-
- Since 1953 the Navajo Evangelical Lutheran Mission (NELM) has met the needs of its community in Rock Point, Ariz. It continues to find new ways to do so under executive director Patterson Yazzie. Photos: ELCA
-
- Patricia Charley and Yazzie serve as wisdom keepers for NELM’s congregation, Navajo House of Prayer. 2023 marked the first time NELM has been led entirely by Navajo staff.
-
- NELM serves Navajo Nation residents through ministries including House of Prayer, Navajo Mission Preparatory School, a food bank, Hózhó Café and a water well.
-
- Yazzie stands at House of Prayer’s altar, made from live-edge cypress inlaid with turquoise. The sanctuary’s cross incorporates the Navajo four sacred colors.
-
- “The thing this school stands out for is its connection to the community,” said NELM Director of Education Valerie Yazzie about the Navajo Mission Preparatory School.
-
- The K-3 school provides a focused education program to equip local children with early-learning language, reading, science and math skills.
-
- Through its food bank and café, which feeds 70 to 90 people every day, NELM estimates that it provided 400,000 tons of food to 2,000 families last year.
-
- Residents drive up to 60 miles for a box of food or to access the water well. “We don’t ask where they’re from, what their faith is, what their histories are,” Patterson Yazzie said.
-
- The mission’s connection to the community extends to the staff who drive school buses through unpaved, and sometimes treacherous, roads to reach students’ homes.
On a Wednesday morning in Rock Point, Ariz., a golden sun rises over towering rock formations. A breeze lifts red soil, blowing it across a vast landscape dotted with sagebrush.
A white pickup truck pulls onto the five-acre campus of the Navajo Evangelical Lutheran Mission (NELM) and up to its water well. Two residents of the Navajo Nation—a giant reservation covering parts of Arizona, New Mexico and Utah—hop out and begin filling two large, portable tanks.
Patterson Yazzie, NELM executive director, leaves his office to meet and talk with the men at the well, as he often does. Like many Navajo Nation residents, the two men lack running water in their homes. Also like many residents, they raise livestock—sheep, horses, cattle—and visit the well weekly for water they’ll use to care for their animals and irrigate their fields.
“About half of our community members don’t have any water or electricity,” Yazzie said. “We’ve been able support the families here by opening up our faucet.” It’s just one way NELM meets the needs of its community, which it has done for more than 70 years and continues to find new ways to do.
Founded in 1953, NELM is the only Lutheran presence in the Navajo Nation. In addition to the well, its current ministries include the ELCA congregation Navajo House of Prayer, Navajo Mission Preparatory School for K-3 students, a food bank, and Hózhó Café, which offers free hot meals daily.
Founded in 1953, NELM is the only Lutheran presence in the Navajo Nation.
Camille Begay, NELM director of operations, attributes that sustained and wide-ranging level of services partly to the mission’s deep connection to the community. That connection extends to the staff who drive school buses through unpaved, and sometimes treacherous, roads to reach students’ homes.
“There’s certain areas where we know that they don’t have running water, that don’t have electricity,” she said. “And there are areas where we know, when it’s a rainy day, which roads get really muddy. So, it’s just kind of knowing the community.”
Patricia Charley, primary wisdom keeper for House of Prayer, agreed. “The foundation of this place was built through community,” said Charley, who was born and raised in Rock Point. “We were always helping people in need. And we still do that—we still go out to the community.”
Charley, who also serves as NELM board chair, can recall many instances from her youth of mission representatives “going out and helping a person that was stuck in the mud, or if they needed feed for their livestock or water sometimes,” she said. “Patterson does that a lot. … The help from back then is continuing.”
First-ever Navajo leaders
In 2023, two milestones in NELM’s history occurred: Charley was installed as primary wisdom keeper that fall, and the mission marked not only its 70th year but also the first time it was led entirely by Navajo staff.
Following Yazzie’s appointment as executive director and wisdom keeper in 2022—after a three-year tenure as mission director—he and Charley became NELM’s first-ever Navajo-speaking spiritual leaders.
When Charley began leading worship at House of Prayer, she was stepping into a role with a congregation she knew deeply. “I’m very familiar with this church because this is my church,” she said, standing at an altar made from live-edge cypress inlaid with turquoise, signifying the flow of water. “I went to Sunday school, vacation Bible school, here in this church. This is the church I got married in.”
House of Prayer seeks to honor the spirituality of the Navajo people—or Diné (meaning “the People”), as many Navajo self-identify—and center Navajo thought and traditional values in its interpretation of the gospel.
“Our dream with House of Prayer is that you can be a Native person and also be a Lutheran and also be connected to your culture.”
“Our dream with House of Prayer is that, yes, you can be a Native person and also be a Lutheran and also be connected to your culture—to be connected to many generations of teachings and cultural practices,” said Yazzie, who also grew up in the community, attending House of Prayer and vacation Bible school.
