This Issue (July, 2007)

La Vida Update

Memories of May good-byes dimmed as staff welcomed Dan and Sharron Dixon to La Vida. Dan is new administrator and Sharron will teach Grades K-2.

The Bulletin Board on page two reflects a positive response to many profound prayers and recruitment efforts by LVM board to fill staff vacancies. We have only three key positions left to fill.

Danny Williams, middle grades teacher, was appointed principal last board meeting to replace Charity Garcia, head teacher. Glori Williams, school and Mission office secretary, will reach out to the community doing health and lifestyle outreach. Gayle Smith moves from girls’ houseparent to office manager as Lee McIntosh steps in to be girls’ dean. Ed Sutsch of Payson, AZ, relieves David Boatwright as cook. He will be assisted by Bonnie Jenkins.

After Vacation Bible School Danny and Glori followed up VBS interests visiting parents and children to recruit students for 2007-08 school year.

Our principal said, “La Vida Mission School is a Christian school committed to character development and academic excellence.” He added, “Our school’s desire is to work in partnership with parents to create children of character who excel academically.”

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Water revisited by David Boatwright

The Exodus and subsequent accounts of wilderness wanderings is full of examples of how God tested the children of Israel over water. Finally He supplied all their water needs by bringing water out of a rock.

The Mission’s “rock” has been the well supplying La Vida with abundant water since it was drilled in the summer of 1968.

Regular readers of Navajo News already know that God has also given us many a test over water. Last year an aging pump gave out and we were without water until a new one could be purchased and installed. Then there was a test with too much water when the road to the Mission was washed out because of flooding up the valley.

The first week in July another test came, this one even more severe than the preceding ones. The whole well apparently caved in.

A submersible pump, which hung on the end of a 100-foot pipe in the well, suddenly ceased to pump water. We tried to pull it out to see what was wrong, but it wouldn’t budge. Sounding the well with a rope and weight revealed that the bottom of the well was at 60 feet instead of the previous depth of 167 feet. We realized with sinking hearts that the pump was now buried under 40 feet of mud. The only solution seemed to be a new well.

July is the most popular time for well drilling in our area and the soonest we could expect to see a driller was three weeks. The drillers informed us that they could do nothing until we had a well permit from the Office of the State Engineer. I visited the small branch office in Aztec, NM, the very next day, where two engineers and the secretary in the Water Rights Division spent nearly three hours on our case alone.

As the engineers began discussing what we would need and how long it would take, I envisioned hours of fighting state bureaucracy. It looked like it would take over a hundred dollars and several weeks just to obtain the permit. School was scheduled to open in three short weeks.

My silent prayers became even more desperate, but God, who knows the end from the beginning, was not worried. At the end of a tense and tiring afternoon in the offices of Robert Genualdi and Craig Shirley, two of the most helpful and friendly bureaucrats I have ever met, Savannah Lindsay, the secretary, had all the documents typed, copied and ready to sign. They did, however, mention that the fee of $125 that they had previously quoted us didn’t apply to this permit. Instead I paid only $5 and left with the precious permit in my hand.

Now, we will not be able to tell how the story ends in this issue but the next issue will reveal how God will have worked mightily to supply our water needs.

Doug Barlow and Nobert Sammer fill water containers during an evening visit from our new administrator/“water carrier”.

Some staff took advantage of downspout water during a short but intense cloud burst that evening.

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Photos requested

If you own one of Barbara Starrett’s paintings and would be willing for it to be used in a book of her paintings, please send a clear photograph of it and state whether you wish your name used as owner or wish to remain anonymous.

Those contributing to this project will be sent a free copy of the compilation. Thanks to those who have already responded to this request.

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Addition Begun

Herbert Padilla, a La Vida neighbor, was hired to build the addition to house community mail boxes at the Mission’s new offices.

Herbert learned masonry from his father and worked during La Vida’s early years with his father and brother building our mechanic’s shop and Dorcas building.

Lack of water has delayed completion of the mail box addition, but hopefully it will be finished by the time school begins August. 13.

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Life Without Running Water

After our first shock of finding our well caved in, we began to face the reality of the inconvenience living without H2O.

We looked around to see what resources we had at our disposal. Our first resource was our reverse osmosis (RO) filtration system. It includes a holding tank for filtered water. We dusted off those pie are square formulas from high school days and found that the tank holds nearly 3000 gallons. It wasn’t completely full when the well collapsed but it did contain over 2000 gallons of filtered water. Even sharing this water with our tomato plants in the greenhouse, we calculated that we had plenty of drinking and cooking water for everyone on campus for at least a month.

