Missions Speak

A few words from Alden Pritchard

Missions Speak

Good morning. My name is Alden Pritchard, and I was a part of the 2014 missions team that went to Navajo Nation in Bluff, Utah. The 2014 missions team’s goal was to put up the walls and begin the roof of a Hogan, which is a traditional Navajo house. The Hogan we built was in the shape of a combination of a rectangle and an octagon.

It was a combination of God’s help and better team arrangements than we had last year that the 2014 missions team was accomplish this goal. Last year, there were at least five different teams doing work on different construction sites.  This year, we had four teams all concentrated on one work site. The teams we had this year consisted of about 9 people per team, 2-3 adults, and the rest were kids. 

One of the largest reasons our teams were so successful was that this year everyone was more familiar with each other, and this made the teams more effective because communication was more open, which was a big improvement from last year.

Last year there was no familiarity between us and the kids from Tulsa, Oklahoma because last year we didn’t know any of the kids from Tulsa at all before the trip, whereas this year the vast majority of people knew each other beforehand, partly due to the 22 hour bus ride.

The small teams we had this year were constantly busy, as there was always work to be done. Some teams had more specific jobs: My team, team 4, went by the name of Rolling Stones, and we were tasked with building the east facing walls, which consisted of two walls with windows, and one with a door.

Other teams may have either had other walls to build, or they might have had tasks like cutting, measuring, or marking wood that would be used to construct the walls. Other jobs for those who had none were helping other teams that had a lot of work to do and needed more help than they already had.

Sometimes a few people would be recruited for a special task like assembling a header to go above a window to support the wall, and that would take them away from their team for a little while. I remember Paul Schwartz, who was on our team, was helping with cutting wood and getting the power tools working so he was unable to help us for most of the time.

Some of the work was not easy. I remember how our team had to tear apart a wall we started putting together because assembled outside in not inside out

Roofing crew had to work on the roof, had to work very meticulously, more so than other groups

All in all: Six sided Hogan (traditional Navajo house), almost all walls up with almost all plywood on those walls

Incredible considering:

Time element

o   Monday bus got stuck, 1-2 hours on site total

o   Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, full day

o   Friday 45-60 mph winds, limited activity on roof and with plywood, cleanup was done before 2:00

o   Temperatures at about 100 degrees every day with almost constant wind

-Alden Pritchard