Last week, I joined several others from our church on a short term mission trip to the White Mountain Apache tribe in southern Arizona. That was a great trip, and really reopened my eyes to what others may be facing in their own lives.
This trip was a perfect opportunity to get out of our own comfort zones and serve others. Our goal was to help clean up a building that American Indian Christian Mission hoped to use as a church building in the small town of Cibecue, on the reservation. That turned out not to be what God had in store for us. Instead, we helped to build the church in other ways.
Our work project was to help tear down some walls, a part of the community youth center that the health department required to be repaired before it could be used again. While three or four of us worked on that, the remainder of our group weeded, picked up trash, cleaned up the area around the community buildings, and interacted with several of the people who stopped by to see what we were doing.
In many ways, this was a much greater impact on the community than cleaning out the proposed church building would have been.
After the work was done, and lunch was eaten, we hosted a Vacation Bible School for community kids. Our highest day was around sixty kids, but we averaged closer to thirty-five or forty the rest of the week. Many of these kids worked their way right into our hearts.
On our final day on the reservation, we stopped by a canyon with an incredible view. One of the guys from AICM let us soak that in, and then directed our attention to the canyon floor. We could see the wrecked remains of several cars. Locally, this was called Suicide Canyon, and the White Mountain Apaches have a very high rate of suicide that plagues their nation.
We discovered that, of the sixty kids we had seen that week, a third of them were unlikely to out-live their teen years because of this. And of the rest of them, not a single one had a serious chance of making it to the age of 44, due to the effects of suicide, alcohol and drug abuse, and the resulting health issues that come with these things. Not a single child.
That is a devastating thought. It hit each member of our team very hard. It has been something I have been struggling with in my own mind ever since. And the White Mountain Apache isn’t the only tribe to suffer from such despair. This seems to be a rampant problem among many Native American tribes, from what I have read.
Seeing the rates of alcoholism, drug use, abuse, suicide, apathy and despair, I can think only of the hopelessness of the situation. That seems to be the root of all of these issues. There is no hope.
That is exactly what AICM is attempting to address by planting a church in this community. Christ offers hope. Christ offers healing. Christ offers joy. And these are the things that are needed in the tiny community of Cibecue, and elsewhere on the reservation.
Only Christ can bring that. Only Christ can heal this people.
After we returned home, we received a message from AICM. They were able to take sixteen of those kids we met to camp this week, on the AICM campus. And at least one family asked to an application for AICM’s school. Maybe some of these kids have an opportunity to discover hope after all.
Please keep them in your prayers as they move on from here, both the kids, and the AICM staff. In fact, the entire White Mountain Apache tribe could use our prayers as well. Great things can take place there for the kingdom of God, and turn around the suffering and despair that they experience.
And, if you get a chance to visit the Apache tribes of Arizona, do it. They are a wonderful people.
Question: Have you ever spent any time on a Native American reservation? What was your experience like? You can leave a comment by clicking here.