Dear Friends and Relations,
Today we attended a wedding. We arrived at 10:00am, the time on the invitation, only to find a handful of people. Two women were setting out decorations on the tables and a couple of men sitting chatting. Jimmy, the grandpa, was raking up trash around the grounds. Days before, the prospective groom had built a really nice gazebo and today the unpainted structure was draped in red and white rose garlands and a throw rug on the floor. We were the only white attendees, but by now we are very used to that and don’t even notice.
We would find this wedding to be a mix of cultures. A traditional Navajo wedding would be held in a hogan and the couple would eat cornmeal mush out of a woven basket. The bride would wear a three-tiered white skirt and blouse and the groom white pants and shirt. Both would be heavily decorated with turquoise jewelry. Family would give advice about how the couple should act in the new marriage relationship. This wedding and reception, however, were to be held entirely outdoors and with the exception of gusting winds that threatened to destroy the decorations and swarms of man-eating gnats that threatened to destroy us, the wedding worked out beautifully.
At 11:00 the one we took to be the minister arrived and donned his officious-looking black robe. It turned out he is a judge rather than a minister. At 11:30 (only 1 1/1 hours past schedule) the procession began. With very soft, almost inaudible music playing in the background, the bride’s three young daughters and son walked up the white runner into the gazebo. Two carried bouquets, one a basket of rose petals she threw around, and the boy with a pillow with rings tacked on. The girls looked so cute in their white dresses and hair adorned with small red and white flowers, trying very hard not to wobble as they hobbled up the aisle on unaccustomed high heels. Then came the bride on her grandpa’s arm. Jimmy is our close neighbor and we’ve grown to love him. He is a scruffy, hard working man. When his cousin told him to get his hair cut for the wedding, he said, “No, I like it long.” I took Jimmy’s picture as he stood beside his pickup “getting ready”. He was putting on a cleaner-than-normal shirt which he would leave hanging out of his everyday blue jeans. With pride he showed me his turquoise bolo tie and bracelet that would accessorize his wedding garb. Off came the baseball cap and he was ready.
Jimmy walked his granddaughter up the aisle to the groom and sat down, having finished his part.
The judge warned us that we could expect at least a 2-hour ceremony because “it is too much work getting ready for a wedding only to have it done in fifteen minutes.” That was quite a while to be chewed on by gnats. He talked for 45 minutes about the civil laws of marriage–
1. it is illegal to have a same sex marriage (in Arizona)
2. it is illegal to get married while intoxicated
3. it is illegal to have more than one spouse at any given time
The couple exchanged vows and rings and then family members stood up and gave advice. My recollection is that all those giving advice were divorced/and or single with the exception of one aunt who was widowed. By this time three hours had gone by and the reception was still to come. Surely at the end of the day the family would feel deep satisfaction that all their hard work prior to the wedding had resulted in 4-5 hours of enjoyment.
ENOUGH OF THE WEDDING
This is summer vacation. All that means is that school is not in operation for three months. For Greg there is no vacation. During the springtime many asked Greg to fix their vehicles and he said he was busy teaching auto mechanics, “come back when school is out.” Well, come back they did. The other day he counted nine trucks needing his attention, and each owner thinking his vehicle the most critical to get worked on. And they just keep coming………… In the midst of this, both of our cars were down which meant Greg riding his bike to the shop and me walking where I needed to go. Greg’s servant heart never ceases to amaze me.
Soon we will have to make a decision about the coming school year, whether to drop high school or resume offering grades 9-12. We cannot go on offering the high school without additional teachers, and at this point there are a couple of interested teachers but no one who has definitely committed. John Bloom, our principal, wants to give the parents plenty of time to make different arrangements if high-schoolers need to go to the public school. Please pray for God’s wisdom.
Your love and prayers mean so much. Thanks.
Greg and Kathy