Gift of Presence
Hey y'all!
As we finished our trip to Shiprock in 2016 and close out the 2016 missions we knew that we're not going back to Shiprock in 2017.
It's definitely a bittersweet moment, but it's time to let them fly.
And time for us to plant seeds in other communities.
Thus, my journey with Native American Mission continued in Tuba City, Arizona.
Tuba City is the largest town in Arizona side of the Navajo Nation, similar in size to Shiprock, NM.
Witnessing what had happened in Shiprock, we're dreaming similar thing for Tuba City. I am beyond grateful to have the opportunity to see the “finished product” in Shiprock the year prior. At the same time I had a mixed feelings of excitement and nervousness going to a brand-new location.
In this first post of Tuba City 2017 series, I'm going to share about what do we do, and our responsibilities as team member.
Being a returning member, no-longer-rookie but still a newbie . . . I decided to take more responsibilities this year.
First, I'm in charge of putting together a map packet for our team.
At the time and age where we rely a lot on digital map and GPS, a traditional map and written direction still the best way to travel the Rez. That's simply because connection can be spotty and many places aren't properly recorded, addresses are not as clear as we all used to here in Orange County. And thus we create a map packet to guide us and ensure none of the team member get lost.
Being an avid traveller, a graphic designer, and my experience in communications world, this is just the perfect role for me. My SHAPE fits perfectly for this task. Of course, I'm havinga lot of too much fun making this map and direction, I almost missed the deadline.
Earlier during our trainings I realized that our team doesn't have a photographer (while in the past each team could easily have 2 photographers or more), so I volunteered to be our Team Photographer.
I told our team leader that I don't have a decent camera, hoping there's one we could borrow. Her response was, “just take whatever you have, even if it's your phone. Or you can borrow mine” I was expecting a DSLR, but she brought me a pocket camera (which has lower specs than my old camera) I ended up bringing my 12 megapixels digital pocket camera. It works okay, afterall it serves the purposes.
As part of my duty as photographer, each night after our daily activities I transfered all the photos to my laptop, then organize the photos and print out the kids' photos (that we hand out at the end of the week so they can take home as a souvenir) on our mini mobile photo printer.
In Shiprock, we conveniently print out photos at a Walmart or other places in Farmington, NM since we were staying in Farmington. While in Tuba City, surprisingly there isn't any place to print out photos despite having a large grocery store and many other amenities. The closest town is Flagstaff which is over an hour away from where we stay. We usually use our mini printer just as a back-up, in Tuba City it became our main way to print photos for the kids.
While my involvement as Team Photographer is rather “unexpected” or I should say driven by a need, I've been planning on doing this thing since I got back from Shiprock the year prior: Car Captain. Simply, I just want to give myself something to do while sitting for 10+ hours in the car.
Car Captain's duty is to track people, give them directions as needed and be the central point of communication while we're traveling, and check them at certain time/point to make sure each car/team members are accounted for and assign nearest help in case any car gets in trouble. Mainly freed up our Team & Site Leaders so they are free to concentrate on other stuffs. This fits nicely since I created the map, I'm already aware of the route we're taking.
So, those are my 3 roles in Shiprock 2017 team: Map Packet guy, Team Photographer and Car Captain.
- - -
TEAM ROLES & CAMP DUTIES
There are many responsibilities we split among team members. We assigned or volunteer for these duties in our second-to-last training session.
Other than my responsibilities as mentioned above, these are some of our team responsibilities:
• Receipt Person(s): collecting, counting, reporting and writing reimbursements for trip expenses.
• Daily Devotional: lead our daily team devotion in the morning (1 person/day, I did this on Day 3 of Shiprock 2016. Read the story here).
• Daily Scripture Card: prepare cards written with scriptures in advance prior to the trip to be distributed each night to each room.
• Leaderships: Sport camp leaders, Art & Crafts leader and Storytelling leader.
In the camp itself, we mainly disperse our team into 2 groups:
Sports and Arts & Crafts.
In reality, when we hit the ground and running, many of us jumped here and there as needed. As the team photographer I of course jumped back and forth often, and sometimes step in to help as necessary.
