by Bonny Mulder-Behnia

You may not easily locate Rehoboth, New Mexico, on a state map. If you blink, you could even sail right past it as you travel down Interstate 40 about a mile east of Gallup. Rehoboth is a campus consisting of just 100 permanent residents and some 40 buildings. So what gives Rehoboth prominent name recognition among longtime Christian Reformed Church members throughout North America?

• One hundred years of evangelistic efforts among Native American people in the Southwest.
• A mission school that has hosted hundreds of Christian Reformed volunteers, work groups, and staff.
• Stories of “Indian cousins” whom families supported with gifts and offerings.
• A multicultural choir that has toured North American churches and schools.

As Rehoboth Christian School celebrates 100 years of blooming where it was planted back in 1903, the staff’s first priority is to thank the CRC for its faithful support during its first century. Ron Polinder, executive director of the school, refers to a “covenant of faithfulness between the CRC and this corner of New Mexico where Navajo and Zuni people live” that has been a source of blessing for both sides.

“Native American people have wonderful gifts with which they have blessed the church,” he said. As Polinder and his wife, Colleen, visit various churches on the Navajo reservation each Sunday, they meet Rehoboth graduates who are contributing actively to the ministry of their churches, raising Christian families, and living out their faith in the workplace. “The influence of Rehoboth through the years just can’t be underestimated,” he said.

As the Century Turns
The CRC Board of “Heathen Missions,” now World Missions, first deployed missionaries to the American Southwest in 1896. Synod 1888 had officially declared, “Through the building of schools, as well as the preaching of the gospel to old and young, the work of missions should be carried out.”

In 1903 the denomination purchased a spacious ranch just outside of Gallup and christened it Rehoboth, from the Hebrew word for “room,” as recorded in Genesis 26:22. That same year Rehoboth Boarding School opened its doors with just five Navajo students, ages 5 to 11, who were renamed after Anglo missionaries.

Edward Carlisle, a 1958 graduate, can trace his Rehoboth roots back to those early days of Indian missions. Andrew Vander Wagen, one of the initial missionaries to the Navajo people, spent many hours developing a friendship with Carlisle’s grandfather, Hosteen Cowboy, a Navajo medicine man. “They became very close friends,” says Carlisle.

Out of that relationship, Carlisle’s Grandfather Cowboy eventually enrolled his son, Edward Carlisle Sr., in Rehoboth Boarding School. The tradition continued through the years, as Edward Jr. then attended the school from kindergarten through grade 12. He met his wife-to-be, Dorothy Bowman, at Rehoboth. When they had a family, they sent their children, Ladonna, Danielle, and Donovan, to the school. Currently two of their grandchildren, Alexandria and Ashley, are enrolled at Rehoboth.

Carlisle credits Rehoboth with giving him a solid Christian foundation, a good work ethic, and basic principles for serving in a professional capacity. “They inspired and motivated us to set high goals and to take responsibility for ourselves in the community, workplace, church, and family,” he says. After graduation Carlisle went on to serve in the military and then to earn his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in law. He worked for the Navajo Nation Judicial Branch and the Bureau of Indian Affairs and also served on the Rehoboth Christian School Board for some 17 years.

Marie (Peshlakai) Arviso, a 1949 Rehoboth graduate, also credits her faith and her success to the school’s “teachers, dorm matrons, cooks, and all the workers on campus” who taught through their words and their lives. Arviso moved into a Rehoboth dormitory as a scared little first-grader in 1936, leaving her home and parents near Mariano Lake on the Navajo Reservation for six months at a time.

She remembers that her mother always spoke highly of Rehoboth. “Before school began each August, she would sit us down and tell us to learn everything we can and do everything they tell us, but do not join their church.”

Arviso says that she followed all of her mother’s instructions except the last, in that she made her profession of faith as a high school student. “It was a wonderful decision, and I’ve stuck with it through my life,” she said. “And, you know, my mom accepted my decision and respected me for it.”

Both Marie Arviso and her husband, Leonard, whom she met at Rehoboth, were among the first nine students to graduate from Rehoboth High School. Marie pursued a career in education, earning a teaching certificate from Calvin College, returning to teach at Rehoboth for two years (1952-1953), and eventually earning a master’s degree in educational administration. She and Leonard have both served on boards and committees of Rehoboth and sent their children to the school.

Unique Cultural Challenges
Ted Charles, a 1959 graduate, values the Christian instruction he received during his four years of high school at Rehoboth, as well as the sense of self-responsibility and goal-setting skills he learned. His parents, John and Mae Charles, enrolled him at Rehoboth when they moved from Shiprock to Rehoboth to serve as missionaries there.

Ted Charles supports Rehoboth’s mission to such an extent that he returned there to teach from 1971 to 1978 and sent all five of his children to the school. Yet he acknowledges some of the scars he retains as a result of Rehoboth’s rejection of the Navajo culture.

“When I was a student, we were not allowed to speak any Navajo,” he said. “In fact, when my parents became Christians, they were told to cut themselves off from all aspects of Navajo culture and tradition, so they didn’t even teach me the language.”

Now retired from a teaching career and filling in as pastor of Fort Wingate (N.M.) CRC, Charles is catching up on what he missed. “At age 61 I’m learning the Navajo language and traditions and am trying to figure out what parts of my culture can be redeemed within the framework of my Christian faith,” he says.

According to Ron Polinder, Rehoboth School has acknowledged and repented of its mistakes of the past. “We came here 100 years ago with some cultural arrogance, expecting Native American people to become like white people,” he said. “The Western influence colored our work; we were never as sensitive nor understood the Native American language and culture as we should have.”

