The picture below is what our garden looked like when we started 2.5 months ago.  You can also see the size of the garden.  It is hard to imagine a garden growing in the middle of nowhere.

Garden when we started our mission.

This is our garden now.  You can see Lyndy
behind the corn in the middle.  The leaves in
the bottom of the picture were squash we
replanted.  They are now over 12 inches in
diameter.

You can see the upper corner of the garden.  We had to extend or  go south or to the right of that point by 4 feet and another 4 feet closer to the parking.
We how have the fence in front of Lyndy that goes to the edge of the gravel.  

The Pumpkin .

Tthe Pumpkin started between the fence and
the windscreen. We had to cut a hole in the
windscreen to allow the pumpkin to grow. The
fence outside the Pumpkin was to keep the
rodents off while it had a chance to grow.

This is two of the Zuchinni that we have gotten off of  our garden.  We take the produce we grow and use it for a "gift" to get us into doors.  Many people have a difficult time with the size and quantity of the food we get.
We had visitors from the Humanitarian Depatment visiting our gardens this week.  They were amazed at what we have been able to accomplish.  We have 25 gardens now with 14 more to date that want gardens next year.  It has been a great door opener for us as we visit the inactives.  The church wants us to start having the people purchase some of their own seeds or dry and store the seeds from this years crop for planting later.  We told them we have to get the people active in our branch first.  We do not have any Priesthood Quorums organized in the Branch.  We have activated a few brethren for a potential Elders Quorum Presidency.  They will eventually take over the management of the garden projects.  The Presidency will conduct training classes and work to get more self sufficient.  Now there is one couple that does all of that.

Hogan...

You will see many of these abandoned Hogans all over the Reservation.  We could not figure out why we saw so many close to houses.  Traditionally, if someone dies in a Hogan then the remaining family vacates the home. It is taboo to return to the Hogan for fear of disturbing the sleeping spirit.   We met one lady that had a very nice 4 bedroom trailer.  Her husband died and the adult children would not return to the home so she let the company that sold them the trailer take it away.  She had a small Hogan like this one pictured built in place of the trailer she was living in.  They will not tear them down or move them for the same reason.

They also use these to establish ownership of an area. If a family moves to an area on the Reservation they will build these to establish the fact that that area belongs to that family.  It is very interesting to see old customs that still exist even with those that are members.  Doing temple work for their ancestors is very difficult.  One of our members said that he had twin brothers die when they were only 2 years old.  I asked what cemetary they were buried in.  He said that his father took them somewhere on the reservation, wrapped them in a blanket and put them in a crevase of a rock.  He does not know where that rock is and his mother will not tell him where they are.  I think she does not remember.  Additionally they will not submit names to the temple without all of the family agreeing to have the work done.  Many of them cling to the old traditions even after they accept the gospel.

Maria Fowler

 This cute little girl wore this dress to church.  She wanted to have her picture taken.  We were impressed that she was wearing what we have determined is the "native dress".  What a cute little girl.  He family are all members of the church.  The conflict comes from her grandmother on her father's side.  Her grandmother is a traditional Navajo.  She pulls the father that direction.  The traditional Navajo are the ones that have the ritual using Payote.  On worthiness questions the members cannot be affiliated with a group that is contrary to the teachings of the church.  We have to be very careful in asking that question.
I got a new assignment last Sunday.  I am now the Branch Executive Secretary.  This is a great assignment because we have more contact with the members than the President.  We are working on building the Priesthood Quorums,  The following pictures of the Benally family is a case that we discovered.  Brother Benally is a member but we had to request his records.  When we found them we determined that he did not hold any Priesthood.  We are going to ordain him a Priest sunday.  He then got a call from the Welders Union in California so he has to leave to go to California and take a welding test.  If he passes then he will go to Las Vegas to help assemble a plant.   This is very common as these people are mostly unemployed and to get work they need to tracel

Benally family.  Mckinzie, Ashley, Lucy, Shania (also
known as "Pocahantis) and Delannie

Defiance weave

 This is a handwoven Navajo Rug.  It is beautiful.  The aunt that lives with the Benally family wove this rug by hand.  It is incredible what they do with colors.  Her loom is the blue frame behind Shania.  She offered the rug to us for $500.  A rug similar to this one can be purchased in the shops for $1000.
 We have a couple of the ladies of the older generation that do this.  I forgot to take a picture of the way she spins this material   It is a  unit with two small wagon wheels (Radio Flyer type) that are attached to a long dowel and she pumps this unit and weves the heavy wool.  This is an art that many of the younger generation do not do. We have two that we are aware of that do this weaving. 
They get the various colors and thread the strands throuhout the rug to form the pattern.  This rug took over a month to weave. 
Any body that has the money and inclination to own an authentic hand woven rug just let us know.  We could probably get  a picture of the person that wove the rug.
The weaving and selling of jewelry is the only means these people have for support.  This is why the garden projects are so important.