Afterall it's all about the kids and filling the needs where needed. Sometimes we act as a bathroom chaperone, or be watchful as security (this is especially useful as our camp was in a public park in the center of town). And those involved in the storytelling team will leave the Sports or Arts/Crafts earlier to get ready for storytelling session prior to lunch time.
Other than that, we also have a few additional things we didn't have in Shiprock the year prior:
• Celebrate Recovery Trainers: Several team member who are certified CR Trainers joined a local CR meeting in one of the evening to help and train our local partners in CR Step Studies.
• CPR & First Aid Certification Instructors: While we're having camp in the park, a couple of our team members conduct a CPR instruction & certification in the church we're partnering with. This is a big help for the community, where help could be over an hour away (not in Tuba City of course, but there are people coming to the CPR Training from other areas), and many jobs requires a CPR certification.
• Handyman Project: One thing we do is that we're not doing it for them, instead we're doing it with them to help and to train/empower them in skills they can use to help their community.
We also have non-traveling team members who support us in administrative works and preparing supplies for us to carry on our trips.
No matter what your SHAPE is, there's always something for us to do.
At the end of the day, all that matter most is just by being there.
It's the gift of presence.
As our team leader said “If you can give a kid a high-five, there's always something for you to do.”
- - -
As a referee, the most common question people ask me is “How many red card has you shown this season?” or a variation of that.
As a missionary, the most common question isn't that much different. Something along the line of “How many people did you convert/baptize?”
I think we often mistaken a mission trip with street evangelism or preaching and the likes. Nothing wrong with any of those, but mission is not about that.
Every mission team is different, depending on the site, the needs of the people we're trying to reach, and many other factors. In PEACE Native America, our mission is to connect our church partners to unchurched people in their community. Our principle is that we're doing it with them, instead of doing it for them. That's why we don't actually do a direct evangelism, but instead empowering our local partnering churches so they can reach their community effectively.
As we always say, we're not in business in teaching them how to fish — let alone handing them the fish. We're empowering them on how to build a fishing business, so they can teach others how to fish.
As we finished our trip to Shiprock in 2016 and close out the 2016 missions we knew that we're not going back to Shiprock in 2017.
It's definitely a bittersweet moment, but it's time to let them fly.
And time for us to plant seeds in other communities.
Thus, my journey with Native American Mission continued in Tuba City, Arizona.
Tuba City is the largest town in Arizona side of the Navajo Nation, similar in size to Shiprock, NM.
Witnessing what had happened in Shiprock, we're dreaming similar thing for Tuba City. I am beyond grateful to have the opportunity to see the “finished product” in Shiprock the year prior. At the same time I had a mixed feelings of excitement and nervousness going to a brand-new location.
In this first post of Tuba City 2017 series, I'm going to share about what do we do, and our responsibilities as team member.
. . . , whatever you do, do it all for the Glory of God.
1 Cor 10:31
Being a returning member, no-longer-rookie but still a newbie . . . I decided to take more responsibilities this year.
First, I'm in charge of putting together a map packet for our team.
At the time and age where we rely a lot on digital map and GPS, a traditional map and written direction still the best way to travel the Rez. That's simply because connection can be spotty and many places aren't properly recorded, addresses are not as clear as we all used to here in Orange County. And thus we create a map packet to guide us and ensure none of the team member get lost.
Being an avid traveller, a graphic designer, and my experience in communications world, this is just the perfect role for me. My SHAPE fits perfectly for this task. Of course, I'm having
Earlier during our trainings I realized that our team doesn't have a photographer (while in the past each team could easily have 2 photographers or more), so I volunteered to be our Team Photographer.
I told our team leader that I don't have a decent camera, hoping there's one we could borrow. Her response was, “just take whatever you have, even if it's your phone. Or you can borrow mine” I was expecting a DSLR, but she brought me a pocket camera (which has lower specs than my old camera) I ended up bringing my 12 megapixels digital pocket camera. It works okay, afterall it serves the purposes.
As part of my duty as photographer, each night after our daily activities I transfered all the photos to my laptop, then organize the photos and print out the kids' photos (that we hand out at the end of the week so they can take home as a souvenir) on our mini mobile photo printer.
