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Show Tv1essage 33, Page 2 table at the same time. The potatoes are making a fine showing, as are the beans, peas, and 3 kinds of squash. In spite of using hot caps the weather held the peppers and tomatoes back, but now we have a lot of green tomatoes which we watch hopefully for sigps of their turning red! While our garden is mostly vegetables, the desert showed a marvellous display of color this year. The yucca gave us a wonderful display of their creamy white blossoms - many say it was the greatest display they have ever seen. On our travels we frequently passed huge patches of purple, yellow, and orange flowers. Other low-growing plants of white flowers and the many hues of the cactus completed the picture, thanks to the very wet late winter and spring. I still have a bit of fence to put up around the old trailer garden and hope to get some grass growing in between the house and the trailer. This area was already fenced, and along with the grass we hope t o have some flowers in this area', if we can keep the dogs, cats and youngsters off themt! We are all most grateful to all of you who so generously contributed to the fence fund. I still have a water system to put in, so as to avoid dragging hose allover the garden. The end of July marked forty years since Father Liebler made his exploratory trip through the Utah strip of the Navajo Reservation. The work has grown from one priest holding outdoor services to 4 mission stations, 3 church buildings, plans for the fourth, and many outbuildings. Praise the Lord, and thanks to our many friends who have made this possible. And Helen says: Encouraging news about Ray Begay who at last got away to a new area to finish his High School years, thanks to Bishop Putnam and his kind friends, Father and Mrs Hugh Duncan at Moses Lake, Washington. He has just completed his 4th year of High School. He came home with the Duncans and had a happy reunion with his family and friends . It was a joy to see his mother, Rose Begay, welcoming his "foster parents." She promptly. got to work making a big pile of delicious Navajo fry bread for everyone, and the Duncans were so much part of the family gathering that you'd have thought they'd lived in Navajoland all their lives! All of us at Hat Rock and st Mary of the Moonlight have long known and appreciated Ray's ability in youth work and loyalty in the service of the church. Matthew, our miracle boy who was so many months in a coma, is steadily improving. The last time I siopped at his hogan he beamed and opened and shut both hands and said with great pride, "I can walk all round the hogan now l1 , and, with a real struggle, he demonstrated. He also said that he now rides to a special school in Kayenta, and enjoys it. He explained that he is having to do everything over again but he likes it. He still likes coloring books, especially ones with simple printing that he can copy. His mother is still watching him with constant care and is studying, with a group of other Navajo mothers , the care of the handicapped. Already anxious parents of large families are asking,t~here can we find a place for our children to live during the next school year?" Although the new High School has already been partially built at the junction where our access road joins Highway 163, it is not yet completed, and the High School students go either to Kayenta or to ~. 0. ~ 1 Monticello, the latter being about a 100-mile trip each way. Also, some of the children are asking the same question. They are children who, for one good reason or another, are sometimes too frightened to sleep in their own homes and hide out on the mesas. But what a change this is from the 40's! We used to spend a lot of time trying to make parents see how important school would be for the children. They would consider seriously, then say, "Guess you could have Albert for school; he not very bright and make no good herder - but not Tommie; he smart kid and we need good herders." Now that the older siblings have gone through high school or college, and the young men and women are holding important positions on the Reservation all that hard struggle of early school and a strange language seems rl. ~ .~ M t?-ja..t, H ekt" ~l' c t.\, 0LI'('" i 'reo: i \\c' ,nj worthwhile. ph.crc(i r(~f>h*,<ij in Sp~t;.. .,;{- rh~ :>~ypc~t- C'_I--'C:~ ~'n - Often, when I visit Bluff, I hear deep. c..c",,-rL~ ~ N'\€rJ f )... L . ', ' b ' II' t t "H 11 'v ~ I r't::~-'y\iLr1"'m~"..,~J\(.L'~\'~'-f , ':.-("\...r\,t-( ass VOlces ca lng au a me, e 0, _~J ,e4 A .. ~ .~u...n<-i ?ft-£~:..l . Helen, do you remember that way back little school, where we all sat on the dirt floo r ? We liked that. And at night you let us take our gum back home. Nobody else did that and we appreciated it. We learned a lot in that little school and we liked it." |