The closest Bishop's storehouse to help these people is either in St. George, about 3.5 hours away or in Farmington which is 4 hours in the opposite direction or they can go to Phoenix to the south about 5 hours.  We have created a mini storehouse in our building that allows us to give immediate help to those we find.  We have one family that has 8 children.  He oldest is 15.  They live in two small trailers accross the road from the church.  They have no water.  The truck it to their trailer.  The have no electricity.  That is provided by two small generators that are powered by gas on the outside of the trailers. We have taken some of the zuchinni from our garden to them but they are reluctant to have us bring them food.  They need to trust us first. It is sad.  I still do not understand how they get the booze.  They barely have enough money to live on but some of them are always drunk.  We found that someone has done research on the Native American Indians and have found that they have a common gene that makes them more suseptible to alcohol.  All it takes to make one dependent on alcohol is one drink.                                                                                                                      

We were asked to start a Summer Seminary program. We meet each Tuesday and Thursday at 5:00 P.M. for an hour.  We had a short lesson this Tuesday and then had part of the kids fill water balloons and catapult them into the field and part of them took(pink) golf balls and clubs and hit golf balls.

Seminary Refreshments

Seminary Water games.  We stretched
two exercise bands between two posts
and tied a piece of a rubber tire in between
and would use that as a sling shot.  The tire
broke so it became a water fight.

We have 9 possible kids and there are 7 that come.  There are two that live 20 miles south of the chapel.  With gas at the high price we can understand why the do not come regularly. They are very hungry for the gospel.  We made sure each of them have a Book of Mormon. They have found out that Golf can be very frustrating. 
We are covering the very basic priciples of the Gospel.
We have found that some have scriptures but a low ability to read. These kids want to learn. We missed one Tuesday because Corey and Jo came to visit and they let us know that they were dissappointed that we cancelled the Tuesday class. So we had class on Wednesday and Thursday that week.
                                                                                          


On Thursday we had one young man that has turned 19 in our class.  I got a chance to talk

to him after class about a mission.  He had never been approached to do that.  He has saved a little money.  He will be interviewed for the Melchezedek Priestood Sunday and then we will work on the mission part. I have suggested that he teach the Sunday School class with the older kids so he can increase his knowledge.

                           

Seminary students trying their hand at golf.
I am at a distance because I have a better chance
of not getting hit by a golf ball.

This is the height of our corn. You can see mom in the background.   t   We put windscreen around the garden on the South and west sides of the garden because that is the direction the wind comes.     We will probably have to string wire to keep them upright.  The pland in the front with the big leaves I think is a Cantaloupe. We planted watermelon and peppers but the Chipmunks got a lot of them when they were small.                                                                   

The errant pumpkin




.This pumpkin grew on the outside of the fence.  I am holding a screen that we installed to keep out the Chipmunks.  The pumpkin grew between the fence and windscreen.  I cut a hole in the windscreen so it would have room to grow and then I had to dig up the screen so it had more room to grow.  The squash got so big that we could not get to the fruit so we extended the size of the Garden to accomadate the spreading vines.



Cow resting....We were at an appointment in the housing project and
when we came out this cow was standing in the driveway of the
house accross the street.  Before I could get my camera out she
moved to the shade tree next door and made herself comfortable

This is one of the few trees that are in the area that we call "The Housing Project".  When you Google Bitter Springs on Google Earth you can see a larger picture of the area.  This is one of the nicer homes in the project.  Some of the members here have gardens and you soon realize why the have fences aroung the garden.  The Fowlers that live two houses south of this house also have fencing around their front yard to keep the cows out.

Corey and Jo Thurgood came from Salt Lake to our house on a motorcycle.  They looked like lobsters.  They spent the evening with us and had dinner.  They got a chance to see some of our "homes" and people that are in the housing project and accross the street from the church.The had visions of our having to live in houses such as the one that the cow is in front of and were very relieved that we are in our comfy home.



Dad, Jo & Corey Thurgood

Corey & Jo Thurgood

Critters

Small desert lizzard

 We have had to fight wind, heat and sun.  These elements are normal.  However, we have had to deal with many other types of problems.  These are a few.  Sorry Marci but it was them or our garden.

There are many lizards around.  This was a rare catch.  They eat many of the bugs.  They are very plentiful in our area. We did not mean for this little guy to get caught.

