Saturday, April 26th

No walking today. We took the day off and are going to take tomorrow off as well. Joining us today was Carol's niece, Denise, who has lived in Mesa for the past 4 years. So we all went to the Heard Museum, Carol and I and Joe and Denise. Joe's wife, Pam, is in Las Vegas attending a jewelry trade show. Pam makes and sells jewelry and she does very good work. The museum specializes in Indian culture and we discovered many facts about American Indians that we didn't know. The most startling fact was the Indian Schools that were established around 1880 and ceased to exist about 1970.(I think). Indian families were forced to give up their children at a very early age and the children attended Indian School. The schools were run like the military and were very strict. The goal was to "civilize" the Indians. My opinion is that it is a very sad chapter in our history and is not known to many people. Later on, we all met at Bob Johnson's Big Apple restaurant to eat BBQ. John, Ruth and Abdul, Denise's boyfriend joined us there. Abdul was born in the US, and his parents had lived in the US, but now live in there native country, Palestine. He was a nice, polite young man and we liked him a lot. Then John laid a bombshell. Millard Fuller had called him and asked about the walk. Millard said that Jack Wolters had called him and told him about our walk across the US for Habitat. He also said, " Be sure and say hello to Dick and Carol Mattson". We had met Millard and his wife Linda in Independence, Missouri at a Habitat conference and Millard has also been to Hot Springs where he dedicated the ReStore.

But in all honesty, he doesn't know Dick or Carol Mattson, but it was sure nice for him to say that. It was a good ending to a good day. Stay tuned ...