The food has been abundant. Fry bread, blue meal pancakes, mutton stew and homaney have been a few of the delacacies we have been treated to. The evenings were filled with storytellers and history (the goatman skinwalker will stick in most of our minds). We were treated to a rare occasion. A local medicine woman was performing a 3 day ceremony. We were invited to observe and ask questions. This does not happen for outsiders but a door opened. You'll have to talk to a team member to hear about the experience.

Near our hosts home sits Grand Falls. In the flood season it is the 2nd largest falls in the US. This massive fall was created by a lava flow. The muddied silt filled waters that flow over it have earned it the nickname of the chocolate falls.

Our last two days have felt like a falls experience as we have been drenched in Navajo culture and hospitality. As we said our goodbyes the team offered a beautiful song of blessing and a prayer of peace. We will always remember our brief visit to the Navajo Nation.

We served for 2 days. The church was given a grant of 2000 dollars that was used for a wide variety of projects to families who desperatly needed help. We cleaned, built steps, hung drywall, built a fence and there were enough supplies left over for many more projects. This is 3rd world living conditions. No electricity or running water. The heat would hit 100 in the day and the 50's at night. This is a world of extremes.

We are quickly realizing that we are the learners- guests of an open people who have much to teach us.

After lunch we headed to the one time ghost town of Jerome on the Hill. This town is now a boom town of artists and history. One of the team leaders, Shannon, challenged us to look at areas of our lives that are like ghost towns (dead and immobile) and areas of our lives that we feel blessed in (our boom towns).

We found a place this evening as we attended the moving Taize service in the Chapel of the Holy Cross, an engineering marvel built into the mountainsides of Sedona by one of the disciples of Frank Lloyd-Wright. Hearing the voices in song, praying together and leaving our burdens at the cross was a transformative experience for all who engaged.

We ate lunch at the memorable Red Planet Diner where we celebrated Melissa's 15th birthday amongst aliens and space crafts.

Sedona is awe-inspiring for its scenery. Massive red monoliths of stone create a boundry of unexplainable beauty. In the afternoon we hiked in Red Rocks National Forest up to Eagles Nest Point where we took in the entirity of the area. Truly, our God is a marvelous Creator.

The fence at The Chapel of the Transfiguration was badly in need of repair, and our team managed the task in near record time.  Weilding crow bars, drills, hammers, and extra long nails, the students worked like a well-oiled machine to straighten the fence and replace the rails which had been damaged by high snows in the winter.

It was really special to return to the Chapel on Sunday for the Holy Eucharist and see the work they had done just days before.  Just as the Eucharistic prayer began, the clouds drifted away and the beautiful mountains became visible through the glass window over the altar.  What an amazing place to worship the Lord! 

She framed her understanding around three words, Explore, Experience, and Express. “A pilgrim is one that explores the world and other faiths to see what power and control God has so that you can encounter all that God has to show you. A pilgrim is one that experiences God’s awesomeness and takes in all His ultimate beauty which is eminated within yourself and the world. A pilgrim thinks about what God has planned for you and what His role is to be in your life and ultimately what He wants you to do for Him. A pilgrim is one who expresses the love and devotion that He has for you by doing good works for others. A pilgrim is a missionary every day showing God through yourself in thought word and deed.”

Rochelle caught what the spirit of a pilgrimage is and how a pilgrimage transforms you in such a way that you begin to rethink everything. We each came to Ireland looking to discover more of God, and we left with a real since of what His presence in our life can make when we learn how to live everyday as a pilgrim.
 

We stopped to explore the Athenry Castle which is one of the oldest castles in all of Ireland. Castle raiding can be a great time of discovery. That evening we spent time together walking and praying through the Stations of the Cross. The Monastery has a beautiful outdoor path lined with the fourteen stations. The pilgrims prayed and led this powerful time together and found this to be an intimate spiritual time of wonder. The weight of this spiritual experience was palatable and left us in silence as we all walked back to our beds for an evening of rest.

The next day we went to visit the ancient Monastic Community of Clonmacnoise, a 5th century development founded by Saint Claram. This was a great historic place to explore and discover what monastic life was like in the ancient monastic way and what can be learned to help us improve our own spiritual life. These pilgrim travelers are beginning to discover what God can do when we yield our life to him and follow in his footsteps. The rhythm of spiritual prayer work and community life has begun to awaken a new reality of the disciplines required to live the authentic life in God.

As we hiked around the island, we were often overcome by the rough terrain.  These islands are known as being quite rough and rugged.  One of the pilgrims commented that, while walking on the shifting stones that our path was made of, it reminded her of her spiritual journey.  She said that you never really know if, every time you place your feet, that step will be absolutely secure.  But if you take your time and steady yourself, and keep moving forward, the vistas that you see make it worth the work.  As the day grew towards dusk, we made our way to an ancient site known as the Church of St. Kevin, which is called on the island, Teampall Chaomham.  This is a sacred site where our team gathered to explore the grounds and to read the burial stones of the saints who were buried in this spot. 