Our neighbors, the Pioche brothers up the wash to the east, have not only a well, but also a flat bed truck with a 1500 gallon fiberglass tank on the back which they filled with water from their own well and brought to us for our use as long as we need it.

It is parked in a central location on campus and every evening our new director, Dan Dixon, drives his pickup (with a smaller tank in the back) around campus filling five-gallon buckets, and other containers, to be used for baths and toilet flushings. It lends a little air of old-time neighborliness when Mission residents come out to fill buckets in the cool of the evening and stand around the water truck and chat.

The morning after getting the well permit, Craig Shirley, who had helped us obtain it, called to say he was going to come out and take a GPS reading at the head of the collapsed well in order to locate it accurately on their charts. While he was involved in doing just that, a pickup pulled up behind our vehicle on the narrow track leading down to the well site. Our neighbor from the west, Ted Bicente, was there to ask what he could do to help.

Director Dixon wasn’t sure where he was coming from, so he asked what Ted had in mind. Ted then explained that everybody in the vicinity used water from the Mission’s well. He thought he could start a petition among the neighbors to ask the Chapter (local administrative unit in the Navajo Nation) to see if they could come up with funds to help La Vida repair their well.

Meanwhile, the state engineer had been listening to our neighbor explain how much our well meant to the community, and offer support for its restoration.

After Bicente left Shirley commented, I didn’t realize how much the community depended on this well. I remember last year when a mud slide covered the community water canal in Farmington, that the state put up funds to help restore it since it was a community water source. I can’t promise anything, but I’m going to look into availability of state funds to help the Mission.

We don’t know whether either of these sources will have money to help us. It doesn’t really matter either since we serve a God who owns all the silver and the gold and the cattle on a thousand hills.

These trials indicate that Satan is upset we are taking the initiative to reach out to our Navajo students and community with the gospel of Jesus’ love. This can do nothing but encourage us. We thank God every day for your

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Bulletin Board

Positions to Fill:

• Plant Services Director
• Boys’ Dean(s) beginning in Aug.
• Grades 6-8 Teacher
• Bible Worker

La Vida Needs:

• School office shredder
• Farm tractor, 60+ hp with PTO
• Short-term volunteers to:
  • Service Mission vehicles
  • Roof Mission buildings

Special Thanks to:

• Our Heavenly Father for providing our needs
• Faithful donors who support LVM with prayers, financial and other donations.
• Student sponsors and their contri butions, prayers and letters
• Lyn Crabtree of Pacific Press Publishing Assn. for library books
• Polly Vicars, fabric & misc. house-hold items
• Deborah Kearnes for toys and clothing
• Ted, Sussie & Mindy Thompson for clothing, toys, school supplies

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New Donors

Kevin and Carol Barnett
Clifford Colvin
Rod & Mary Jewett
Coralie Lallemand
SDA Schools of Lincoln
Timothy & Maria Manns
Roger & Mary Matthews
Kenneth & Ruth Willes

Dixons try mission service

Dan and Sharron Dixon moved to La Vida Mission just in time to experience our well failure. Both have stepped in to make staff and visitors comfortable during the unfortunate situation.

Dan and Sharron Dixon recently arrived from Payson, AZ, to assume duties at La Vida Mission.

Dan claims that he has been relatively successful at all the enterprises he has undertaken in his life, except for retirement. He says he has tried three times and just failed the third attempt when he agreed to come as Mission director.

Dan did a six-year stint in the Navy spending part of that time in Viet Nam. After the war he joined both the National Guard and the Forest Service.

Having retired from both he had no excuse when board members Carol Barr and Ed Sutsch, both also of Payson, encouraged him to apply for the director’s position.

Sharon, or Sherrie as she doesn’t mind being called, has her education and experience in early childhood development.

Besides raising four children to adulthood, she worked 40 years in such areas as day care and preschool as well as special education in public school. Sherrie will be teaching grades K-2.

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In Memory of

In Honor of

Doris & Dr. Wetzel Williams by Paul & Joanne Eiseman
Dorothy Kidder’s 80th birthday by Evelyn Wellman

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Jobs Well Done

Parsons Tennessee Pathfinders, (L-R ) Ashley, Derek, Jeremy, and Annie, lead by Master Guide, Nancy Raymond, signed The Lord’s Prayer during their July visit. The group blessed the Mission with help preparing for registration.

Storrie happily took part in final Vacation Bible School program presented Sabbath in La Vida Mission Church by Florida Pathfinders.

Several Florida Pathfinders touched up the familiar La Vida sign during “spare” time spent apart from preparing for and presenting a Vacation Bible School.

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Prayer Request

Community, friends and family request special prayer for Erna Montoya, a former LVM student who is battling cancer.

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