Day 5 Recap: The San Carlos Apache Reservation

Today was our first day on the reservation!! Breakfast was at 7am and then we piled in the van with Denise from ARM for a prayer tour of the San Carlos reservation. We drove through several neighborhoods as Diana explained tribal culture and reservations issues. We saw the unbelievable poverty that is the daily life here, families living in abandoned cars or 20 people living in two bedroom homes. The need is so very great.  It was terribly moving that the this is the situation here in the United States. We then spent our morning at one of the home sites. These two-bedroom homes are about 400 square feet each. We completed the painting of the exterior of both home. Everyone had a blast painting and we went back to the church with a sense of accomplishment and a thick coating of house paint.

This afternoon we traveled back to the reservation in the children's bus. We arrived at a neighborhood called Moonbase and pulled into the playground. The Apache children started showing up for "bus time". Several from the team did a lesson and craft inside the bus while others played outside with another group of children. Cameron and Jordan tried to impress the boys with their skating moves, while others played basketball, jump rope or duck duck goose. It was hard to leave these wonderful kids, especially knowing that they are returning to homes where drug abuse, alcoholism and abuse are so common. Please pray for these beautiful children of God.

Tomorrow we will be at a different building site and different location for the children's bus. The team is doing an amazing job. I am so proud of the them. Oh and by the way, when I get the pictures up (internet service is not very good. I can post but uploading is proving to be impossible right now.) You will see the visitor we found in the men's shower. We will be shaking out our clothes and shoes from now on!!