In Shiprock, we conveniently print out photos at a Walmart or other places in Farmington, NM since we were staying in Farmington. While in Tuba City, surprisingly there isn't any place to print out photos despite having a large grocery store and many other amenities. The closest town is Flagstaff which is over an hour away from where we stay. We usually use our mini printer just as a back-up, in Tuba City it became our main way to print photos for the kids.
While my involvement as Team Photographer is rather “unexpected” or I should say driven by a need, I've been planning on doing this thing since I got back from Shiprock the year prior: Car Captain. Simply, I just want to give myself something to do while sitting for 10+ hours in the car.
Car Captain's duty is to track people, give them directions as needed and be the central point of communication while we're traveling, and check them at certain time/point to make sure each car/team members are accounted for and assign nearest help in case any car gets in trouble. Mainly freed up our Team & Site Leaders so they are free to concentrate on other stuffs. This fits nicely since I created the map, I'm already aware of the route we're taking.
So, those are my 3 roles in Shiprock 2017 team: Map Packet guy, Team Photographer and Car Captain.
- - -
TEAM ROLES & CAMP DUTIES
There are many responsibilities we split among team members. We assigned or volunteer for these duties in our second-to-last training session.
Other than my responsibilities as mentioned above, these are some of our team responsibilities:
• Receipt Person(s): collecting, counting, reporting and writing reimbursements for trip expenses.
• Daily Devotional: lead our daily team devotion in the morning (1 person/day, I did this on Day 3 of Shiprock 2016. Read the story here).
• Daily Scripture Card: prepare cards written with scriptures in advance prior to the trip to be distributed each night to each room.
• Leaderships: Sport camp leaders, Art & Crafts leader and Storytelling leader.
In the camp itself, we mainly disperse our team into 2 groups:
Sports and Arts & Crafts.
In reality, when we hit the ground and running, many of us jumped here and there as needed. As the team photographer I of course jumped back and forth often, and sometimes step in to help as necessary.
Afterall it's all about the kids and filling the needs where needed. Sometimes we act as a bathroom chaperone, or be watchful as security (this is especially useful as our camp was in a public park in the center of town). And those involved in the storytelling team will leave the Sports or Arts/Crafts earlier to get ready for storytelling session prior to lunch time.
Other than that, we also have a few additional things we didn't have in Shiprock the year prior:
• Celebrate Recovery Trainers: Several team member who are certified CR Trainers joined a local CR meeting in one of the evening to help and train our local partners in CR Step Studies.
• CPR & First Aid Certification Instructors: While we're having camp in the park, a couple of our team members conduct a CPR instruction & certification in the church we're partnering with. This is a big help for the community, where help could be over an hour away (not in Tuba City of course, but there are people coming to the CPR Training from other areas), and many jobs requires a CPR certification.
• Handyman Project: One thing we do is that we're not doing it for them, instead we're doing it with them to help and to train/empower them in skills they can use to help their community.
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Tuba City 2017 Team
in the “Garden of Getshemane”
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We also have non-traveling team members who support us in administrative works and preparing supplies for us to carry on our trips.
At the end of the day, all that matter most is just by being there.
It's the gift of presence.
As our team leader said “If you can give a kid a high-five, there's always something for you to do.”
- - -
As a referee, the most common question people ask me is “How many red card has you shown this season?” or a variation of that.
As a missionary, the most common question isn't that much different. Something along the line of “How many people did you convert/baptize?”
I think we often mistaken a mission trip with street evangelism or preaching and the likes. Nothing wrong with any of those, but mission is not about that.
Every mission team is different, depending on the site, the needs of the people we're trying to reach, and many other factors. In PEACE Native America, our mission is to connect our church partners to unchurched people in their community. Our principle is that we're doing it with them, instead of doing it for them. That's why we don't actually do a direct evangelism, but instead empowering our local partnering churches so they can reach their community effectively.
As we always say, we're not in business in teaching them how to fish — let alone handing them the fish. We're empowering them on how to build a fishing business, so they can teach others how to fish.
