Ya'at'eeh!!!
I'm
doin dandy down here in Shiprock! or Tse' bit' a' i' in Navajo. Its
nice and hot and extremely dry....just the way i like it... not really, but
oh well. It did rain a tidbit the other day which was much needed but
the next day it went back to normal. So i have now been to a Navajo
church twice and its pretty interesting. They hold a gospel doctrine
class in Navajo for the older members of the ward that cant speak good English. We were asked to sing in that class it was kinda weird, ive
never sung in front of people before except elementary school and church
stuff with big crowds. But it was fun to sit and listen to the Navajo
language. I can pick out a word here and there but it its extremely
difficult. The Navajos assume that because we are biligaana (white
man) that we know how to do everything....piano, sing, lead
music....everything. So we get asked to do alot of junk that im not too
fond of doing. The prayers in a native American church are very long
and seem to be much more respectful and personal. When they say things
like "thank you for this earth" or something they go into a very long
description about what exactly they are thankful for about the earth and
then they move onto the next subject so its its pretty cool.
I have had angry rez dogs chase after our truck and me sometimes but i will swerve into them and they run away or I just run or yell at them and then they get scared. I LOVE IT! My companion and i are doing awesome and we are becoming very good friends. Since he is a professional horse shoer he has permission to trim peoples horses out here. We had an appointment the other day with that. I learned a lot and my love for horses has grown a lot, they are amazing animals. The people he trimmed for invited us to go and rope some calves so we did that, that was way fun. I'm a ropin cowboy brandin missionary now!!!
About the Shiprock ward.....so the Navajo people get attached to certain people if they are liked very quickly and they DO NOT like change at all. About 10 years ago the bishop was Bishop Clah and he was a great bishop apparently. There was over 200 people coming every week. Once he was released....less then 100 came. The new Bishop even had a number of "opposed" votes which is sad. Now there are probably about 100 that come a week on a good week, and we are getting a new bishop next week. So we will see what happens. They are very stubborn people sometimes and once they find a comfort zone they stick to it and never change unless something crazy happens. We are having a meeting with President Batt today to figure out ways we can improve missionary work with the ward here because NOBODY cares....it seems about half the ward only comes because they are on welfare and they have to have a certain attendance % to get financial help. Sad. So its kinda hard but i still enjoy it.
Anyways things are goin good i guess! I have become attached to the Navajo people though already. There is a big flea market every Saturday and i bought some shirts, one is an air jordan symbol but it has an Indian headdress on it its sweet! The other has a picture of a big chief on it with an eagle haha. Awesome.
Love Elder Christensen
No comments:
Post a Comment