New York Times Article

I think this was the article that appeared in the New York Times.

By FERNANDA SANTOS
Published: October 30, 2013

TUBA CITY, Ariz. — Linda Smith lost one son, a methamphetamine addict, when he hanged himself in jail. Her other sons are heavy drinkers, fathered by a man who she said nearly killed her one night in a fit of rage, driving her from her home on this corner of the Navajo reservation to Provo, Utah, where she found solace in the Mormon Church.

Ms. Smith’s narrative echoes an increasingly common theme on this reservation, where unemployment is rampant, domestic violence is common, and alcohol is often used as an antidote to heartaches and hardships. In a land troubled by dysfunction and despair, a growing number of Navajos have been turning to the Mormon Church.

Membership at the church’s Tuba City Stake, which covers 150 miles of Navajo and Hopi lands, has increased by 25 percent since 2008, even as churches around it have struggled. St. Jude Parish, this city’s sole Roman Catholic presence, survives largely because of its Filipino congregants, brought here to teach in the local public schools. In September, the Catholic Diocese of Gallup, N.M., which serves the Navajo Nation and six other reservations, filed for bankruptcy protection because of the mounting costs of defending against accusations of sexual abuse by clergy members.

To attract followers, Larry Justice, a white man who is the president of the Tuba City Stake, took a page from the lives of Navajo ancestors and began a gardening program to teach people how to live off the land.

He and a handful of church volunteers teach gardening techniques, distributing seeds from a plot behind the church building here. The program started with 25 gardens four years ago, each made by Navajos next to their homes. There were 1,800 gardens last month, and by next year 500 more are to be created in Tuba City and communities all around it, Mr. Justice said.

Participants learn how to fertilize the soil, parched by years of drought. They learn to build fences to keep out the animals that roam the land. They learn what to harvest and when: melons and grapes in the summer, squash and cabbage in the fall.

“Their grandparents knew how to farm. Their parents forgot it. We’re working to make sure the young people learn it,” Mr. Justice said as he escorted visitors through the chapel, which was so crowded one recent Sunday that a divider was removed to make way for more seats. “It’s important to teach our people to be self-reliant.”

The Mormon Church has been expanding at a steady pace, primarily in parts of Asia and Latin America, where, Mr. Justice said, there are plans to introduce his gardening program to indigenous peoples, using lessons in subsistence farming as a doorway into the church. The church had three million members worldwide in 1971. Today, there are 15 million, with roughly one-quarter of them in South America, according to the church’s statistics. Its army of missionaries has increased by 37 percent since last October, after the church lowered its minimum age requirements.

As converts here on the reservation tell it, becoming a Mormon has brought them closer to the fundamental Navajo values of charity, camaraderie and respect for the land. There is a feeling of “reconnecting to our traditions,” as one of them, Nora Kaibetoney, explained in Navajo through a translator — even though Mormonism often compels them to leave behind rituals that have long defined their identity, like a medicine man’s healing ceremonies or the cleansing in sweat lodges.

“In Navajo culture, the most important things we have are life and our family,” said Ms. Smith, 64, the daughter of a Navajo code talker and hand trembler, a type of diagnostician. She was baptized as a Mormon in high school.

Converting, she said, “wasn’t about turning away and embracing an entirely different tradition; it was about reconnecting.”

American Indians have had complicated histories with the Christian denominations that have performed missionary work among them, including the Mormon Church, known formally as the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. In the West, where Mormons migrated during the 19th century while fleeing persecution, they and the Navajo worked together on the land and also fought over it, in a relationship defined by alternating periods of cooperation and strife.

What set the Mormons apart from other missionary groups is the role they ascribed to American Indians in their holy scriptures as descendants of the Lamanites — rebellious nonbelievers whose conversion could help the Mormons build God’s kingdom on earth.

“There’s this paradoxical sense in which the Lamanites are both a rebellious and wicked people, but they’re also key to the consummation of history and they’re central actors in the Mormon scriptural drama,” said Peter J. Thuesen, the chairman of the department of religious studies at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis, whose research explores the role of Mormonism in American culture. “No other form of Christianity gives the native people such a unique place in their story.”

In paintings adorning the church’s building in Tuba City, a structure made striking by the modest homes that surround it, American Indians listen as Jesus preaches to them. According to Mormon belief, Indians were the first people to whom he ministered when he came to the Americas after his resurrection.

The connection is one of the ways the church attracts people like Wayne Smith, whom Ms. Smith married last year in the church.

A retired ironworker, Mr. Smith, 52, is among the tens of thousands of American Indians, most of them Navajo, who were recruited as children for placement in Mormon homes outside the reservation, under a contentious program that was promoted as a way to give the children a chance at a good education — but that removed them from their native culture.