Before we left this site we gathered to discuss what it really means to live.  The pilgrims were challenged with the idea that until they come to terms with their death and dying, they can never really learn to live.  The way of the cross and the pilgrim’s walk, follows in the steps of Jesus, and requires us to die so that we might really live like Christ.  The way of the pilgrim is to ask ourselves the question, “Are the things I’m living for, worth Jesus dying for?”  The site of St. Kevin’s Church is quite beautiful, and our walk down from this place was a quiet, reflective walk.  We concluded the evening by listening to traditional Irish music, and prepared to rise early the next morning to catch our ferry back to Galway Bay.

We stop on the way to our first home for the next few days. Montezuma's Castle is a 5-story cliffdwelling built into a huge natural recess in the cliffs at least 50 feet off of the ground. Over 200 people lived in these natural apartments built over 800 years ago. This monument, left by the Sinagua people, paints a picture of life hundreds of years ago in this harsh environment. We took some time journaling and pondering the monuments we are leaving behind.

Our home is the beautiful Living Water retreat center outside of Sedona. There was a stark change as we drove from the arid desert into this refreshing oasis. The team, though tired, seems extremly excited about the journey ahead.

After a day of orientation, acclimation, and light hiking, we spent half a day with the "Veg Crew" from the National Park Service. Thistles have flowers with a beautiful purple hue, but their effect on the ecosystem here in the Tetons is devastating. Our students spent hours in the hot sun, pulling these non-native invaders to keep them from wreaking havoc in the park. Herds of roaming bison made our drive to and from this project quite entertaining. We also spotted a huge bull moose that was attracting quite a crowd on the side of the highway. An afternoon hike through an area recovering from a forest fire gave us the opportunity to think about struggles that exist in our own lives.

Our day today included geysers, mudpots, thermal pools and waterfalls. All of these amazing wonders are in abundance at Yellowstone National Park. Again, we were overwhelmed by the amount of acreage that wildfires affect; but we also were reminded that just like regrowth in a forest often requires death first, so our lives in faith often require putting certain things to death. The students engaged in a lively discussion about struggle, suffering, and pressure in their lives, and how they can still live out their faith in the midst of these things.

Letters from home brought the evening to a sweet close, and the students were led to ponder their loved ones, and a loving God who has promised never to leave nor forsake them. We pray that more incredible adventures await us tomorrow...

We spent the majority of our day in Astoria seeing what all the city had to offer (besided being the birthplace of The Goonies) and then we were off to Portland. Our next day we spent on the Deshutes River rafting, eating, and enjoying each others company, but after our dinner at a small ski town at the foot of Mt Hood we got back to our home in Portland and started packing.

We had reached the end of our pilgrimage in Oregon, covering almost every eco-system the state has, seeing the glory of Christ in each other and in His creation, but during our closing meeting we returned again to the story of Lewis and Clark. Both of these men, and all of their party, risked it all to traverse the great Louisiana Purchase, but that was not the end of their stories, the same as this is not the end of the story for the youth of St Columbas. Lewis and Clark represent two very different futures. Lewis' did not end with much joy while Clark lived a long and fruitful life leaving a large family with members still alive today. The challenge for the youth of St Columbas is to realize that this pilgrimage is not over, and in many ways it is still just beginning. Their lives will forever be a journey with Christ and with Him they will never be alone. Our prayer for them is that they will never lack the faith and courage to pursue that life with Christ the same as Lewis and Clark were not afraid to pursue their call into the unknown.

He explained, as many of us know, how we all have places like Devils Lake in our own lives. Places that we never want to reveal to others and places that we never want to bring before Christ. We allow these places to fester and they never change. They might be issues of the past, issues that we can't seem to overcome in the present, or maybe issues we are afraid of in the future. The point is, and the challenge was, to not keep the places like Devils Lake in our lives hidden from Christ. Fr Brandons challenge was to invite Christ straight into them. Don't try and keep them from Him, run to Him with them.

As we headed to our campsite on Devils Lake for the evening we all took some time to reflect on Fr Brandons test for us, and we all prayed that we could be courageous enough to come to Christ with all of our fears and all our shame.

Once we arrived at the coast, and before we began our new discoveries, Suzie posed the question to the team to find how the patterns we witness in ocean life reveal Christ. It was a lingering thought, but after our lunch on the beach we had some free time to swim and then we were off again. This time it was Todd who lead our adventure and he took us deep into Silver Falls Forrest. A completely different terrain from the ocean life we just discovered, but just as powerful. After exploring two of the seven waterfalls this park has to offer Todd flipped the question of patterns on us from finding Christ in the patterns to finding patterns in our own lives that limit us from allowing Christ to reign.

It was a sober question, one that we pondered in silence on our return home that evening. It is a scary thought that the very God that brought patterns into this world also allows us to build some patterns in life that limit us from seeing Him. It is only through our knowledge and relationship with Him that we will grow to see those patterns that are actually destroying us.