In an attempt to correct mistakes and improve future efforts, Rehoboth—in its 99th year—added the Navajo language to its high school course offerings. John and Mae Charles started these efforts on an informal basis in the ’60s and ’70s by reading Navajo stories and teaching songs in Navajo to Rehoboth students.

“We also haven’t done enough to understand the Native religion, to see where it fits and where it’s antithetical, and we should be faulted for that,” said Polinder. “You know, Rehoboth is like a workshop in that we’re struggling with cultural issues most schools in the CRC don’t face.”

Rev. John Rozeboom, executive director of Christian Reformed Home Missions, gets excited by this challenge and opportunity. “Native American mission work can model Christian commitment in culturally appropriate ways, and Rehoboth has come a long way in this regard. We’ve all learned to be more prone to listen before we talk and to be appreciative of cultural, family, and tribal connections,” he says.

Home Missions has served as a funding partner of Rehoboth since 1964, when the denomination transferred the school over from World Missions. Since the mid 1980s, Rehoboth and Home Missions have taken intentional steps toward Rehoboth’s independence: a parent-run school board was established in 1973; direct funding has been decreasing incrementally each year ($265,000 this year; $230,000 next year); and Home Missions deeded 950 acres of land to Rehoboth Red Mesa Foundation in 2001.

While funding a Christian day school is unusual for Home Missions, the ministry believes that Christian education is still an effective way to carry out Native American mission work. According to Rozeboom, both Rehoboth and Zuni (N.M.) Christian schools provide “an opportunity to minister through daily witness in areas of high need.”

Light on a Hill
Rehoboth Christian School is planted in a community where 23 of the county’s 30 public schools are on probation. The county is the third poorest in the United States. Approximately half of the school’s families deal with major life challenges such as single-parent homes and/or dysfunction, addiction, or underemployment. “Rehoboth is like a light on a hill for this region,” says Polinder. “We have limited resources, but we’re rich in dedication and heart. We simply could not carry out this mission without the tremendous support of the denomination.”

During the second half of its first century, Rehoboth has maintained a solid foothold in its region and has grown both in wisdom and in effectiveness. The K-12 student population totaled 166 in 1950, grew to 390 by 1980, and today hovers around 400. The school employs 69 people (teachers, support staff, and administrative staff). Since the dormitories closed in 2001, the school buses in most of the students from as far as 60 miles one way each day.

Of the 400 students currently enrolled, 65 percent are Native American, 25 percent are Anglo, and 7 percent are Hispanic. “We’re not exclusively for Native American students anymore, and we believe the growing diversity of our student body is one of the key strengths of this school,” says Polinder.

Bryan Kamps, a 1978 graduate, is grateful for the multicultural experience of growing up in the Rehoboth School setting. As an orthopedic surgeon with Rehoboth-McKinley Christian Health Care Services, the cross-cultural comfort formed at Rehoboth has increased his effectiveness as a physician. For that reason, as well as the high quality of Christian education at Rehoboth, Bryan and his wife, Linda, have sent their four children to the school as well.

In addition to the rich and unique diversity offered by Rehoboth, the school considers its greatest strengths to include its vigorous academic program, its solid Christian base, and a strong sense of community.

Elizabeth Starks, a 1999 graduate, feels that Rehoboth prepared her well for her current college program at Biola University in La Mirada, Calif. “There was a strong emphasis on academics, and the teachers offered lots of personal attention because we had only 30 students in our class,” she said. The personal attention was important to Starks, having been home schooled by her mother in Zuni, N.M., for her first five years.

Starks speaks fondly of the close-knit community she experienced during her six years at Rehoboth. This same sense of community became significant for another Rehoboth family, Allan and Clara Landavazo, when their son Josh was killed in a car accident in October 2002. Josh was a junior at Rehoboth.

All three of the Landavazo’s children have attended Rehoboth, and the family always appreciated the strong Christian training that the school provided, the individual attention showered on the children, and the extracurricular activities. “For all the years we’ve been at Rehoboth, we heard talk about community, but I don’t think we really understood it until Josh died and that community reached out to our family,” said Allan Landavazo.

“There’s something special about the Rehoboth community; they went above and beyond anything we’d ever expect. It’s as if they tried to experience and carry our pain with us,” he continued, with trembling voice. “It really gave us a sense of belonging. God’s love came shining through our Rehoboth family.”

Recreating that sense of close community is a key component of this month’s Centennial Celebration at Rehoboth. Says Polinder, “We want to bring back as many alumni as possible for storytelling, sharing Native food, displaying creative artwork, holding fun events, worshiping together, and reconnecting.” The first day will include a forum where alumni will have opportunity for “past-to-future analysis, where we hope to get at some of the tensions that are part of our story,” says Polinder.

Learning from the past century will continue to hold the key for future successes in God’s kingdom-gathering activities at Rehoboth—a place where cultures come together in Christ.

Timeline

1902-1903
CRC Board of Heathen Missions purchases Smith’s Ranch six miles east of Gallup, N.M., along the Santa Fe Railroad, for $1,650. Property is to be used as a mission outpost among the Navajo Indians.

1903
Boarding school begun with five students, ages 5 to 11. English names given to early students are those of famous figures in history of Indian missions.

1910
Rehoboth Hospital dedicated with 16 beds.

1913
Dormitory filled to capacity: 52 pupils.

1920
100 boarding students enrolled at cost of $180 per student, paid by mission.

1929
Day school for Anglo missionary and neighborhood children begun.

1936
School closes early in May due to lack of funds; staff unpaid.

1947
First school bus donated by children of Christian Reformed churches for “Indian cousins.”

1949
First senior class graduates from newly opened high school.

1964
Responsibility for Rehoboth Mission transferred from Board of Foreign Missions to Board of Home Missions.

1973
Rehoboth Mission School becomes Rehoboth Christian School with local, parent-run school board.