The program began just as soldiers were returning from World War II, a time of “profound breakdown of community,” said Laurie F. Maffly-Kipp, a distinguished professor in the humanities at the John C. Danforth Center on Religion and Politics at Washington University in St. Louis. For parents, the Mormons’ ban on alcohol and emphasis on a measured lifestyle stood in stark contrast to the harsh realities of life on the reservation, and delivering children was seen as “the most realistic way to give them a leg up,” Ms. Maffly-Kipp said.

Mr. Smith recalled that the program gave him a sense of self-worth.

“Here was an outside group of people telling me I wasn’t just someone who was poor,” he said, “that I had a great heritage, that I have potential.”

Mr. Justice and the missionaries who travel the dirt roads here are working to spread the message, knocking on doors and offering prayers. Their encounters usually include an invitation: Come by the church on Sunday to learn more.

“The thing about us is,” said Mr. Justice, referring to his flock, “is that we take care of one another.”

Geraldine's funeral in Polacca

Dear Family & Friends,

This is an email I sent to the Elders & Sisters serving here in  the mission field.  Our missionary numbers are getting smaller, since 7 couple will be leaving in the next few weeks and at this point we do not have others who will be taking their place.

We do have the Seminary couple next door and the counseling couple who leave about a 1/4 of a mile from the church, but they travel a lot and we don't see them much.  

 Here is the email I sent to them which I wanted to include in our blog, so that I could have a copy.

  We attended a funeral Saturday for a young woman who Elder Olson baptized when she was 9, which was about 45 years ago.  As I looked out over the crowd and saw their faces I was even more intensely aware of how many are wounded not only physically, but spiritually and how easy it is to "judge" wondering why they cannot see what we know to be true.  

 As I listened to Pres. Eyring's Conference talk, I was touched by what he said about our tendency to become impatient, which happens so often when they do not seem to understand what we so desperately want them to understand.  I pray that we can heed his counsel as we share the hope and understanding of the Atonement and its power to heal.  I pray we strive to overcome our impatience and show forth more compassion and love to all those we come in contact with as we serve among the people.

"There is another preparation we must make. It is a human characteristic to become hardened to the pains of others. That is one of the reasons why the Savior went to such lengths to tell of His Atonement and of His taking upon Himself the pains and sorrows of all of our Heavenly Father’s children that He might know how to succor them.

Even the best of Heavenly Father’s mortal priesthood holders do not rise to that standard of compassion easily. Our human tendency is to be impatient with the person who cannot see the truth that is so plain to us. We must be careful that our impatience is not interpreted as condemnation or rejection."  Pres. Henry B Eyring

I also wanted to include the talk I gave at our last meeting with the missionaries who served this last growing season.  They are an amazing group of people who served with incredible diligence among the native American people in this area.

As I pondered on what I could say this day, I knew it would not be easy.  After teaching for 32 years the end of the year good-byes never did easier.  The kids always liked to do a count down, but they never realized the teachers were doing the same thing often with even more enthusiasm.

Today is the last time that I will see some of you during our mortal probation.

I want to express my deepest gratitude for the sacrifices you have made over the last few months by being here and not at home with your “maturing parents,” kids and grandkids.

Gratitude for the time you spent serving the people here.

For the time you spent on your knees pleading with the Lord for His help to know what to do and for who to do it.

  Through the hours you spent serving the people with far more that showing them how to have a successful garden.

Gratitude for sharing your talents, your expertise, your love, and your faith in the gospel and the power to the Atonement to heal both physically and spiritually.

Gratitude for building the people up

Encouraging them

Teaching them

Accepting them where they were and not judging them when they didn’t understand.

Working alongside of them in their gardens and accepting the gospel.

Loving them as your brothers and sisters, sons and daughters of God.

This chapter in some of your lives, just like this planting season, will soon come to an end

I hope you will share your “good memories” and the lessons you learned from the “not so good” memories or as Pres. Justice says “the take aways” you gleaned from the harvest you reaped during the more difficult days.

You may never have your picture appear on the front page of any newspaper and you most likely will never become famous except in your own families and neighborhoods.

BUT all of you will be forever etched in the hearts of those you served here on the “rez”

You have continued to follow the legacy of your pioneer forefathers

You have worked hard

Traveled far

Gone to bed bone tired,   But rose again to serve the next day renewed and refreshed, strengthened with the resolve to help another along the way

You have faced each days challenges with faith in God and His ability to give you whatever was needed to get the job done.

You have each had your Hole in the Rock experiences.

Hopefully, you did not have to eat soup made from boiling a cowhide because there was nothing else to eat

Surely someone was willing to share their mutton and some fry bread.

Many of you probably have beadwork or items of silver.  But your real treasures will be the memories you made while serving faithfully with those who were once strangers, but now have become good friends.

Please know how much President Justice, President Batt, those you served with and even more the love our Heavenly Father has for you and your willingness to serve God’s children in this small area of the world as you return to your homes and families. 

