A DESPERATE NEED - HOPI EMERGENCY

Hopi Emergency

For the 6th time in history, the Hopi have requested outside help to deal with a federally declared disaster

Donate to Hopi – this is the same disaster shown in the Pic of the Day

January 31, 2010
Email sent to Stan Deyo

Friends,

This is a chance for all of us to truly help some brothers and sisters in need. They don't need our money, they need firewood. We are organizing trucks with horse trailers or whatever to go down asap with wood. If you want to really help some ancient people that really have a need, NOW, please pray to see if you can help.

If you have wood and want us to pick up some, call me. If you have a truck, four wheel drive is needed and a trailer, call me. If you have cash to help with so we can purchase fire wood, call me. If you have cash to help with gas to drive it there, call me. I will be up north today putting this together.

What an incredible opportunity to help other people.

Please call,
Doug Mendenhall
435-469-2294

PS I just talked to the contact person at the Hopi service center and he confirmed that they are completely out of firewood. I asked if he could use ten cords delivered by tomorrow night and he was quite excited. Please help if you can. We have four cords committed right now and two trucks. We could use gas money and more trucks and more wood.
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Hoa, Shalom, O'siyo,

This is being sent to all who have contacted me over the past two weeks, friends, family, associates and others with hearts of Joseph.

I just returned from Hopi land, (Thursday) and it may be a few days before I can return your emails and phone calls, but there is an urgent emergency about which I thought I would seek your prayers and possibly additional help for Hopi.

For the sixth time in their modern history, the Hopi have requested outside help to deal with a federally declared disaster in the wake of a highly unusual snow storm that dumped up to four feet on parts of Hopi land.

When I drove into Hopi land from Window Rock on Hwy 243, just to the west of Ganado, when the highway finally opened on Saturday night and Sunday morning, the first thing I saw at first light, was a horse lying frozen and dead beside a fence. There is no telling how many times this scene would have been repeated had I had light to see. Dozens of other horses had come up to the fences lining the highway, seeking some kind of mercy from passing cars and trucks and dozens of Hopi walking on foot between villages.

The horses were being fed just about everything to keep them alive. Apples, peanut butter sandwiches, unpeeled oranges. While truckloads of green hay was being delivered to horses on the Navajo reservation, which surrounds Hopi, I saw no such hay coming to Hopi.

Arriving early in connection with a film documentary on the Hopi message and the connection of some Hopi clans with Jerusalem, and the film producers caught in the aftermath of the storm in Flagstaff until the roads were opened, I had time to volunteer to help with the relief effort, mostly delivering sandbags in my truck to villages that were otherwise inaccessible. That gave me a first-hand look of the situation, which I would now like to relate.

On Monday afternoon, which was two days after the snow had ended, and the sun had returned, the snow pack was still more than a foot to 18 inches across Hopi land with drifts approaching four feet. Only Hwy 243 from Ganado and a road connecting Second Mesa to Winslow, AZ., were opened and none of the villages were passable without 4WD. More than 900 calls for firewood, coal or fuel had been received by the emergency center set up at the Veteran's Memorial Center between 2nd and 3rd Mesas. Where the snow had been cleared by the few scrapers available, mud was about six to nine inches thick again making travel in the villages impossible without 4WD and stranding hundreds of elderly and infirm.

FEMA had provided two helicopters to fly in medical supplies and prescriptions and check on the infirm who live in remote areas.

Another 150 or so calls had been received requesting sandbags for leaking roofs, and porous foundations. On Third Mesa, many of the mud-brick houses are built directly atop the ground (in these villages the ground is considered sacred so it is not disturbed as much as possible, therefore houses and kivas are built directly atop the ground. Initially, these houses had dirt floors but many have since been tiled over. Still, the water from the massive snow melt was streaming into walls and ceilings. Two FEMA trucks had arrived filled with drinking water, sandbags and other emergency supplies but no firewood.

Surrounded by Navajo, the Hopi must rely on firewood from the Hopi Mesas and contiguous areas, the Navajo dealing with their own emergencies, although much better equipped to do so than the Hopi. Two truckloads of firewood were expected to arrive from California to the west on the day I had to leave in order to avoid being snowbound from another storm that hit Wednesday night and Thursday.

President Obama the day after the first storm hit, declared the region a major disaster area making it eligible for FEMA assistance. However, the one need of the Hopi - firewood - was not met by the FEMA assistance.

The national emergency is to last for 60 days, but the Hopi are out of firewood throughout their mesas NOW. On Saturday, Sunday, Monday and Tuesday nights, they were surviving in many homes huddled under quilts with NO HEAT.

Meanwhile, the four-leggeds, including predators were on the prowl. I personally spotted a mountain lion track about 150 yards west of the Cultural Resources Center on 2nd Mesa , which has the reservation's only motel and restaurant. It was a big cat whose paws pressed a good inch into the icepack … and there were spots of fresh blood where the tracks of something smaller abruptly ended.

The kwahus and other wingeds were nowhere to be seen, except for literally hundreds of crow that also seemed desperate for food which could not be found atop the frozen ground.

The first storm hit as the adolescent Hopi boys whose mothers felt they were ready for initiation rites, were being instructed in the rites of the different kiva societies. The second storm stuck on the day they were to come out of the kivas and prepare for the Bean Dance, which begins this weekend.

Hopi elders said they were caught unawares because this storm they believe was caused by changes in weather patterns due to global earth changes taking place. Elders had anticipated a bad winter and had encouraged Hopi to stockpile wood, but repeated cold snaps have now exhausted these supplies. The pressing need is for firewood at least for the next 60 days until the coldest of the weather passes.

I am especially asking anyone with LDS and RLDS connections to notify their leadership of this emergency and encourage the stakes especially in southern Utah to bring truckloads of firewood to Hopi. They don't need your money. They are truly self sufficient except for this pressing need which has suddenly been thrust upon them.

If the Mormon community truly believes the Hopi are connected with the Lamanites of the Book of Mormon, it is time to reach out to these "relatives." But all Joes on this list who have the true heart of Joseph are encouraged to pray and if they have the means, to help somehow.

Please give me a few days to complete the contacts I promised I would make in connection with this emergency. Then I will read your emails and answer the phone calls I missed while away.

Hoa, Shalom, Gah gey you e, Asaweh,

ben Yoseif