St. Anthony Indian Mission
Although we are well into the summer vacation at the school, life is as busy as ever around the campus.
We of course ended the school year with the graduation of our 8th Graders. That is always a time of mixed emotions for me. Some of our graduates I have known since pre-K and kindergarten. To launch them into the big wide world is an anxious time, but joyful as I send them off, full of potential to take their next steps forward in life.
I was happy to meet up with several alumni who attended the graduation proceedings, and several turned up at the school the following week. That gave me the opportunity of finding out how they were progressing. Three of our alumni are attending the prestigious Santa Fe Indian School who gave me inspiring reports of their grades. Two of these year’s graduates will be joining them this year. In addition, other 2026 graduates have been accepted for several selective High Schools in the area. This tells a tale of how well we prepare our students.
Hot on the heels of summer closure our friends from Wichita arrived to host our Art Camp. Seven wonderful women ready to teach music, art and theatre to our students and several of their friends who do not attend our school. The camp ended with parents invited for lunch and every student received a back with art supplies. I noticed that some of our regular students were becoming closer friends and watching seven year olds chat like old men brought a smile to my face. The simple lust for life among the students is surely a gift from the Lord.
We had a week’s break after Art Camp for the first of two Bible camps. A group of young people from Alabama arrived to host the camp. While there is religious element to these camps, they are also full of fun and games. They took “saints as heroes” and the stduents were quick to grasp the idea. More excitement on the way!
The feast day of St. Anthony was approaching and it had been many years since we had made a celebration of our patron. The school board, parish council and PTO took up the mantel. We decided to revive the form of celebration that took place decades ago. The arrangements were hastily put together and several people were exceptional in their efforts to make it all happen. Even as we were preparing people we were planning for next year!
We loaded the statue of St. Anthony from the church onto a litter. (I had made it ten years ago, but our workers fixed it up securely.) Ladies decorated it with bundles of flowers and Zuni shawls. The Zuni women baked small loaves of Zuni bread and I prepared small prayer cards to be given away.
We gathered at the seventeenth century Old Mission in town. There we blessed the statue and a little girl gave it a garland around its neck. We Blessed St. Anthony bread (custom dating back to 1263). Then we processed, carrying the statue though the town to St. Anthony campus. En route, we distributed the bread and prayer cards to all whom we met. We celebrated Holy Mass in our church and proceeded to fun and games for the rest of the day.
The games included a “Pueblo Throw”. It was something I had not experienced before. Many people had donated gifts for the event. From the front of the rectory, a team actually threw the gifts to the crowd, which were all practical household items. I giggled as rolls of toilet tissue went flying across the yard to eager hands waiting to catch them. Some of our students carried small baskets filled with goodies to the older people so that everyone could participate. It was hilarious, and I found great satisfaction as senior citizens remarked that this was what they experienced when they were young!
We reassembled at 9:00 PM in the church for a torchlight procession winding round the school and the campus. We sang and prayed as we went, stopping to hold up our candles to the sky, and praying ‘here we are Lord, we are still trying hard for our children, come and bless us’.
I was asked in town how our event went and could only reply that it was a very pleasant day simply celebrating who we are. We should do that more often.
We celebrated our achievements, rejoiced in our unique identity, and had the opportunity to recognize the gift that we are for our each other and especially for our students.
