by Emily Wagner, EM Summer Staff on the Navajo Reservation in Arizona
This week was House of Joy Church's Revival week. Every summer, the people in the Christian community of the Navajo Nation have a summer-long (May through October) "revival" time, which consists of constant church. Monday through Wednesday there are evening services from sunset to about 10:30pm, and Thursday through Saturday are essentially all-day services, with normal Sunday church resuming at the beginning/end of the week. Each week, a different church hosts the revival with a big tent outside their normal church building or sanctuary.
Pastor JR and House of Joy Church have hosted the Revival this past week. This means that on Sunday after church, the big blue tent went up in front of the building, and the whole week we had people from all over the Rez (up to several hours away) attending services, coming to worship and hear speakers and pastors share the word of God. It was a really awesome week and was so fun to be able to meet new people and share in such a culturally significant experience for the Navajo people.
Two teams also came to serve with us on the Mesa this week. One was a middle school group from Missouri, and the other was a high school group from Kansas. These two groups were of the highest quality I could imagine. All the team members were so friendly, positive, and willing to serve. They worked well with each other and built awesome relationships in the community as well as within the team. We were sad to see these groups go, and they were sad to be leaving each other. I cannot imagine a better experience with a team. It was so fun to see students who had never been on a mission trip before come and be able to live with and serve others. They came in having left assumptions and expectations at home and really came to learn from each other and grow together.
We loved their positivity and their ability to break down walls and get to know people intentionally and intimately. The two teams worked hard, even though much of that work was trench digging, accompanied by busting and hauling rock in the hot sun. We are so proud of the work that they did, and appreciative of them for pushing through the hard work that nobody wants to do so that we can continue working on these critical projects for the church and the community throughout the summer. It means more than they might think, and they really made a huge impact on the people here in Black Mesa, and on us as staff.
This past week was especially cool for the team because they had community members around the church all the time. There were always people here for them to get to know and interact with, and revival is a special and unique event that they were able to experience. Some of the team members even led a little bit of worship in the tent one night. I'm excited they were able to experience that and get a rich understanding of what it means to live, work, and be out here on the Rez.
LEARN MORE | 2016 Mission Trips to the Navajo Reservation
Site developed and hosted by Skycog, Inc.