Living Water for the Navajo Nation
“If anyone is thirsty, let him come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me…streams of living water will flow
from within him.” —Jesus
The desert of southwestern United States is a harsh environment, lacking in water and vegetation. The desert floor is hard, uncompromising clay, which during the monsoon season effectively shuttles sudden cloudbursts downhill, causing flash floods since the concrete-like ground cannot absorb water. Gnarled clumps of sagebrush and spiky leaves of the yucca plants straggle toward the sky.
Against this bleak, dry landscape, the dormant volcano called Shiprock rises to a cloudless sky in the Four Corners region of the Navajo Nation where New Mexico, Arizona, Colorado, and Utah meet. Shiprock is significant to the Navajo, tying into their religious myths and legends. Climbing the peak is illegal. The Navajo fear the disturbance of the chį́įdii (ghosts) or that climbers will rob corpses of Navajo who died on the rock.
Navajo religious beliefs contain the worship of many gods, often in the likeness of birds, reptiles, or animals. The Navajo believe they must constantly perform ceremonies to remain in harmony with these gods. Illness or misfortune rise from transgressions against the supernatural or witchcraft. Death and the dead are feared. The afterworld is not thought of as a happy or desirable place, nor is there any concept of reward or punishment for deeds done in this life.
Navajo girls in traditional dress.
North America’s largest Native American group, today’s Navajo often lives isolated due to poverty. Many homes lack electricity, running water, or other modern amenities. Unemployment can be as high as seventy percent, adding pressure to already rough life situations. Alcoholism is rampant, leading to high rates of family violence and sexual abuse as well.
It is in this land and among these people where BCM missionary Nancy Davis has chosen to live. In 1989, after more than thirty years of BCM Bible Club and camp ministry in Carthage, New York, Nancy felt God’s leading to move to Navajo territory in New Mexico.
The region wasn’t foreign to Nancy, as she’d often visited a couple she dubs her “spiritual parents.” With no children of their own, as they grew elderly, they urged Nancy to move nearby. But Nancy wanted to be sure this was God’s will for her life. She began to pray about it.
On September 22, 1989, Nancy’s daily devotional reading was Deuteronomy 6:7-9: “The Lord your God is bringing you into a good land… a land whose stones are iron, and out of whose hills you can dig copper.” A description of New Mexico?
Three weeks later Nancy was visiting her Uncle Jim and Aunt Lillie. Their devotional reading for that day turned out to be the same passage in Deuteronomy 6. It seemed she was being led to New Mexico, her uncle assured Nancy.
Less than a month later, Nancy Davis packed her bags, left New York and arrived in the desert. Little did she know the BCM leadership had been praying for workers in New Mexico. Little did she know there would be children ready and waiting for her arrival.
Nancy met Jack Drake, president and founder of Navajo Ministries, a Christian mission that runs a children’s home, counseling center, and radio station in Farmington, New Mexico, a small town bordering the Navajo Nation. Children often stayed at the mission short-term, then came back if there was crisis in their home. Nancy got connected with these children, holding a Bible Club for them and acting as a sponsor. Over the years she eventually sponsored ten different children.
On the Navajo reservation Nancy began a Bible Club with two families, meeting in the home of one where she taught five girls and a boy. When the father of one family abandoned them, the mother had to work to support her children, so the Bible Club moved. In the summers Nancy held five-day Clubs and Vacation Bible School. Navajo children would arrive in beds of pickup trucks and were taken home by the same means. When Nancy drove to a Navajo housing area, the children would run to her car to meet her and help carry her teaching equipment.
But Navajo families seemed to move a lot. Nancy would go to a home to pick up children for club only to find the family gone. In one instance, she called the home where a club was meeting because the children hadn’t come out to the car as usual. A man answering the phone told Nancy that he and the children’s mother didn’t know her.
Then there were children who responded to the gospel, but reverted back to the lifestyle into which they were born. Nancy’s Bible Club ministry was often difficult and disheartening. Still, in the middle of that dry desert, the living water of Jesus Christ was producing growth.
John Tsosie
A boy named John is one reason Nancy doesn’t give up. Due to a difficult home life, John has spent most of his life at the Navajo Ministries children’s home, where Nancy taught him at one of her Bible Clubs. Today he is involved with the Junior ROTC, plays on his high school varsity football team, and has excelled in school. He was recently chosen to attend a Forum on National Security in Washington D.C., its purpose to prepare outstanding students for a possible career in government. John could have been just another statistic. But because of the living water of Jesus flowing through channels like Nancy Davis and Navajo Ministries, John looks ahead to a successful future.
One of the Bible Club girls Nancy sponsored went to college, then returned to the Mission. Today she offers the living water she received to other children there. Another Navajo Bible Clubber named Nehemiah loved the Bible lessons so much that even after he got a job as a teenager, he would come to club. He too got involved with Junior ROTC. in high school and played the trumpet. It was a thrill for Nancy when Nehemiah showed up dressed in his uniform to play “Taps” for her. He is now attending San Juan College in Farmington.
Nancy Davis teaching a Bible Club.
Nancy Davis continues to hold Bible Clubs and sponsor children at Navajo Ministries. After fifty years as a BCM missionary and nineteen years in the New Mexico desert, she has now seen a generation of her Bible Clubbers grow to adulthood. She is often invited to birthday parties, graduations, and baby showers of former Bible Club students.
“People say they can’t imagine doing the same thing for fifty years,” Nancy shares. But she can’t imagine anything else she’d have rather done. “Every group of children is different. What a privilege and joy it has been to have a part in so many lives.”
