A Mission Story

Two Mission Stories

By Walt Stone

1.  A CONVERSION STORY

Elder Kim and I were assigned to the “Farm Road” area of Shiprock, New Mexico, on the Navajo reservation.  At the end of the last farm road was a little shack inhabited by Ina Yazzie and her three young boys.  When Elder Kim, my senior companion, first took me to her place we opened a broken down gate of a picket fence and were immediately charged by an aggressive, noisy guard turkey who had been hiding behind the one small, leafless tree in the yard.  Elder Kim stepped to one side and let the turkey come after me.  He pecked and screeched at me saying “get off my property” in turkey language.  Elder Kim just laughed and so did Ina who was watching from her doorway.

She approached us and shooed the turkey away inviting us to enter her humble dwelling.  The entrance was not actually into the home.  It was into a screened porch she used to house a sheep, goat, and dog.  The ground was peppered with dung of all types.  We tip toed past the droppings and winced at the smell. Ina chuckled.

Entering the one room shack, I noticed there was a wood burning stove in the middle of the room with the stove pipe extending through the roof.  There was an unmade bed to one side and two chairs.

Elder Kim took one of the chairs and Ina took the other.  So I was left to sit on the bed.  I sat down, but heard a “squeak.”  I had sat on her baby!  Don’t worry he wasn’t hurt.  I scooted over and made sure there wasn’t another child under the covers.  The other two boys were in the room shouting and laughing and playing some sort of tag.  Both were naked; neither looked like they had bathed in some time—if ever.

 As I looked over at Elder Kim, I noticed he had settled into the chair and had his eyes closed.  Could he be asleep already?  He was getting up at 4:00 a.m. so it was entirely possible.

Meanwhile, Ina began speaking to me in Navajo.  “What is your name?” she asked.  “What is your clan?”  “What is this called (pointing to the stove with her lips)?”  “Do you have a story?”  Each question was followed by a pause as she waited to see if I could answer.  She was teaching me Navajo.  In return, she let me practice my missionary discussions on her, all of this in Navajo. This scene repeated itself twice a week for a period of six months.  No English was spoken the entire time.

As the weeks went on, little changes took place.  The turkey disappeared.  The screen porch got swept and packed down. (It had a dirt floor, as did the home.)  The animals were put out in the yard.  The bed got made.  The children got dressed.  We even saw them get a bath one day as Ina put them into an aluminum tub used to water the animals.  They were having a bubble fight.

One day Elder Kim went with another missionary and I brought a Navajo elder to Ina’s place.  He took up the conversation with Ina and I tried to understand them. Even though she had worked hard to teach me, without any English spoken at all, I didn’t think I was making much progress.  The Navajo elder asked her how things were going with the discussions.  She said something like, “Well, Elder Stone has taught me all the discussions and I want to be baptized.  I’ve been trying to tell him my desires, but he doesn’t seem to understand.  Will you tell him?”

When the Navajo Elder told me what Ina had said, I almost fell off the bed!  She wanted to be baptized?  Amazing!  So the baptism was planned and carried out.  It was a wonderful occasion.  Ina Yazzie and her boys looked like angels.

When I got the news that I was to be transferred we went over to Ina’s home to give her the news.  She was sad and so was I but she was sustained by her faith.  Then something amazing happened.  She said to me, “Elder Stone, thanks for baptizing me.  Thanks for bringing the gospel to me and my boys.  I will always be grateful to you.”  Then she chuckled.  Every word she had spoken was in perfect English.  She spoke perfect English!  She had always spoken perfect English but she had hidden it from me.  She did it as a prank at first but then she just kept going because she decided I really needed to learn the language without the crutch of English.

As we drove away in our pick-up I turned to see Ina standing outside her home.  The yard was picked up and in order.  A tree was bursting out in leaves. The little picket fence mended.  The animals were grazing on grass.   She held the baby.  The boys were playing with sticks.  Ina was standing by the door of her screened porch smiling.  Her dress was second hand but clean and neat, her rose colored sweater reminded me of the Navajo sunsets I had come to love.