This morning our plans for day changed after breakfast. While visiting with Mr. H. we decided that we wanted to work hard today finishing all the jobs we had begun and then take Friday as a sight-seeing day.
After breakfast Roger took a crew including Brooks, Darlene, Darren and Frankli.n (our site supervisor) out to the Cambridge house to work on putting up dry wall on the ceilings of the bedrooms and to start insulating the exterior walls.
Alesia, Phil, Kathy, Lisa and Nora went to the church to finish painting the ceilings and cleaning up the mess.
Midmorning Phil and Nora returned to the dorm to have a meeting with Nancy, Samm and Rodney Aist, Director of Four Corners Native American Ministry and Heather Bishop, US2 Missioner assigned to 4CNAM. We went over plans for the Leadership Training Event that will be held at the Shiprock UMC on Saturday. The four of us pastors from Nebraska will share in the leadership of the training with Rodney and Heather. We will be going through Module 3-Caring and Module 4-Communication of the Basic Lay Speaking Ministries Course. We hope that about 40 people will atttend this event. These are persons who are connected to one of the charter churches or outreach congregations of the 4CNAM.
After lunch Alesia joined the crew out at the Cambridge house. Samm, Nora, Kathy and Lisa went over to the church to help Mr. H. and Rodney set up the Fellowship Hall for the Saturday training event. When they were done, Phil drove them out to the Cambridge house and we joined the work already in progress. EVERYONE pitched into stuffing insulation between the studs in the exterior walls and cleaning up the mess from the work on the dry wall. Unfortunately one of the staplers broke so we only had two that were functioning. This slowed us down a little as we waited our turn for a staple gun. Once all the insulation was in place we put up a thick plastic vapor lock. We had a single roll 100 feet long. It was enough to cover about two-thirds of the house. By 4:30 we had completed all the tasks that we had set out to do this week!
We returned to the dorm for a special dinner prepared by Nancy with help from Betty and Carol. We had baked potatos (one of which exploded in the oven), meatloaf, fresh baked dinner rolls and pumpkin pie for dessert! Yummm! Joining us for our meal were two special guests. First, Lorena, the director of the Thrift Store shared our table. Heather Bishop joined us to talk about her work as a US2 missioner assigned to the 4CNAM. She graduated last year from Duke Divinity School with an M.Div. but feels called to ministry in this way rather than as a pastor of a local church.
Roger finished off the evening by installing the last of the kitchen cabinets in the dorm. He has been installing them one at a time. Yesterday morning he put up the middle section. This morning Brooks helped him with the second and tonight Carol ably assisted him with the last one. They are a very nice addition to the dorm and will make it easier to serve meals.
In addition, this afternoon, after finishing the work at the Cambridge house, Roger made yet another trip to Farmington. He had to return some insulation that was left after we had completed the house. And he brought back more plastic sheeting to complete the vapor lock on the house.
Tomorrow we plan to leave right after breakfast for the Four Corners Monument. Franklin will be going along to act as our tour guide. From there we will travel to the Mesa Verde Park on the other side of Cortez, Colorado. We plan to take a guided tour of one of the cliff dwellings in the afternoon before returning to Shiprock.
It's hard to believe that our time here is drawing to a close. It has gone so fast! We have gotten an incredible amount of work done. Betty and Carol have had a blast working in the Thrift Store with Lorena and meeting lots of the local people who have been coming to buy jeans because they heard it on the radio. Today one family bought 29 pairs!!
We are sorry to see the end approach but we are looking forward to future VIM trips.