And the adventure begins! New Mexico finally arrived after so much waiting. So I get to church to hop on the bus and I see Angie who says she is driving separate and I can go with her if I want, so I jumped on that train quick. So we beat everyone and drive to Nashville quick and check in and all. Then I meet the other 5 people going with us on the Friday flight. We had others coming in on other days. And just a sidebar, 80% of this trip was full of old people, just so you know. So I hung out with old people all week :) So we flew from Nashville to Dallas and stop to have dinner. Then we flew from Dallas to Albuquerque. And the plan was to get to Albuquerque, rent a car, drive 2 hours to Gallup and sleep on the reservation - fail. The last thing I wanted to do was drive 2 more hours and then sleep on a whatever was there. Very humble of me I know considering I was on a mission trip. But Angie thought it would be great if we rented our own car and spent the night in Albuquerque, then we could go do whatever we wanted the next day. So that's just what we did. It was so nice to go to bed early too and sleep. I don't think I got that much sleep for the rest of the trip.
But anyway we got up and ate breakfast at this awesome, hole in the wall diner we found. This place looked kinda sketchy and had bars on the windows. But nonetheless we went in haha. This place probably only held 20-30 people max. The food was AWESOME though and you got a crap-ton of it for cheap. I think everything on the menu was 7$ and under. I got a whole plate of french toast that came with eggs, 4 pieces of bacon and hashbrowns. It was great. So then me and Angie decided to head to Gallup. The scenery was breathtaking. I could not get enough of it. It amazed me how something so bare and desolate could be just as stunning as my green Tennessee. So we arrive in Gallup and meet the other ladies at Walmart. Big mistake. Can I just tell you that we later found out, it was the first Saturday of the month which means the Navajo had received their food stamps/welfare money and went to town for food basically. So here me and Angie are, 2 blondes, walking around Walmart with only 5 or 6 other white people in the entire store, probably 1 other blonde. So needless to say we got stared down big time. The entire store was Navajo. Everywhere. More. Navajo.
So after our fun Walmart adventure we went to the reservation. I learned some interesting facts along the way. Let me share with you.
1. There is a stretch of highway called a Safety Corridor. It is the only part of the road that is well lit with street lights and a big shoulder on the side. This is for the alcoholic indians that need to get home at night and can't drive. The lights are for them to see and the shoulder is to walk on. There are also sobriety check points almost every night.
2. I have never seen more hitch hikers in my life. To make it even better, they hold up money to catch rides.
Anyway, the reservation is apparently the most desolate, ugly part of the area. Obviously. What else would the government give the Indians? The place we did all of our work was a church/school. This itty bitty place has been there for 20+ years. Bayside goes every year. But anyway, we spent most of our time in the gym/kitchen area. The school's gym floor was cracked and uneven. So the men's construction job this time was to tear it up and put a new floor down. P.S. They tore that floor up and cleared it out in 1 day. Amazing. So for half of Saturday, most of Sunday and Monday, we sat there and did a lot of nothing. I'll remember next time not to volunteer to go early on the trip. If you're not fixing food, buying food or cleaning dishes, you're sitting, staring at the wall. So that's what we did a lot of. But the other 7 people showed up Saturday afternoon. And my person for the trip was Jennie. She's 30 and awesome! She brought her 9 year old son, Daniel, who was an amazing 9 year old. Plus, he went to Boyd :) So we became BFF on the trip. We were originally suppose to room together, but she brought Daniel, so I ended up rooming with Joyce for a night and my OWN room for the rest of the week. Now let me tell you how nice that was :) All the ladies were worried about me and were like you can stay with us, etc, etc, and I said ladies, I want my own room lol.
So Saturday I believe we just all had dinner and then went to the hotel early. I was so tired. It was hard work doing nothing all day haha. So I shared a room with Joyce that night who was so fun and sweet. We got along so well the entire trip.
We got up Sunday and headed back to the Res for church. Okay, now the entire trip, none of us knew what kind of denomination the church was. They sang out of ancient hymn books, with a few instruments, and some other odd stuff. The ladies all wore skirts every day too. Eric told us they were some sort of independent Baptist. But, church was quite an experience. There were only about 25 people there, 14 of those being our group and the others were Indian, but related to the preacher and his family. So not very many Indians had come on their own. It looked kind of pitiful actually. But they had some sort of super old school wooden board that had how many bibles were brought, offering, people, etc. The offering jumped from 65$ to 236$ from the previous week. Guess all of Bayside gave well. Anyway, we sang songs, split up for Sunday School and then sang some more songs. The whole service was kind of weird. But it was good nonetheless. This gave me an idea of how singing would be for Wednesday night church. I was toying with the idea of deciding to sing again after seeing how few people were there.
So I believe after church we all ate and then sat around. Me and Jennie were so bored so we went to Walmart. We stole a rental van lol. I'll definitely remember this important tidbit next time: If you wanna go anywhere you want and not be at everyone else's mercy, rent your own car. We couldn't do anything unless we had a car. So I think we did that and that was about it. We had church that night at 6pm. It had about as many as Sunday morning. Not much interesting.
So on Monday we went and had to plan for Bible school. There were 6 of us doing the little ones. We were gonna split it up Prek-K, 1-2, 3-4. The year before there were 50+ kids and 3 teachers total. Fail. Ugh. They said it was wild. So we expected a large crowd. The day is basically full of food, crafts and games with a little Jesus thrown in there lol. So we planned and made stuff, then we all went to eat at Earl's restaurant, which was suppose to be some great place. It definitely wasn't. I was so annoyed the whole time, Indians come in and show you jewelry, etc. to buy while you sit there. The food was okay, but not nearly as good as they all described it being. But I also bought some moccassins before dinner! They are gorgeous! I was so excited! My other cheap, mall ones were falling apart. So now I've got some new ones from Indian land :)
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