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Show #30, page 2 . Ray's young cousin, our i'iatthew, is not doing as well. He was the baby who had a sh~t . put in his head to relieve excess water on the brain. He has had a fairly pleasant 12 years, especially in the Special Education school with the Catholic Sisters at St. l1ichael f s, Arizona, where he learned good English, beautiful manners and many other things. He enjoyed life with his large, affectionate family, and always enjoyed coming to St. J1ary 's where he was eager to be helpful. His faithful and intelligent mother has learned much from doctors and hospitals and, in spite of her limited English, she is helping other parents to care for handicapped children. She is on a Tribal Committee, teaching parents to care for handicapped at home. An intelligent daughter, finishing High School, has announced her intention of giving her .life to work for the handicapped. 1\1J Soon after Thanksgiving, a very excited call from an R.N. in Tuba City Hospital came ~ Hat Rock Retreat asking for Helen, whose name appears in an old hospital record as a long time friend and contact for Na tthew, who has for so many weeks been in a coma. The nurse said, '~e do not know how to reach the mother and we are anxious for her to get the good news." The nurse told us that during Thanksgiving night l'atthew suddenly roused from many weeks of coma, talked with nurses, took food himself, moved a bit and made a slight' response to the therapist. The hospital is greatly encouraged by this miraculous improvement, but the doctors and nurses seem not to know why it happened. A message was taken to IIatthew's home the next day, but it did not reach his mother until several days later, as she was away with other members of her family trying to earn a little extra money by picking pinon nuts. l-latthew has been allowed to come home, and though he is still mostly paralyzed the fact that he can move at all and communi-cate with them is a great joy to his family. The hospital has provided a wheelchair, and we understand they are planning to send a bed with sides to it. At present, his mother sleeps on the floor next to his bed, so if he falls out he will fallon her! Brother Juniper's 2¢ ••••• As we write this there is less than one month left in the Old Year. Can it be possible that it is almost a year since we left the "house on the hill" and settled in the house and trailer provided for us so that a younger priest could take over? Anxiously we waited for the news that a priest had been found, but that news has not come. We will soon enter our thirty-eighth year among the Navajo, and we are still trying to carry on - we who are some of the oldest, both in years and service to the Navajo. We wonder what it is about the inner city work that attracts so many, while there are wide open spaces in the country where people live who need to be told of Our Lord and learn of the Bible, or, as it is called by the Navajos, "God Bizaard", God's Word. The area served by the Church of St Mary of the Moonlight is not just a few blocks square, inhabited by the poor who have at some time heard about Our Lord and who need food and shelter and reclamation from vi~e. It is an area of about 1,000 square miles with scattered people who have to travel long distances for care, and who need to be instructed in God's Word. A people who, until a few years ago, knew Our Lord's name only as the white man's strongest swear word. These are the people we are getting to old to serve properly. This, as the year comes to a close, we offer this prayer: "0 GREAT LORD of the harvest, send forth, we beseech thee, labourers · into the harvest of the world, that the grain which is even now ripe may not fall and perish through our neglect. ~our forth thy sanctifying Spirit on our fellowChristians, and thy converting grace on the ~eathen. 11aise up, we pray thee, a ministry among the native believers, that, all thy people being knit together in one body in love, thy Holy Church may grow up into the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ. Through him who died and rose for us all, the same Jesus Christ our Lord." Nay you have a Blessed Christmas and a prosperous New Year. |
