mid-summer update

From today!! July 17

It's been a while! They keep you super busy at YouthWorks, working from 1PM Sunday 'til 6PM Friday. And a normal day is from 6:30AM to 12 midnight... BUT now it's Friday night! So I have some free time. Since each week is the same here, I thought I'd just share a few highlights.

Every Tuesday we go to the home of a community member, Corey Greaves, for a worship circle, which is Christian worship incorporating native traditions. It's such a wonderful opportunity to watch the youth experience worship in a whole new way. It's also great to watch them realize that Christ is present in all cultures and that Western cultural doesn't have a monopoly on "right". This comes after Corey has spoken to the youth Monday night about what Christian missionaries have helped the US government due to Native people through bording school. (Mainly, demolish their traditions and tell them their culture is heathan.) It helps the students realize why it's no surprise that there aren't a whole lot of Native Christians. The church hasn't been very welcoming. On Tuesdays during the worship circle everyone gets a chance to speak and I've heard so many students apologize for what their ancestors did to the Native people and thank Corey for being so open and welcoming despite that history. It's been really amazing to see. Check out Corey's website: http://www.mendingwings.net It's the one of the largest Christian youth organizations in the US.

We've also been having some great things happen at our Kid's Club. Our KC runs Mon-Thurs afternoons in the Wapato park, right next to a Native housing project. It's aimed for kids 5-10, but older kids have been showing up since the beginning. In the last few weeks we have been able to incorporate them into the activities. THey usually do a little bit of reading or crafts and then we get a big kickball game going. This has helped them become much less of a problem. Before they were interrupting the activities and causing a problem, but now they are involved. It's a great chance to show them another possible way of life, rather than joining a gang, like most of their older siblings. Besides trying to love them and be good Christian examples, Jillian shares a Bible message at the beginning of KC every day. This past Wednesday she had a girl come up to her and ask her about the basics. (What does it mean that Jesus is Creator's (God's) son? What does it mean that he died for our sins?) Jillian was able to answer her questions and send her home with a Bible. The girl wasn't back on THursday (not unusual) but we're hoping she'll be back next week.

Last weekend we went to Seattle to get paint. We have three crews painting houses every day, and we had mostly interior paint, which wasn't helpful. So YouthWorks had called a Sherwin Williams and set up for us to go pick up 100 or so gallons of mistint paint. So we showed up and they said they had it, but it was buried and they wouldn't be able to get it out until MOnday. Since we were only in Seattle for Saturday, that wasn't exactly helpful. So we drove down the street and found another paint place. They only had a few gallons, so we picked those up and while we were there Joe found a phone book and started calling paint places. He found one that said they had a LOT of mistint, so we went there and ended up getting a little more than 100 gallons for $11.55. The guy said he had to charge us something so he could enter it in the computer. We were just glad to get paint!!!

After the paint adventure we went to eat lunch with my cousin Cindy and her family. It was great to see them since I hadn't for probably two years or so! Then we went down to Pike's Place Market and hung out for the afternoon. We took some great pictures on the waterfront and had dinner at a nice restaurant on the waterfront as well. It was a great trip!

We have been blessed by amazing community members this summer. I think I've mentioned a few. One is Marvelina, the wonderful lady from the church who does our laundry for us when she's in town and gives us her house key when she's out of town. She also has an AMAZING garden, so it's really relaxing to go visit her house. We also have the wonderful Mexican neighbors who have cute kids that are fun to play with and who feed us home cooked Mexican whenever we go over. (Maria usually won't let us leave until we eat.) We also have Corey, who I mentioned first. Corey has been very welcoming and has taught us SO much. Another one is Tom Blackeagle who sets up all our work project sites and is a wonderful, loving man. There's Marlu Scott, the Phillipeno pastor from the Methodist church in White Swan who is a tiny bundle of energy and SO much fun. She showed up at our last community picnic and I heard that she said "I'm going to Cutie to buy some cold things for you guys." I finally figured out she had said QD which was supposed to be DQ which translated to she went and bought dilly bars for 80+ people! And there's more great people.