December 9

Tim-Tam,

Elder and Sister Watts are fantastic. They are also working with Northwest High School (which is a BIA School, Shiprock High is a local school) but I'm not sure what the third school they are referring to is! Perhaps the high school down in Newcomb, which would be great!

Our conversation is supposed to be limited to 45 minutes, and usually our study schedule isn't over until 10 o'clock, but I can't imagine them not allowing us to alter that for Christmas. I'll try to get more details on it and get back to you! I would love to be able to have the Norris and Phillipps families there too.

I'm sure spending a few minutes in Shiprock was a little different for the Griffiths family than Layton, but there are so many great people here in Shiprock and my heart will forever have a soft spot for this place because I began my mission here. There are many families that I will miss dearly when the time comes to leave! 

We really haven't been able to meet with Leo and Blaire for the past two weeks or so, which is really sad. Things just keep coming up for them at all of our appointment times. I really hope we can meet with them this week. Bryan is doing well! He came to church yesterday. Gwenevere is doing well also, she was all out of wood so we went out to chop down a few trees on a mesa just north of Hogback on Saturday and dropped it off at her place as a Christmas present.

We are decorated at our little trailer for Christmas with a Christmasweed Tumbletree (it's just a really big tumbleweed with lights and ornaments). It sure does brighten up the place! Thank you and Grandma for all of the Christmas-y stuff, it is all going to good use so far.

The Christmas Devotional last night was fantastic and really helped me focus on the true meaning of Christmas and the sacred message we all have to focus on and spread during the next month. I also have loved the commitment left in General Conference by Elder Ballard to touch "one" life by Christmas with the gospel as a gift from us to Christ.

With love and regards,

Elder Schaelling

happy thanksgiving from elder schaelling!

photo dump!

December 2

Mom,

Good to hear the package got to you guys alright! I'm glad you were all able to look through some of the picture and videos, haha. The newer abandoned homes were being built by some company by contract and they ripped off the Navajo Housing Authority (or whoever else was building them, I'm not sure) and they have very poor foundations and things like that. They weren't in livable condition. I don't know a ton though. We were wresting the sheep!

1) Yes, I have already gotten all of the packages! We ended up going into Farmington on Wednesday to get something checked out on our truck, so I was able to pick up those packages. Thank you so much for sending all of those great gifts to me! I plan on opening them on Christmas Day and I'm sure I'll have opened them by the time I call/Skype you guys. Sounds good! I wouldn't be surprised if we tried Skyping from the Watts' place because they have internet at their trailer (not too many people have internet) and they said they wont be doing too much on Christmas. I wouldn't want to interrupt some other family's Christmas morning celebrations too much! I hope I'll be able to see/talk to Natalie and Jackie and their families too!...

3) Thanksgiving was great! We got to spend time with a lot of families... I love all of those families and they are all very hospitable to all of us missionaries! ...

Good to hear all went well for you guys with Thanksgiving! Ahh, Los Gatos Cafe is very good. That's probably the biggest activity/temporal thing I miss being on a mission is eating good food at good restaurants. I love you all!

With Love and Regards,
Elder Schaelling

November 25

Thanksgiving in Shiprock should be pretty good, and I'm excited to get whatever things are in store for me in the package. Thank you so much for taking such good care of me even while I'm on my mission! But, I guess I'm not as far away as most other missionaries are, haha, I'm just over the hill. The Watts are great people, I am very appreciative to have such a nice, caring, and supportive senior couple here in Shiprock. They feed us dinner every Sunday and it feels like family dinner back at Grandma's, which is really nice.

I am so thankful to have grown up in a family that encouraged righteous living and where I had the gospel and the priesthood available to me. Thank you, Mom and everyone else, for doing so much to encourage me to live a life in accordance to gospel standards and I hope to be able to do so even more after I get home. I hope Thanksgiving goes swell for all of you and that you have the opportunity to thank and glorify God for his marvelous works in our lives. I read Luke 17:12-19 which discusses the story of the 10 lepers that Jesus healed and the one who turned to give thanks. Jesus has healed every single one of us from the sickness of sin, and it is essential we all use this time to give thanks unto him.

