Monday - Thursday, July 20-23

YouthWorks Site: Navajo Nation

Each morning, we ate breakfast, leaders inhaled coffee, we had devotions, and a group prayer time before heading off into groups to serve for the day. There were two types of service outreaches we did: Monday & Tuesday, half of our groups of about eight kids spent the day doing work projects in the community, and the other half of our groups spent the day at Kids Club, an outreach/summer day camp type program. On Wednesday morning, our groups switched, so each got to hang with awesome kids AND get their hands dirty helping out in the community. We saw awesome things happen in these endeavors. Here are a few:

-Two groups painted Betty's home. We got to sit in her living room and pray with her. 

Before paint

After paint

-The gospel was shared with Betty's son-in-law, and we got to give him a Bible.

-One 9th grader who lives in Fort Defiance, Hope, was very anti-social at Kids Club, until one day one of our students broke Hope's walls. Hope wouldn't let Whitney out of her site!

-On Thursday at Kids Camp, one of our students shared the Gospel in big group. With the gentle help of Robb, THIRTEEN kids scrambled up to the front declaring they wanted to follow Jesus. YouthWorks said they hadn't seen anything like that all summer.

-The YouthWorks team praised our kids for being incredibly involved, ready to serve, and articulate in processing their experiences throughout our time at the site. 

Bits of Culture

-We got to do lots of fun things in the evening. These included a trip to Window Rock (a cool rock formation). We got to climb & take in worship led by a local from one of the churches in town.

-We heard from an elder in the community about life growing up in the reservation. It was awesome! We all sang "Jesus Loves Me" in Navajo. Way cool.

-We had foot-washing service & worship at a 'hogan', which are a traditional 'church' type of circular structure usually made of wood with dirt floors.

-We took in traditional dances in Gallup, NM.

-We held a community cookout in a nearby town and played with lots of kids.