Kneel Down Bread

Grinding fresh corn

 Kneel Down Bread


Grinding corn kernels. This was done with a
rock in a bowl originally.  Modern tools make
the job easier.

 When the corn is ready they pick all of the ears from ripe to almost ripe.  The cut the kernels off with a knife into a large bowl as seen above.  Then the corn kernels are ground into a paste.  The paste is then replaced back into the corn husks as seen below.  The husks with the corn paste are then placed in a fire pit lined with hot rocks.  The husks are then covered with hot rocks and sand and cooked for 2 hours. 


Lucille Begay is Loading husks with the corn paste.

The husks are removed from the fire.  The husks removed and the result is a small loaf of bread.  That is corn bread in the original form.
The taste is very bland.  They also bake the husks in the oven.  You can freeze the cooked bread.  They cut up the bread and put it in soup.


Preparing husks for baking.  Husks are baked
for 2 hours.  Has a mild corn taste.

Trailer house people

 

Sloan Family

This family lives across the road fro the chapel. The Kidmans in branch, who are one of the Anglo couples that help, bought these clothes for the kids so they
could go to school. We check on them often  because there are 9 people that live in the trailer. The mattress is put on the porch and it becomes a bed.  We checked on them when school started and the girl agaist the door was not in school.  When we asked her why she replied "I do not have any clothes"

Sloan Family trailer

We try to take them vegetables from our garden.  They have no running water and there is no electricity to the house.  They use a gas powered generator to provide lights and the cooking stove is a BBQ outside the porch you see here.  We are working on getting them to come to church.  They are just a short way away from Grandma Haskie's house that is up the hill to the right of this place. 

Archeological evidence shows that lpeople have lived here in these canyons for nearly 5,000 years.  Longer than anyone has lived unterrupted on the Colorado Plateau.  The first residence built no permanent homes, but remains of their campsites and images etched or painted on canyon walls tell us their stories.  They lived in small groups, hunted game, grew corn, beans and weaved baskets.  These are ancestors of today's Pueblo and Hopi indians and are often call Anasazi: a Navajo word meaning ancient ones.
The Puebloan people built the multi-storied villages, small household compounds and kivas with decorated walls.

You can see the ruins against the rock wall

People still live in the canyon in order to retain the spirit of their ancestors. Traditional beliefs are reflected in the everyday life. How the Navajo care for their families, live stock and their Homes and how plants are collected for ceremonial, medicinal and traditional uses. They feel that it is important that they retain their cultural ties while attempting to adapt to the new physical demands of the world around them. The walls of the canyon start at 30 feet outside of Chinle to over 1000 feet at the Spider Rock.  This an explanation of the small ruins above.

information board.

Spider Rock.  They believe that this God has taught them
to weave and make baskets.

Right column of the Spider Rock

Overlooking the left column of the Spider web.  There are two large columns.  We are about 1,000 feet above the surface.  A cute German lady and her daughter took our picture.  The hsband did not like heights.  Sounds like Mom!  The road going along the ridge is about 17 miles long.  The people in this canyon have had many periods of famine, weather and in 1863 by Kit Carson who systematically attempted to destroy the people in the canyon.  It was not until 1925 that the people were allowed to return to the canyon and rebuild their homes.  They then were allowed to draw from food distribution centers and scarce food supplies. 

This is the Historic Hubble Trading Post.  It was built in 1876.  Hubbell purchased this property from William Leonard and started a trading post.  The part of the building in the picture is the original building.  It has a wood burning stove in the middle of the floor used to heat the buildings.

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