Dual mission

Lutheran volunteers give, receive on Navajo Nation

By Karen Walenga

www.gvnews.com

Smiles and hugs from young students are among the perks for volunteers at the rural Navajo Lutheran Mission in northeastern Arizona.

“It really touched me,” said Green Valley resident John Bentley, one of a group of 11 from Desert Hills Lutheran Church that recently spent a week helping out at the remote mission in Rock Point.

Bentley and fellow volunteers Sue Kazmier, Helen Ford and Ron Woelfel agree this community near Four Corners “is in the middle of nowhere,” 40 miles from a grocery store or a doctor, and 110 miles from the nearest clothing and hardware stores.

The mission provides a K-6 school for about 75 students, a medical clinic, food bank and a thrift store. The few other Rock Point amenities include a gas station, convenience store, laundromat and public school. Residents with jobs in Flagstaff, Farmington, N.M., and Gallup, N.M., are only home on weekends.

“Their lives are tough out there,” says Kazmier. There’s no running water, and many places lack electricity.

Ford said unemployment on the expansive Navajo Reservation is a staggering 40 percent, with many families living in poverty.

A first for Desert Hills

She and Woelfel began visiting the mission five years ago with their former church in Nevada. After moving to Green Valley and joining Desert Hills Lutheran, they gave a talk about the mission and were part of team from Desert Hills and another church that volunteered at the mission last year.

This spring marked the first time Desert Hills sent a team on its own, which included Sue Duggan, Sue Spiewak, Mary Jo Eakle, Dale Logan, Karen Sharrock and Bill and Deb Nicholls-Wozniczka.

The volunteers stayed in simple, comfortable apartments at the mission and helped in the school cafeteria and classrooms, in the thrift shop and to prepare the shop and clinic buildings for stucco by installing insulation, paper barriers and chicken wire.

Kazmier and Sharrock taught a home-economics class to the fifth- and sixth-grade students, which included measuring ingredients and baking 60 cupcakes to celebrate the students’ April birthdays.

Ford was among the volunteers who spent time in the thrift shop sorting donated clothing, putting away winter items and bringing out spring and summer wear.

The four “all left-handed” male team members from Desert Hills worked to get the two buildings ready for stucco, Woelfel says.

In addition, following a wind storm in this land of reddish sandstone, the guys shoveled away sand that covered the sidewalks and blew in underneath doorways.

Mission maintenance

The mission dates to 1953, and doesn’t have the financial means to maintain the property, Ford and Woelfel point out.

Donations and volunteers come from across the United States, with major sponsorship from Thrivent Financial for Lutherans, a Fortune 500 financial services membership organization.

“We also took lots of donated items from Desert Hills,” says Bentley, including quilts made by the church’s Sewing Bees.

Through its Social Concerns Committee, Desert Hills Lutheran also sponsors a child to attend the tuition-based mission school, Ford says.

The students are bused to and from the school along desolate dirt roads surrounded by tall sandstone mesas. They get breakfast in the school cafeteria and brush their teeth before heading to class. The volunteers join the students in the cafeteria for lunch, and bring their own food to make breakfast and dinner in their apartments.

Touring the RV

A highlight this time for the students, mission employees and their families were tours of the huge RV that Dale Logan drove from Green Valley to Rock Point.

“They would sit behind the steering wheel and honk the horn,” Bentley recalls with a smile. “It was a real attraction.”

An interest in the Navajo culture and a desire to see the area was a draw for a Bentley. More so, it was an opportunity to do something constructive and give back, he explains, calling the trip “a very positive experience.”

“I definitely will go back next year,” Kazmier says.

Ford finds that she gain more from volunteering at the mission than what she gives, and she and Woelfel look forward to returning year after year to see what has changed, what has been improved and how the people they’ve come to know there are doing.

“When you see a smile from a young Navajo, it puts smiles on our faces,” Woelfel says.

For more information on the Navajo Evangelical Lutheran Mission, including making a donation or sponsoring a child, visit online at www.nelm.org.

kwalenga@gvnews.com | 547-9739