Please know with surety that you will be greatly missed.  You have been tried and tested AND YOU MADE IT.

Your example and attitude has been one of love, hope and faith.

You have loved as God has loved

You have done as He would have done

You have served as He would have served

Well done thou good and faithful servant.

Your children will have changed some and your grandchildren grown an inch or two

Things may have changed at home, but the greatest changes will have been in you.

Having running water, indoor plumbing , lights that work consistently and a Walmart only a few miles away will not be taken for granted anymore.

Please know how much your service has meant to those you served and to everyone in this room and many more.

Our last request is that you would say the things that would build up those who may be a little hesitant to serve a mission.  That your comments would be honest but positive about their ability to serve wherever the Lord needs them.  That their faith will be His faith to do whatever is needed.  That their funds will be His funds and be enough for whatever is needed to keep them there. That His love and foresight will be all that is needed to accomplish whatever is needed to move this great work forward.

I know that Jesus is the Christ,  that in Him and through Him all things can be accomplished.  That Joseph Smith was divinely inspired and that the Book of Mormon will provide the answers to the challenges that we face.  That God will answer the righteous desires of our heart and like Peter we can do all things IF we stay focused on our Savior and Redeemer, Jesus Christ.  And if we falter we can know beyond the shadow of a doubt that He will be there hand extended to get us back on track.

I say these things in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen

It is actually more an outline of what I said, because I knew I would not be able to say what I wanted without crying.  Not that I am emotional or anything like that. :o} 

 Elder & Sister Olsn

Oct Conference 2013

This is Tom and Selina Slim, son Tuchoney, and daughter, Brianna.  They came by to see our Church Garden and it was the very first time that Tuchoney had eaten a raspberry.  He thought they were very good and would like to get some starts for their garden.  It was fun to see his face light up when he tasted the first one.

  They were very excited about their first garden this year and will be getting the ground ready for next year's garden in the next couple of weeks.  We had our first hard frost last night.  The plants in the garden looked 

pretty sad.

  We were able to watch every conference session.  I was especially touched by Elder Jeffrey R Holland's yesterday and President Eyring's talk this morning.  We had about 40 people there this morning.  The spirit was so strong and the feelings of the Savior's love and concern for each of us was so evident.

  Sister Margaret from the Catholic Church on the north of us, invited us over for dinner.  She asked about how a new prophet was chosen and wondered if they voted on who it would be.  Elder Olson explained how it all works.  She also asked if we had a sister missionary who could be called to serve in their "food ministry"  We explained that the sister missionaries served proselyting missions and that we could not call one to serve in the Catholic Food Ministry.  It was actually a very interesting evening.  She had saved a newspaper article about "Mormon women shut out of male meeting"  I just read the article and there wasn't a word about women being shut out.  It was about the membership growing.  It did point out that we are vastly outnumbered by Catholics, who have 1.2 billion members worldwide and Jews with 13.8 million.  Not sure the author did much research before he wrote the other information in the article.

  It was a spiritual feast and we had two families that are taking the missionary lessons attend.  Between sessions today we had a "sort of potluck"  We had invited a family that we knew were coming and then a second family who came.  Once the food is blessed it seems to go as far as it needs to go.  We did not feed 5,000, but we did feed about 20.  It was fun to see the little kids fill their plates.  They were even able to make up some plates for one of the grandmothers. 

  Elder Olson and Elder Walker, the new Seminary teacher, went over to the hospital to give a young woman a blessing.  That actually happens quite frequently.  Sometimes they are being air lifted out and you have to go immediately or they are in the air before you get there.

  Elder Olson helped a new family till and get the Humante, fertilizer, and manure in the grown Friday and yesterday before conference and after.  Unfortunately they were feeding their horse alfalfa and he was down wind of the dust.  I have not seen him wheeze for a long time.  It is not fun for him at all and he is to stubborn to get a blessing.  He keeps telling me he will be fine and I am sure he will, but it is hard to see him struggle to get a breath of air.  Please keep him in your prayers.

  Things are going well otherwise.  Always lots to do and places to go.  

Elder & Sister Olson

Darlene's garden produce, and finding family names to harvest.

This is a picture of Darlene Claw's harvest.  The potatoes are from her garden too, although she used a store bag to put them in.  Check the background, pretty amazing don't you think to see what can be grown where this was grown.

 Sister Norris and I have planned a road trip for tomorrow to locate a Mission Cemetery.  

We were able to find a census record for one of Fannie Sanders ancestors.  It listed 6 or  7 children, then by going to az genealogy.com we found two birth certificates and a death cert. for 3 other children that were not listed on the census.  With the information we found we will be able to prepare their family to be sealed together forever. 

We are going to the cemetery near Pinion to see if we can verify death dates for several of those family members that we found. It was a pretty amazing experience and you could feel them there guiding us.

We will go in the morning and return in the afternoon.

Sister Olson