2009 will mark the sixth year that Bear Creek has sent a contingent to work with this community near Yakima. For several families, this annual trip has become a tradition. New folks are always welcome for one day or the whole week. It is a chance to repair buildings and build relationships; to teach as part of Vacation Bible School and to learn of another culture. This year’s trip was July 19-24. Here is a note about the trip.
The Wonder of White Swan
Every July for the past 6 years, a team from the Bear Creek United Methodist Church in Woodinville travels to White Swan on the Yakima Indian Reservation to lend support to a congregation that marked 150 years in April. In its early days, the church boasted nearly 800 members, mostly Yakamas. George Waters, Chief White Swan’s brother, became the first ordained Native American minister in the Northwest Methodist Conference in 1889. Today, the church has a much smaller congregation. Membership has dwindled to roughly 35 active families – about half tribal members.
This year the team joined forces with another team from the First United Methodist Church in Wenatchee to spruce up the church grounds, re-roof a home, build out a bedroom, conduct a Vacation Bible School, build bunk beds for a retreat center in the old Grange Hall, and paint the food bank. One of the bigger, or at least more challenging, past projects was a basketball court. The Woodinville team started the project, and fortunately, the Wenatchee team jumped in, or it could have been a mess. The court is well used, sometimes into the wee hours.
After six trips to White Swan, the visitors wondered, “Do our little projects really make a difference?” A prominent tribal member and his wife replied emphatically, “Yes. More than you know. Besides the projects themselves, you bring a little question.” The little question is “Why?” “Why do these people come here?” wonders a young person. “Why do they do what they do? Should we be doing these things? Should I be doing these things?” One question leads to another and another, opening the mind to possibilities beyond the status quo, and apart from alcoholism and unemployment.
The visitors are impatient to see a difference, to which the tribal member said, “It takes time.” In Native American culture, the virtue of patience is based on the belief that all things unfold in time. Patience was a survival skill in earlier times. In social situations, patience is needed to demonstrate respect for individuals, reach group consensus, and all time for “the second thought.”
Will the Woodinville and Wenatchee Methodists go to White Swan again next July? You had better believe it! They are happily hooked on the friendships and wonder of White Swan.
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