Cluster Reflection Gathering

Today was a cluster reflection gathering. Once every three months, Baha'is from around the area (a cluster is bigger than a community but smaller than a region - often divided along county lines) meet to discuss the development of the core activities in the cluster and plan for the coming three months. The focus of today's reflection gathering was junior youth groups, since in the past three months, five of the local Navajo youth went to the Book 5 training in Phoenix (Book 5 is the book about junior youth groups).

Junior youth groups aren't supposed to be school or babysitting. They're support groups, where middle-school-aged youth get together to discuss their lives and take charge of their own education and spiritual development, with a youth (typically age 15 to 30) "animator" there who provides structure to the group and is a friend and mentor to the younger youth. So, at the reflection gathering today, the youth took leadership in the discussion, planning how to start new junior youth groups and revitalize current ones.

And then, because we're all children inside, we wrote down our individual plans for what we could contribute to the junior youth groups on colored paper and stuck them on a pretty tree! This picture shows everyone who came to the gathering. The man behind the tree with the white eyepatch is Jerry Bathke, and his wife Alice is the second woman to the left of him, wearing a red necklace. They're the NABI co-coordinators. The woman on the far left is Janet, the NABI administrative assistant. The blonde in the front is me.



Today was a good day because I was reunited with many of my friends from the Book 5 training in Phoenix, which was in the beginning of July. I got to go to this training since I was already in Phoenix for the wedding of my friends from MIT, Kelley and Hristo, which was beautiful but I don't have photos. One of my buddies is Sherwin, who's 15 and will one day be a famous fashion designer. In the photo below he's the (other) one in the yellow hoodie. This is the door of the big hogan (pronounced "hoe-GONE" as in "my hoe is gone!"). The nine-pointed star on the door is the symbol of the Baha'i Faith. Below the star is Ghazal, my roommate from yesterday's blog entry.



Here's some more of my buddies. From left to right: me, Alyssa, Sherwin, and Sherwin's cousin Aisha, whom I just met today.



The landscape is much more green than I expected. One reason is because we're at a high elevation - mountain desert is different from valley desert. Another reason is because I arrived about three weeks after monsoon season. Even though it was a dry year, the rain made the world turn green. There's yellow green and spring green and gray green and dark green. It's very pretty (see below). We also saw a coyote and tons of prairie dogs (they were popping up on the road like that arcade game where you have to hit them with hammers), but I didn't get pictures.