Local family helps struggling Navajos

DAVE MOSIER/independent editor

Local residents Nick and Val Steyer have always felt like they were led by God and their faith to help others.

That need to serve begins with their family. In addition to their three biological children, the Steyers are providing a home for four adopted Ethiopian children and are in the process of adopting a girl with special needs from China. 

For most people, that would be going above and beyond the call of duty, but for the Steyers, it’s just the start.

“As a family, we want to live a life that is more than going through the motions,” Val Steyer noted.

Currently, the Steyer family has taken on a project to provide water, clothing, and other items to a Navajo reservation that stretches for 27,000 square miles over Colorado, Arizona, New, Mexico, and Utah.

It all began when Val watched the “Today” show in April and saw a story on Navajo tribes that affected her deeply. She learned from the “Today” program that 40 percent of those on the reservation have no running water, while there are just 13 grocery stores to serve a population of 180,000 people.

“I had no idea that there were people in America that had no running water,” Val said. “I was totally shocked.”

She also discovered from the program that, while many Navajos already struggled to make a living, with many working in casinos on the reservation, the Covid-19 pandemic has shut those facilities down.

“They struggled before, now they are really hurting,” Val said. “I watched a man on the show sobbing, begging for help. It broke my heart.”

She began praying for the Navajos each day, but there was still that nagging feeling that God was wanting her to do more. But what could one person, or even one family, do? It turns out, quite a lot, with the help and generosity of the local community.

After first thinking some big corporation would help out the Navajos — but not seeing that happen — on May 7, Val and her family decided to do something, anything they could, to help.

“I didn’t know where this would take me, but I made a Facebook post asking for donations to help them,” Val said of her decision to do something about what she saw as not only a Native American tragedy, but a human tragedy as well.

The response was incredible, much more than the family expected.

“Never in my wildest dreams did I ever think we would have enough to almost fill a semi,” Val noted. “My husband is driving the biggest U-Haul truck we can and pulling a trailer. I will be following my husband with our car and another trailer.”

After items began to flood in — with four people dropping off items an hour after she posted her request on Facebook — the family began to organize the items, place the smaller items in boxes, and label what was in them so that recipients could easily find what they needed.

Val and Nick said their children, especially her older adopted children from Ethiopia, were excited to help.

“They know what it’s like to have nothing and be hungry,” Val noted. “They couldn’t believe that America has communities that struggle.”

As a family, the Steyers decided they would travel out to the Navajo Nation and drop donated items off. 

“I thought we would get a small trailer full,” Val said, admitting she had no idea how generous people would be in providing donations for people they didn’t even know.

Donations from local residents included lots of water (200 cases), diapers, clothes, food (40 cases), toys, kitchen items, bathroom items, beds and lots of bedding, shoes, sinks, scooters, sports equipment, 320 masks made by one of Val’s children, and even money to purchase more items to take. 

Then more problems arose. Who to give the items to? And how could the Steyers get them there?

After no one involved in the “Today” program would return her calls, Val decided to Google “missionaries” and “Navajos”. Feeling that God was leading her in the direction He wanted her to go, she found the number for a church recently started on the reservation by Sheena Ewers, a full-blooded a Navajo woman, and her husband, Brandon, and called them to see if they would take the items. 

“I called and said ‘I found your number on the Internet, and I’d like to bring out a ton of donated items to you’,” Val noted. “They said ‘please bring them out.”

This past Sunday, the Steyers and a number of volunteers, including members of the First United Methodist Church youth group and Bridge Community Church in Decatur, Indiana, a church the Steyers attend on occasion, leaded the donated items, which nearly filled a pole barn on the Steyer residence, into a U-Haul truck and two trailers.

The Steyers will then leave Tuesday for Chambers, Arizona, and arrive there on Friday. After dropping off some items there, the family will go to Tuba City, Arizona, to drop off more items to the Ewers and their church.

Val Steyer is adamant about not taking credit for what has been accomplished locally to help the Navajos.

“None of this happened because of me; it was God and our small town,” she said. “They saw the need and stepped up and said ‘yes, we are all in’.”