I love you,

Elder Schaelling

November 18

Mom,

Transfers went great! I am still in Shiprock with Elder Johnson, so this will be our third transfer together which is a pretty long time, but we get along really well. I'm glad I'll be able to stay in Shiprock for Thanksgiving and Christmas since I've already gotten pretty close with some members and investigators in the area. The biggest change that is happening this transfer is that they are adding sisters to our district. So far there have only been elders in the district. They are the Kirtland 3rd Ward sisters (previously the ward had elders) and they cover some reservation so I'm guessing that's why they are being placed in the Shiprock District instead of the Kirtland District, they are some of the only sisters on the reservation so they are pretty lucky! Our mission has the least amount of sisters out of all the missions in the world, along with the highest number of vehicles. Thank you! We also set another baptismal date this week with one of our investigators named Bryan. He is such an awesome and solid guy, he's been to church the past two weeks and he's on date for December 21st. He has two little kids who are awesome and he's been reading the Book of Mormon a lot! It's been amazing to see the area progress so much, I have truly been able to see the Lord's hand at work.  

I went to the Shiprock Fair on the Friday night for like an hour or two and it was pretty cool! Supposedly it's actually been getting smaller the past few years, which is pretty crazy to hear. Yeah, I want to come down for a fair after my mission but I'll probably go to the Window Rock Fair instead because the Shiprock Fair is always on General Conference weekend. I'm probably going to Sanostee sometime soon! A family in our ward, the Yellowhairs, are going to take us down there some day to go hiking on a land bridge and butcher a lamb or a goat! It's only about 45 minutes away from Shiprock, and Sister Yellowhair is originally from there. She's from the Bedah family. Yeah, reading/writing Navajo is essentially nonexistent down here, only the younger kids who take Navajo classes learn to read and write it, but supposedly the language is changing between the generations. Yeah, especially in the boarder towns like Shiprock the language is being lost. Deeper in to the heart of the reservation or the small communities Navajo is spoken a lot more.

I've already tried blue corn mush, kneel down bread, roast mutton, dumpling stew, fry bread, steamed corn soup. The only thing I haven't heard of before is Navajo ice cream! I'd try blood sausage, but apparently the mission has told us not to eat it because some missionaries have gotten sick in the past. We're planning on roasting ach'ii at the Watts' place one of these days though!

I'm sure I'll be surprised at the connections I find to Farmington and the rez once I go home also! I think the primary descendants of the Anasazi are the Hopi and Zuni tribes. They are all related to the other tribes of the area too, like the Laguna and Ute and stuff like that. The Navajo and Apache are actually not originally from the Southwest, they migrated over like 600 years ago or something.

I hope all is going well at home! I love you all very much. I got your Thanksgiving package with The Lower Lights, by the way. Thank you so much! The CD is amazing. It's probably the closest thing to some of the music I used to listen to while still being spiritual and about Christ, haha. Greg's recommendation never fails.

Love and regards,

Elder Schaelling

November 12

We have already received an invitation for Thanksgiving, thankfully. We are still technically supposed to do regular missionary work on that day, along with every other holiday, but I doubt we'll get much done. No one wants strangers to knock on their door when you have the whole family over on a holiday like that, haha. So we'll probably just go to members' or investigators' houses that invite us over and whatnot. California sounds like a lot of fun! I enjoyed that Thanksgiving I spent with Jackie and Trevor in Philly a few years ago, that was way awesome! I hope the Phillipps can make it out to Oklahoma too! ...

Yesterday for P-day one of the members here took me and the two Kirtland missionaries I was living with to look at some Anasazi ruins sites between here and Four Corners. It was tons of fun! There is some way cool stuff out there and supposedly there were once hundreds of thousands of people living here along the San Juan river between about Bloomfield, NM and Aneth, UT. The Anasazi and the Navajo aren't related, the Anasazi are the parents of the Hopi and Zuni natives around here. They are all pueblo peoples, so they live in little cities and towns, where Navajos and Apaches all live very spread out and remotely and speak different dialects. Hopefully I'll send you some cool pictures soon!

I love you!

Elder Schaelling