Navajo Ministry Support Group Church of Jesus Christ testimonies

In March we delivered a load of goods to Pinon. The people send their thanks to all who donated clothes, sewing materials and other items.

The Navajo Nation, like others, has been battling increasing youth violence since 1996... about the same time that electricity came to the reservation. Modern appliances, lights, etc. being a blessing; some other things not so good.

The following is taken from a report in the Navajo Times Newspaper:

In 1996 there were 67 people killed on the Navajo reservas of gang-related slayings made the remote Indian territory one of the deadliest spots in the country. Over the next five years. while crime rates fell elsewhere in the U.S. the nation's Indian reservations became even more dangerous, particularly for teenagers. Isolated, impoverished, dispirited, disconnected both from their traditional culture and western society, American Indian youth have grown increasingly violent, drug dependent and depressed.

The signs of youth troubles are seemingly everywhere across America, with a list of familiar factors to blame...from violent video games and television programs to broken homes. Among the more than 550 federally recognized tribes, adolescents have even more to contend with. Indians 12 to 20 years old are 58 percent more likely to become crime victims than whites and blacks. Indians under 15 are murdered at a rate twice that of white teenagers. Indian youth commit suicide at more than twice the rate of non-Indian youth. Deaths related to alcohol are more than 10 times higher among Indian teens than those of other races. With jobs scarce on reservations, poverty and unemployment levels are the highest in the nation. Alcoholism is an epidemic and domestic violence is soaring. Add cultural confusion to the mix and you have a generation stuck between two worlds, says Tom Goodluck, a counselor at the Four Corners Regional Adolescent Treatment Center in Shiprock, New Mexico. “I see a lot of young people come in with no spirituality, no belief in a creator. They don't even know how to pray. These children are hungry for something.”

The Department of Justice has a grant program of $8 million this year to be given to Indian communities for prevention of violence and substance abuse, but resources are stretched thin. For example, there is on average just under one tribal police officer per l,000 residents patrolling the Navajo reservations 16.2 million acres where 169,000 people live. That is compared with 2.3 officers per l,000 in comparably sized non-Indian communities.

The Navajo Nation, with the help of some federal funding, built two new facilities in Chinle to address the youth problem. One, a 48 bed youth detention facility, was funded in 1989 but was only completed last October. It remains unopened as tribal leaders squabble over who will operate it.

Elsewhere across the reservation, after-school programs have been implemented to tutor at-risk youth. In Chinle, teens conduct community service projects through Horizons Unlimited.

The real answer, as we know, is Jesus Christ. Those that have responded to his call are turning their lives around and find that which they hunger for the truth of the Restoration gospel. We have much work to do and it takes prayer and determination to continue in this battle for the souls of this covenant people. Many are responding, but the work is hard and the laborers few.

Now we quote from 3 Nephi as Mormon is speaking:

“....I am Mormon, and a pure descendant of Lehi. I have reason to bless my God and my savior Jesus Christ that he brought our fathers out of the land of Jerusalem (and no one knew it save it were himself and those whom he brought out of that land), and that he hath given me and my people so much knowledge unto the salvation of our souls.

Surely he hath blessed the house of Jacob, and hath been merciful unto the seed of Joseph ...yea, and surely shall he again bring a remnant of the seed of Joseph to the knowledge of the Lord their God.

And as surely as the Lord liveth will he gather in from the four quarters of the earth, all the remnant of the seed of Jacob, who are scattered abroad upon all the face of the earth. And as he hath covenanted with all the house of Jacob, even so shall the covenant wherewith he hath covenanted with the house of Jacob, be fulfilled
in his own due time, unto the restoring all the house of Jacob unto the knowledge of the covenant that he hath covenanted with them; And then shall they know their Redeemer, who is Jesus Christ, the Son of God.”

III Nephi 2:102-109

Barb and George Allen