Top side

Our Potato vines were over six inches tall.  The stubs are what is left

The chipmunks are in the thousands.  When we first planted our garden we could look accross the fence from where the garden was and it would be like the crickets in pioneer time.  One day while we were gone to appointments a "herd" of these little critters invaded our garden and had a "Chipmunk Smorgas Board".  Our potatos were sticks and all of the watermelon, cantalope, carrots and beets were gone.
The picture below is a Kangaroo Rat.  The look just like a minature Kangaroo.  They love gardens.


Kangaroo rat

 Below is the Chipmunk.  These guys were here in the thousands.    We thought we were the only garden that had been invaded but there are several others that have been having the problem.  We put mesh wire 4 inches under the ground so they could not dig underneath the fence.  We found that they would just climb the fence.  We put up chicken wire and they would go through the holes.  We finally installed wire with quarter inch holes and made a tent-like structure over the top of the rows of vegetables.  This seemed to be the most effective along with traping them.

Chipmunk

 

These are our neighbors.  Between the church property
and the road there is the section that you see above.  The
cows, sheep and goats run freely.

It has been a very busy week.  We have a new Mission President.  President Batt.  He is from Idaho Falls, Idaho. We went to Flagstaff for a Zone Conference to meet President Batt and his wife.  Flag is 1.5 hours directly south from our area.  In August we go to Gallup New, Mexico for our next Senior conference.

We have the wild west next door.  These animals belong to the neighbor behind us.  There is a locked gate that goes into the church parking lot.  Between the fence you see and a second fence and cattle guard these animals feed on the range grass.


This is the Benally family.  You can see their garden in the back.  Delyne, the Father was baptized in 1987 and was not fellowshipped.  He has been called as a Greeter and will be ordained to the Aaronic Priesthood soon.

 Devon is our first convert baptism.  He was so excited to be baptized.  Tom is his Uncle. Devon and his brother read the scriptures every day.  They are both very sharp individuals.  Devon's Mother has started coming back to the church.  Tammie, his mother works at Waweep in the boat rental area. 



Devon Delmar and Tom Hoover.

Each area have what is known as the Chapter House.  This is essentially what we would call the area "Town Hall"  The area that we are in is the Gap Chapter.  This is where most of the land activity starts. 
You can lease an acre of ground on the reservation for life.  You make application to the Chapter House.  The application fee is $30. They survey the ground you want and you can then build a house or move a trailer on the site.

EvelynTsiniginni.  She is the secretary of the
Gap Chapter House.  It was through her efforts
the the Branch were able to get the land to
build the building.  She was one of the early
participants in the Indian Placement Program

Karen Manyturquoise.  She will be baptized
this coming Sunday.  She has been called
as the Ward Translation Specialist.

Each Sunday we have a number of the older sisters that come and do not understand English.  In the clerks office we found a case full of hearing devices that they used during the dedication services of the building.  The person conducting generally tires to speak in some Navajo but it is difficult to have that older group understand all that goes on.  So we suggested that we call a translation specialst to use a transmitter and sit in the meeting and translate for the older sisters who have the receivers. The first Sunday we handed out 3 receivers.  Last week we handed out 7 so we are getting the "older generation" involved in our meetings. Due to the fact they are female we will have increased participation in the Matriarchal society because "Grandma" says so. Karen will serve as the branch specialists to translate for that group.

Me, Jerry Burningham, Sister Gardner on top of Sugar
Loaf Mtn in St George

View of the St George valley from Sugar Loaf In St George.

We were able to go to St George last week and spend time with Jerry and Carla
Burningham, go to the St George temple.  We also picked up some badly needed toys for our branch that was donated by our family and members of our Home Ward.  We want to give a big THANK YOU to all that helped on the project.
We were able to go the the Bishop's Storehouse in St. George and pick up some food items for the branch.  St George is the closest storehouse for our area.  We brought back what food Items we could in our car.  We had it stuffed to the rafters again with toys and food.
We went by Colorado Cith on the way down.  I know that one wife is enough!!
When in St George we were shown the sites by Carla.  Sister Gardner was very excited to see a "Big City" and to visit Target, and JC Penneys.

As Sr. Couples we do not have the restrictions as the Elders and Sisters.  We have to let our Zone Leader that we are going out of our mission area and we are allowed to go.

One is enough!

Jerry Burningham, Elder Gardner and Sister Gardner in front
of the St. George Temple.  We love to visit this Temple and
see the painting of the Founding Fathers that is in the Foyer
of the Temple.

Coming down from the top of Sugar Loaf you
had to go down usinng hand holds in the
Rock.. We just about lost Sister Gardner on
the way down.  She stooped over to start down
and she slipped.  The Lord watches over the Sr
Missionaries.  The view from the top of the St.
George Valley is breath taking.