Reservation for Two

On Navajo Nation

November 2012

The Main Dish

This is a picture of Lyle Clark. Lyle is dating the daughter of one of our members and has been around off and on for a few months now. I want to share his story with you because his story is in many ways the face of what mission work truly is. Around three months ago Lyle started coming to church on occasion with his girlfriends parents (shes not a member of the church) and we started to build a relationship. Lyle is a bull rider and travels around the state most weekends to compete in rodeos. One Friday night I get a phone call from Lyle and he asks if he can come by the house to see me for a minute. He knocks on the door and asks if I would pray for him. His dad is in the car, his horse is loaded up in the trailer and hes about to leave for the weekend rodeo. Lyle is more desperate to win than usual because he has been injured and hasnt placed in a long time and he needs the money to feed his horses the next week. I prayed with Lyle and then I didnt hear from him the rest of the weekend. Sunday morning hes at church, I said Lyle how was the rodeo? He smiles and says I placed third, it was his highest finish of the season. Over the next few months wed spend a lot of time talking and every Friday night we pray for his weekend trip to the rodeo. He keeps doing well, every weekend he comes home and tells me that he placed in the money and hes staying healthy (which is tough for an amateur bull rider). Hes even won a couple of events. His rodeo career has turned a corner. Then two weeks ago I get a call from Lyle and he asks if I can come over to talk with him. I leave the office and drop by his grandparents house to chat with him. His Grandpa had just come home and hed wanted to talk to me alone so we take a drive out to his horse corral. Before we even get there Lyle is holding back tears and shaking as he fights to keep from completely breaking down in front of me. (Continued on Back)

Nick & Heidi Rice PO BOX 4536 Kayenta, AZ 86033 Phone: 928-697-3096 nickolasjrice@gmail.com hidlynnr@gmail.com reservationforrice.blogspot.com
Any donations or financial support to the work can and should be sent to our sponsoring congregation:

Northeast Church of Christ

11000 Paseo Del Norte NE Albuquerque, NM 87122

Coming Right Up
Bible Study on the Reservation: December 14th- 15th Gallup church of Christ Speaker: Jeff Foster Topic: The Book of Acts

Supporters
6th & Washington church of Christ sixthandwashingtonchurchofchrist.org Fishinger & Kenny Roads church of Christ www.fandk.org Hendersonville church of Christ www.hendcoc.net Highland Heights church of Christ www.highlandheights.net Spring Road church of Christ www.springroadcoc.com University church of Christ www.universitycofc.net Watterson Trail church of Christ www.wtcoc.org Word of Life Ministries www.wolonline.org

Reservation for Two

On Navajo Nation He parked the truck and I asked whats going on. He starts to tell me that hes screwed things up and that he doesnt want to hurt his relationship with his girlfriend. He admits that hes made mistakes before and that he is desperate to not disappoint her again. So far everything he says is vague at best. I had to ask him, What are we dealing with here? He tells me about some sin he was involved with even before the time that wed gotten to know each other. The details of the story would fit into an R rated movie plot with ease. The actions also have some pretty serious consequences. We talked about that for a while and he understands that and seems to be okay with the consequences, except one. Telling his girlfriend. Lyle starts to get more upset and he reaches up to the dashboard where he had a notebook. He flips open to the last page hed been writing on hands me the book and looks at me and says, I dont know what to do. The page starts, Dear Mom and Dad, Im so sorry He had written out a suicide note the night before and was planning to take his own life. If I hadnt been so desperate to quickly find him another solution it would have broken me down into tears too. I spent the rest of the day with Lyle, trying my best to counsel him and to help him reason through some of these issues. He didnt want to take his life, but he didnt want to face it either. I had him drive us back to the office and he said he wanted to study the Bible together. So we did, for the next few hours. Lyle had been thinking about his faith and about being baptized for weeks, but he knew committing to Christ was serious and that he needed to be ready before he took that step. He had enough respect for the church to know that if he was going to be in it, he was going to be in it right. He went home for a few hours and came back to church that night for our potluck meal. He brought his two younger sisters with him and after the meal he was baptized into the church. If his story ended here Id still have written all of this and it would still be among my greatest joys as a minister. That isnt quite the end though. This week Lyles sister had a birthday (shes about 10). Birthdays are a pretty big deal in Navajo culture. His whole family came in for the party and Lyle told me that every time someone in his family has a birthday they celebrate the same way. His Grandfather who is traditional gets a special pitcher of water and an Eagle feather and uses them to say a traditional prayer that blesses the four sacred mountains, seasons, directions and then the child. At his sisters party, Lyle said the prayer instead. I asked him how it went and he laughed and said, Yeah, I did it a little differently. As far as I know, that was the first time he ever prayed in front of anyone else.

November 2012

This is what mission work is, its Lyle Clark. It is answering a plea for help, being there for someone to vent, turning someones attention to the Word, building a relationship, saying a prayer. I am more proud of this story than of all the other work Ive accomplished in two and a half years. This newsletter and a hundred others like it could never explain fully what this work is all about, but I think Lyles story is about as clear a glimpse as I could ever give you into the inside.

On the Side
In December of last year one of our members donated their parents old abandoned trailer to the church. We moved it onto the church property and have been gutting and renovating it ever since. A full year later, the project is finished and Heidi and I just moved into it a few weeks ago. There are probably close to 100 people whove been involved in this process at some point and as promised were compiling a bunch of pictures onto a photo sharing website so that you can all see the transformation. Ill send out the link this week separate from the newsletter. Thank you is not fitting to describe the amount of work and sacrifice and love and support that weve seen and felt over the past 12 months. There are men and women who have single handedly taken on a burden on this project that will benefit the Kayenta work for decades. I have never felt so blessed as I have been through this process. The Lords church is like nothing this world has to offer. To God be the glory, and a heartfelt thanks to all of you.