Peaching before Preaching

Greetings from Chinle, Arizona!

It took three days of travelling and many months of preparation and waiting to see if we would be still able to serve as Student Missionaries to the Navajo people. But now we are here and it is because of the grace of God and the help of many people who donated their time and resources to making this trip possible! Due to the onset of Covid, many of the student missionaries from Walla Walla have had to defer their service to another year. Through the hard work of our Missions chaplain, the Arizona conference and Pastor Wolcott, Martessa and I are able to be two of the nine student missionaries sent out by Walla Walla University this year. God worked it out through some difficult situations and made it possible for us to serve this incredible people.

Peaches and music are clearly our passions!

 

Moving In                                      

Our first week was spent unpacking and organizing the single-wide trailer that will be our home for the next few months. Kristen’s mom also sent boxes of peaches for us to eat and share. Fresh peaches like these are hard to come by here in the high desert. We were able to share them with several of the families who live on the church campus and it was a great way to start conversations and friendships. We had enough peaches to freeze some for later.

"Peaching" was our initial method for connecting with the locals rather than preaching. It reminds us that "nobody cares how much you know, until they know how much you care (Roosevelt)." Peaches served as an effective entering wedge and we can't wait to connect more!

Duties

In the first week we also learned in more detail of the actual duties we will be performing to serve the Navajo people. One of the most urgent is to prepare a series of five-minute radio programs for kids that will be broadcasted on a weekly radio program on the Navajo Nation radio station.This includes writing a script, playing a theme song, and recording the animated content.We will also be writing an interactive mailing to send to the kids who have been attending the nightly children’s outreach meetings (JA Kids), as well as tri-weekly text messages. We hope to soon begin in-person meetings with the children.

             Healthy Food Prep     

Currently we are helping the school prep and pack sack meals for the schoolkids. As soon as we have completed our fourteen day quarantine period we will be able to go on house visits and hopefully start up some bible studies with the local children. In the future we would also like to restart the Pathfinder club.

Thank you for your prayers and support! We keep you in our prayers as well.