New Year's Coming and Start-Up Funds Raised!

Ahe'hee'! As of today we have raised 100% of our start-up funds!  Any donations to start up fund beyond this is a blessing.  We are also still in need of 24 monthly supporters at 20 dollars a month!  Thanks everyone for getting us to this point!  Ahe'hee'!



~ Rob and Michelle Nickles

96% of Start-up Fund Raised!

 After just a month and half, we can say we are just 4% ($66) away  from being ready to leave for the Navajo Reservation and our work near Farmington, NM.  Keep us in prayer in the next few weeks as we contact possible duplex and apartments for housing.  We will be also packing our 2002 Dodge Neon, "Stormy", and seeing if Rob's bike, "Monsoon", fits on the roof rack we're buying.  It will be a busy month or so, as we prepare to move!

What a Christmas gift this as been and totally unexpected!  Literally, we went from 12% funded to 96% in a single Sunday.  It was December 15th, which is also our anniversary!  An anniversary/Christmas gift all in one!   Thank you to everyone who has given thus far!  We will still be need monthly supporters... but our start up fund is nearly full!  Ahe'hee'!  Thank you!

~ Rob and Michelle Nickles

Trouble on The Road...

Here we sit, at a car shop in Tennessee...
Waiting to see if Stormy is going to be fixed.
Waiting to see if we can make it to New Mexico by August 10th...
Waiting to see what is going on...
Transmission being replaced....
On the bright side we learned that some hotels still take cash.
Praying we can get back on the road... and make it to the memorial.

~ Rob and Michelle Nickles

Learning Authenticity ...

It has been 3 years seen I have been here, and I don't just mean since I was in Wichita... For the last 3 years I have lived in the land of bright blue skies, monsoons, and deep snows.  Some call it the badlands of New Mexico, I call it Dine Bikeyah, the land of the Navajo, the land of the people.  I left part of my heart there for sure, and soon hope to return, this time 100% myself...

You see, when I left Chicago and came to Wichita in 2009, I thought I could not be me, and go where I was going...
I thought there was no place for the gal in black and brown, with her gypsy, wild west, steampunk,  tribal tastes.  Yet time has taught me otherwise... I can be 100% me and still be where I want to be and live the life I am called to.  That is not an easy lesson, being authentic, to be a ragamuffin.... but it is one well worth learning.  I have learned living in the here and now, letting go my fears, being myself, keeping hungry for Truth,  being adaptable/flexible, being grateful, and learning to be more merry/light hearted, are helping so much....

So, as I step out of the wrong shadows in which I hid for so long, and pull off my mask to be myself, I say to you, "Seek out who you are and what you are to be.  Find where you are both challenge and at home (yes, at the same time), and get busy doing what you are meant to do!"

~ "Morria"

Great Thoreau Flood

 Yesterday, monsoon season continued as expected, but what came after has not happened this bad in over 10 years... The Great Thoreau Flood.  Our backyard and drive way turned into a literal river.  I had to rescue our dog Nikida back onto the porch.  The rain had stopped and she had gone out to relieve herself, but in the 2 minuets she was out... the flood hit.  Robby had just walked from the front window to the back, and back to the porch...and it hit between leaving the back window and the front porch.

 We had to wait till our driveway stopped being a river to get over to the church. The church got hit too.  Our back field, which last week we used for a cowboy church service, was "Thoreau Lake" yesterday.  We were blessed with sandbags from the Fire Department, and bagged every door of the church to keep it from leaking through the doors, more than it had at least.  We had pizza and fellowship after cleaning up the church.

Even more unbelievable was the flooding out of the train tracks.  These tracks have been used since the 1890's by first the Mitchel's lines and now the Amtrak and Santa Fe Railroad.  Trains were waiting till about 9 till 10 pm for the water to go down and the tracks to be cleared off enough for the trains to pass.  At 6 pm when I took the pictures, the tracks were still flooded out... It was totally and unbelievable sight!

~ Rob and Michelle 

Casa Rosa

Rob and I live in a little checkerboard community called Thoreau in northeastern New Mexico.  Surrounding us on most sides is the Navajo Reservation.  Thoreau is a typical rez community: small, not much to do, and alot of people to meet.

For us, we did not expect to move to Thoreau.  We were just looking for a place close to the rez where we could live near the missions field and maybe rent some land.  Little did we expect to find an older mobile home with an acre of land on a street called Rose.  The place is a fixer upper, but what missionary home isn't?  We'll write more about "home"...
Later...

~ Rob and Michelle Nickles