Happy Easter

Christ is Risen.... He is risen indeed!

I can't believe it's almost the end of April!  Our travel time has flown so quickly.  We've see and done so many things that I've always dreamed of.  I am so grateful for the opportunity to spend this time "away".  I'm beginning to find myself turning my thoughts back towards home at times, thinking about how nice it will be to be in our house, with the space, and then I remind myself to cherish this time, being in this space, with the people I love, without the other distractions the "regular" life has to offer.  I've been thinking about how to reintegrate, how to balance life after we get home.  Thankfully I have a few more months to ponder these questions.

I've been struggling with talking about our experience at Hopi Mission School.  I want to be able to say it was great, but if I'm honest, it wasn't.  We were forewarned that the staff at HMS was severely over-extended and they wouldn't "be able to hold your hands".  Now, we're not the kind of family that needs hand-holding.  We're ready and willing to work when pointed to a task, and we can entertain ourselves.  That being said, if it wouldn't have been for the other volunteers and the family we met at church we would have had no interaction with other people.  There was essential no interaction with the staff at HMS beyond work assignments and that was disappointing. 

The work we were given to do was also unpleasant and unrewarding.  We shoveled out a burnt out building, scraped and reglazed windows, and did a little bit of painting.  It felt like we didn't accomplish much, even though we worked full work weeks.  The girls did get to interact a bit with the school kids at recess, but even there they didn't feel engaged with the kids.  The weather was at times very unpleasant (sand/snow storms.  The area is very isolated and felt desolate. 

 Bullheads (we called them Buttheads)  Very painful if you step on them.  I took one round around the trailer with my flip flops.

The upside was that we met Jim and Rox Miller and family at church on Sunday.  They have 5 children, 3 of which were in the play age for the girls.  They connected and enjoyed spending time together.  We went on a hike to Coal Mine Canyon one day.  It's a smallish canyon, with a seam of coal running through it.  We enjoyed scrambling around the canyon.  Andrea had an encounter with a snake that she will tell you about on her blog http://adventuresofafrukitty.blogspot.com/ 

It's been a while

I didn't realize that it has been almost a month.  A fair bit has transpired since we left Yuma.  Upon our departure we headed to Phoenix.  We parked the trailer at the SOOP site, right beside Peter and Rheta Mae Wiebe's home.  Peter was an interim President of H.C.  so it was nice to have a contact.   We were invited to a community movie night across the street which Doug and the girls took advantage of.  I stayed home and did laundry and got some needed quiet time.  The next day we connected with John Murray.  He took us hiking, toured us around Phoenix and accompanied us to the Organ Stop Pizza Restaurant.  The pizza was good, the Wurlitzer organ was entertaining. 

The next day we headed to Sedona.  We spent the next day scrambling around the red rocks of Sedona.   We hiked up Cathedral Rock.  We also hiked to Devils Bridge.  We calculated that we hiked about 8 miles that day.  Erin decided to try hiking in her flip flops on the second hike.  It was fairly obvious after the first mile that flip flops were not a good choice.  Natural consequences are the best teachers.  We decided at that point that all of the females in the family needed some good hiking boots.  It was a tiring but fun day! After Sedona we were off to Hopi Mission School.