Long Journey

A new adventure for the Maynard family awaited in Memphis, Tennessee.  All we needed to do was pack up all of our possessions, our animals, and our children and head out across the nation.

For the last five years my family and I have lived in the Navajo Nation where my wife and I worked in education.  We have taken on various roles.  My wife has been a Music Teacher, Academic Advisor, Cheerleading Coach, and Senior Class Sponsor, a Dean of Students among several other things.  I have taught World and American History, Spanish I & II, and Education Professions.

In Memphis my wife Pamela would work as a Dean of Students at a middle school and I would teach English as a Second Language at an elementary school.

At the conclusion of the school year Pamela still had to work for another week.  My mother-in-law and I worked on packing up the house and getting ready for the big move.  The Elders from our church came over a few times to lend a hand. 

When Pamela finished her work day she came home and helped us finish up.  Then we left Arizona.  On our way out we noticed that the headlight of the truck was not working.  We stopped two hours sooner than we wanted to in order to have the problem fixed.  We had to cancel our hotel room and stay the night in Gallup as a result.

The next day we started our trip several hours behind but we drove on and tried to make up the time as best as we could.  We discovered a new problem with the truck.  Rust had created a hole over the roof, when it rained it poured on the inside.  It was an extremely rainy trip.  Since we were so far behind where we needed to be we needed to stop early again.

On the third day we once again started out late, we had to wait for the rental company to come out and inspect the truck.  Later when we were finally back on the road my mother-in-law discovered a mouse in the truck and the headlight stopped working again.  When we looked at the headlight we noticed that it was actually hanging off of the truck!  We tapped it back on and decided to keep going.  Eventually we stopped due to exhaustion, a third hotel room lost.

Finally we arrived in Memphis, filled out the paperwork for our house, and were able to move in!  Several people from the church showed up, it made the work move on a whole lot faster!  Pamela's grandfather was also here to help us.  It may have been a long journey but in the end it was worth it.  We had arrived with our family to begin our new life together.