Another hot day today.  However, we didn’t have a lot of hard, outdoor labor today.  Right after breakfast, Fred took us on a treasure hunt.  We went about 2 miles south of the school on a dirt road to a place that Fred called “Treasure Mountain.”  We were promised that we would be able to find some petrified wood there, and maybe some pottery shards as well.  Well, he delivered!  All of us who went came back with a several pieces of petrified wood, and many of us found pieces of broken Hopi pottery, some painted in beautiful geometric black and white patterns, and some of  it hundreds of years old.  We all came back happy!

After we returned (and after the morning cookie break), some of  us helped Carol work on boxtops and labels.  They were able to take more than 2000 box tops to the post office this afternoon!  That’s pretty cool!  After lunch some of us caught a well-deserved nap, while others worked some more on labels and boxtops.  Meanwhile, a couple of the group painted our sign for the western “old town” behind the school (the tradition for Work & Witness Teams – sort of a “we were here” thing).  Sharla came up with the idea for the sign’s theme, and Marie and Elissa did the actual painting.

At 2:30, Fred and Vera came over to give us some parting thank you’s (including several bags of W&W candies – M&Ms upside down), because they had to leave at 3:00 to pick up the next team that is arriving from Philadelphia into Phoenix early in the morning.  They have sure been a wonderful help and encouragement to us all.

Since dinner and devotions (on Hosea tonight, led by Pastor Sharla Ann, who finished up by singing a praise song that she wrote this afternoon), we have been packing and straightening up and showering, and generally getting ready to be out of here in the morning.  The plan is to be ready to put our bags in the van at 6:00, and be on the freeway before 6:30.  We will be spending about 3 hours on the south rim of the Grand Canyon before heading to our first stop at a Nazarene Church in Las Vegas (pronounce “lost wages”).

Please pray for safe travel tomorrow.  Thanks a bazillion!

One of the “roads” to Treasure Mountain, as seen though the windshield of the school van.

Group photo up the stairs in the dorm.

All of us around the Sun Valley Indian School sign at the entrance to the school.

A bunch of us working on labels and boxtops.

The designers and artists with our team’s sign for Old Town.

Fred & Vera, our Work and Witness Coordinators. Really neat people!

A bull snake that Jeremy & Jenni discovered in the parking area. We kind of surrounded him long enough to get a picture (I stood close so you could see how big he was), but he was pretty grumpy, so we let him sulk off into a nearby bush.