making and acrylic painting.

 

We make it a point to eat dinner at 6 PM every evening and Bill always prepares plenty of food.  Our table is open for anyone to drop in and have dinner and we are constantly encouraging everyone we meet to come down and "come eat!" That evening we shared dinner with Keith and his mother, Mary who both work at the school and who brought piki bread and hohoysi for everyone.  Felicia, one of our oldest friends, also came down from Shungopovi on Second Mesa with her daughter, Janice and her son, Darion who is just about 9 months old.  Needless to say there was much laughter and catching up and with the team being mostly of the female persuasion, Darion became the center of attention.

Before bed last night, the skies cleared enough for us to see the stars and finally get a good view of Jupiter and Venus in conjunction in the west.  Living so close to Baltimore and DC there is far too much light pollution to truly appreciate the glory of the heavens above us at night.  Out here it is dark enough to see thousands of stars and the Milky Way.  It's a spectacle that once witnessed will not soon be forgotten.  All of our youth members were thrilled.

 

A few more kids showed for VBS this morning and Steve, Andie and I were joined by Amanda on the weed pulling brigade.  We're making real progress and it shows.  We're hoping to have the playground in good shape by week-end. 

Thankfully weather has been cooperating with us.  Some morning cloudiness kept temperatures in the mid to high 80s with no humidity to speak of, of course.  Rain falling all around the Mesas has also helped as it rapidly evaporates which cools the air.  All in all, it has been quite comfortable so far.   Reinette, Lynn and Ann went back to assist Paige in the library, while Bill and Joyce went over to the HOPI Substance Abuse Prevention center to visit another of our friends, Kevin, who is the director of the program which operates under the guidance of The Hopi Foundation.

After lunch, I drove a small group of first time team members up to the public radio station, KUYI (88.1 FM / kuyi.net) to meet Richard, Thomas and Trina and to help out for a few hours by cataloging CDs and sorting and filing some of the station's vast and eclectic music collection.  It was especially heartwarming for me to find out that they are still using an Excel database that Norm and I created for them back in 2011.  At Richard's request because no one at the station had the necessary technological skills, we consolidated multiple Word tables into a single Excel workbook, adding filters and search functions to make it easier for them to catalog and document their collection which is growing all the time. Part of KUYI's mission is working to preserve the Hopi language (lavaye) and music (tatawi) by recording native speakers and traditional Hopi ceremonial and social songs. While we were there a lady picked up a set of 40 year old recordings to take back to the kiva because over the years some had forgotten the proper way to sing them.

By coincidence, Richard is heading to DC tomorrow in order to advocate for continued funding for public radio in general and for non-profit Native public radio in particular.  Stations like KUYI provide an invaluable service to remote areas like Hopi.  KUYI itself serves not only Hopi but a large portion of the Navajo reservation as well and at times can be heard as far away as Flagstaff.  There have been times when heavy snowstorms have crippled the radio stations in Flag and KUYI has been the only station in the area able to continue broadcasting and providing much needed news and public service updates to this corner of Arizona.  Before we left Richard had us record another "shout out", identifying ourselves and our Hopi VIM team along with repeating the station's call sign and frequency info which is used between programs and required by law.

Paige and Katie joined us for dinner tonight along with Kevin.  My friend Leon also came down with his family and I got to meet Roni and their two children, Mamie and Percival for the first time.  This is the part of the day that I enjoy the most and find the most meaningful - sharing a meal with friends new and old and just relaxing at the end of the day in fellowship and friendship.

 

 

Hopi VIM 2015: Homecoming

For many of us, once you have been to Hopi, this place forever captures a place in your heart.  And for those of us returning, our arrival yesterday evening was like coming home again.  There is a unique scent to the dry, high desert air and a feeling of joy that comes with reveling in the cool evening breeze laced with the freshness of rain carried on the winds from a storm blessing the low lands south of the Mesas.
 

The rainy season has come early this year and Hopiland is greener than I have ever seen it in all my years coming here.  This is a great blessing; the crops seem to be doing well, the corn so lovingly tended and nurtured, is green and getting tall.  The desert weeds and brush have burst forth with a profusion of delicate blooms tossing their heads in the light wind.  The thunderstorm that followed us on our long journey from Flagstaff, finally came to the Mesas overnight as a gentle rain and we woke this morning to find the ground and cars wet from its passing.  We greeted the cloudy dawn and found a welcome, cool breeze kissing the land all around us.  Life is good.

 

It also rained in Flag before we left yesterday.  The San Francisco Peaks, sacred to the Hopis as the home of the katsinas for half of the year, were still shrouded in pregnant rain clouds when we left for the Museum of Northern Arizona and the Hopi cultural and arts festival.  The festival has become an important part of our annual trips because it provides a fun and informative introduction to Hopi culture for those members of the team who are visiting Hopi for the first time.  For those of us who have been here before, it is a chance to greet old friends.  I spent most of our time there running from gallery to gallery looking for and reuniting with many of the friends we've made over the years and meeting some that I have only known through Facebook.  The festival is also a place to see tradional Hopi social dancing and to sample some traditional Hopi foods: piki bread, hohoysi which is Hopi tea brewed from a plant that grows wild on the Mesas, noquivi, a stew, traditionally made with white hominy corn and either mutton or pork, frybread, and the very popular Hopi taco.

 

After leaving the museum after lunch, the team split up in order to complete the necessary shopping for the food and other supplies we will need for VBS and our other projects throughout the coming week before making the nearly 2 hour trek up to Kykotsmovi. However, in spite of today's GPS technology and its mobile app brethren, sometimes there is no substitute for a good old fashioned map.  Combine that with the challenge of trying to keep 5 SUVs in sight of one another as we caravan from place to place and you end up with plenty of wrong turns, about-faces and missed exits.  These comical "F Troop Maneuvers" have led to much laughter.  We missed the exit of our planned route to "K Town" by way of the Leupp road and ended up going all the way to Winslow before turning north toward Second Mesa.  The accidental error actually ended up getting us there faster in spite of adding extra miles to the trip.

Once we arrived at the Hopi Mission School, our welcoming committe consisted of Kristen, one of the teachers and our 2 canine "Rez dog" buddies, Piki and Duma who came running as soon as they heard us pull up.  There was much tail wagging, whining and begging for belly rubs and Andie quickly became our "dog whisperer" on this trip.  She's following in the footsteps of her husband, Brett, who came out on the first 2 trips and had all of the local dogs following him wherever he went before the week was half over.

After a hearty dinner that night and the traditional blue corn pancake breakfast the next morning at the "Center of the Universe", the Hopi Cultural Center restaurant, we drove to First Mesa Baptist Church to worship with Pastor Lim and Pastor Choi of the Korean Methodist Church and their congregation.  The new sanctuary has been completed since our first visit last year and is beautiful in its simplicity with its custom made stained glass windows which incorporate Christian, Hopi and Korean symbolism.  

 

 

It was a joy to worship here again.  We sang hymns in English, Hopi and Navajo/Din'eh.  Pastor Lim graciously asked Jill's husband, Bill to give the message today and to help during the altar call portion of the service and it had more than one member of the team moved to tears.  And after a Spirit-filled morning of worship, we shared over an hour of laughter, conversation and fellowship over a delicious lunch in the church hall before parting.  What a blessing to come together in worship as children of God in English, Hopi, Tewa, Korean and Navajo/Din'eh!

 

The remainder of the day was spent preparing for the work of the coming week, resting and reflecting on the tremendous gifts we have received on the trip so far.  God is good!