Wisdom keepers serve the congregation as pastoral leaders and spiritual guides. “Personally the main responsibility I feel is to keep the church doors open on Sundays,” Charley said. “This church has been here for over 70 years. And, as I remember, we were always open.”
Citing the traumatic history of Christian missionaries in Indigenous communities, Yazzie said NELM’s ministry is based on the relationships the mission has established in the area. “We have a long history now of being here in Rock Point, and one of the questions that I always ask is, ‘Did [residents] invite this church to this community?’ I remind our church leaders that we are guests in this community, and we will remain in that point as long as the people of Rock Point welcome us.”
“I dream big”
In the last five years, Yazzie has seen the mission’s ministries expand to meet the community’s needs. “The services that the mission provides have grown because, for many years, [lack of] access to quality food was never revealed,” he said. “All of that was exposed after COVID.”
NELM’s campus is located in an extreme food desert, 50 miles from the nearest grocery store. Prior to the pandemic, Yazzie estimated that about 30 people per day visited the Hózhó Café, named for the Navajo philosophy of harmony and balance. “After COVID happened, that number tripled.” Now, he said, the café feeds 70 to 90 people every day, preparing and boxing hot, healthy meals for anyone who would like one.
“It’ll start from 10:30 all the way until the trays run out,” Begay said of the café. “It’s done that daily, Monday through Friday, free of charge.” A campus food bank is also open Monday, Wednesday and Friday.
NELM estimates that it fed 400,000 pounds of food to 2,000 families last year through a partnership with St. Mary’s Food Bank, which delivers the food to NELM’s campus.
“We still have families that drive 60 miles to get a box of food,” Yazzie said. “We don’t ask where they’re from, what their faith is, what their histories are.”
NELM estimates that it fed 400,000 pounds of food to 2,000 families last year.
Similarly, people travel near and far across the Navajo Nation to access water from the campus’ well, which has been operational for two years. At 650 feet deep and with a 500-gallon capacity, NELM’s well is deeper than nearby windmill wells, which can dry up. Because Rock Point is located downstream from abandoned uranium mines, the purity of water from shallow wells is a cause of concern.
Studies are underway to test NELM’s well water and find the most efficient method of making it safe to drink. “Right now, we’re exploring the different stages,” Yazzie said. Possible solutions include a filtration system or establishing a deeper well that connects to an established source of potable water.
Faced daily with the lack of basic infrastructure that continues to affect Indigenous people in the United States, Yazzie still looks to the future. “I read an article a while back about how to bring a group of people in poverty out of poverty,” he recalled, “and it said it takes a hundred years of consistent work. I’ve only been at it for five years.”
Yazzie sees his main role at NELM as being a dreamer. “I dream big. And then my directors are the folks that make those dreams a reality.”
Breathing life into community
Some of the NELM staff’s biggest dreams are for its school—and by extension, its students.
Valerie Yazzie (no relation), director of education for NELM, first connected with Navajo Mission Preparatory School two years ago, when she came to the campus and knocked on its door because she had heard good things about the school in the community.
“The thing this school stands out for is its connection to the community,” she said. “They have the church, they have the water that’s available here—they help the whole community. And I often hear that the church is the heart of the community. They have a great system in place.”
Yazzie believes that children play a vital role in such a system. “I feel like the children are the lungs,” she said. “They breathe life. They bring life to this community. And that’s what I love about this place, that you can do so much with these students.”
The private school provides a focused education program to equip local children with early-learning language, reading, science and math skills, exceeding local standards and requirements. It is funded by donors, congregational partners and the Arizona Christian School Tuition Organization, and supported by an education advisory team.
“The thing this school stands out for is its connection to the community.”
Yazzie sees the school as a stabilizing force in many students’ lives. “These students are coming from difficult backgrounds,” she said. “The school provides that security and the things they may be lacking at home. Even with chapel, giving them messages of security and hope, reassuring them that they’re loved, not just by us but through God too.”
Teachers and staff prepare students to transfer to another preparatory school following third grade, and to seek higher education.
“Right now, all of our schoolteachers are Navajo members of this community,” Patterson Yazzie said. “And that makes a big difference in how they deliver the lessons, and understanding the kids and encouraging them in different ways.”
The executive director wants to build up NELM’s academics and, in the long term, to lower the college dropout rate among Indigenous people.
“We encourage [students] to think about what they want to be when they grow up, and whatever they share with us, we build upon that dream,” he said. “And I say, ‘This is what we need to do. This is what we need to concentrate on for you to achieve that goal for you.’ For so long, that didn’t exist in our tribal communities.”
Yazzie sees this work as part of his larger hope for the mission—and believes in sharing that approach with their students, members of the Navajo Nation: “Instead of asking themselves, ‘Can I do it?’ I want them to say, ‘Yes, I can do it.’ … We encourage them to dream.”
To help
Support NELM’s ministry at nelm.org.
