The Christian Chronicle (Oklahoma City, Okla.), Vol. 76, No. 3, Ed. 1 Monday, April 1, 2019 Page: 10 of 35
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ACROSS THE NATION
10 THE CHRISTIAN CHRONICLE
APRIL 2019
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Todachine
Arlinda Lee
'WE KNOW IT'S A LACK OF HOPE'
About five years ago, the Lees
started worshiping with the Salt River
Church of Christ — a congregation
planted in Mesa to minister to Native
Americans living in the Phoenix metro
and the small reservations nearby.
Josh Austin, the church’s minister, is
a second-generation missionary to the
Navajo. He grew up on the reserva-
tion and knows about the temptations
young Native Americans endure.
5
4
handfuls of antidepressants, sleeping
pills and her mom’s prescription
stomach medication, attempting to
end her life. She spent a week in the
hospital on suicide watch.
“I tried to be strong in front of
her,” her mother said, “but I would
go home and cry and pray.”
Her father struggled to understand
what was happening to his little girl.
Growing up, he had been taught
that Navajo men “are part of the
sky, the universe,” he said, and “the
women are in the house; they’re part
of the earth. There was no interac-
tion, even in the household.”
As she watched her daughter
suffer, Arlinda Lee did her best to
“let God take over,” she said. She
read through the book of Job and
prayed for answers.
“I was trying to figure out, what
did we do wrong?” she said. “Why is
this happening?”
was born. “A lot of my friends were
already grandmothers,” she said.
Celeste was bright, talkative. She
loved to read. In kindergarten, she
won the Navajo Nation spelling bee.
A year later, her teachers skipped her
ahead from first to second grade.
That’s when the bullying started.
“They put me in a supply closet,”
Celeste Lee said.
She persevered — and excelled.
She played trumpet in the school
band. Then her family moved to
Mesa, where her mother got a job
as a clinical laboratory consultant.
They worshiped with the Sun Valley
Church of Christ in Gilbert, Ariz.
As Celeste started high school,
“I noticed that her moods were
swinging ... and she was showing
anger, anxiety, depression,” her
mother said. “She’d be awake,
awake, awake and full of activities.
And then she’d crash.
“One second I could be fine,”
Celeste Lee recalled, “and then the
next second I would be having a panic
attack for no reason. My brain was,
like, constantly looking for things to
make it feel better.”
She tried marijuana. She tried
cutting herself. The pain forced her
forgot the turmoil “for a couple of
hours, or for like a second,” she said,
but then it all came back.
It always came back.
So, at age 15, she swallowed
and hope
High rates of poverty and unem-
ployment, combined with a lack of
access to mental health services, are
factors in the suicide epidemic, he
said, “but ultimately, we know it’s a
lack of hope. If I don’t know Christ,
what do I live for?”
The specter of youth suicide “is
everywhere,” said Austin’s wife,
Divine. “Kids that we don’t even
suspect would have depression
issues or suicidal tendencies do.”
One of the church’s first converts,
Evan Todachine, now serves as assis-
tant minister. A Navajo who grew
up on the reserva-
tion near the Four
Corners, he under-
stands the despair.
“You’re living in a
world that’s saying
you have got to seek
material wealth,
you’ve got to seek
physical blessing,
and that what makes you happy,” he
said. “Well, if you grow up in a state
where you don’t have running water
and electricity to begin with, chances
are you’re not going to reach those
mountain peaks that you see on bill-
boards and in magazines.”
In communities plagued by domestic
abuse, alcoholism and homicide, “If
there is no God in the picture, it makes
sense to end my life,” Todachine said,
“to forgo all of that pain.”
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Worshipers from at least five different Native American groups, including
Navajo, worship with the Salt River Church of Christ in Mesa, Ariz.
NATIVE AMERICA: Church tells troubled teens there is help
FROM PAGE 1
'WHAT DID WE DO WRONG?'
Celeste Lee grew up going to
church. Her mother first encoun-
tered Christ in the courtyard of a
trailer park in Tuba City, Ariz., on
the vast Navajo reservation. There,
a Church of Christ hosted a Vacation
Bible School. Arlinda Lee rode the
JOY bus to worship (an acronym
for serving Jesus, others and then
yourself) and was baptized at age 12.
A few months later, her mother and
father followed her example.
At one point in her life, “I had gone
away from church
a little,” she said.
Suffering from depres-
sion, she underwent
a nighttime Navajo
ceremony in which
her friends blackened
her body with ash
to hide her from evil
spirits. A medicine
man chanted prayers of protection
before she was washed and covered
with yellow cornmeal.
“It was kind of like a baptism” she
said, but the effects didn’t last
Later, she attended the healing
ceremony for her husband, Nate,
where the medicine man made his
fateful prediction.
Many of Arlinda Lee’s cousins were
as young as 17 when they had chil-
dren, but she was 33 when Celeste
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£_________________________________- _________
On the Salt River Pima-Maricopa reservation, served by the Salt River church,
handpainted messages of encouragement are painted on a roadside barrier.
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Tryggestad, Erik. The Christian Chronicle (Oklahoma City, Okla.), Vol. 76, No. 3, Ed. 1 Monday, April 1, 2019, newspaper, April 1, 2019; Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth1509400/m1/10/: accessed May 30, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Abilene Christian University Library.