HIS Impact “The generous will prosper; those who refresh others will themselves be refreshed” (Proverbs 11:25, NLT).
Jerena is a 2012 graduate and a remarkable testament to God’s impact through our school on each one of our students. For Jerena, the influence was so significant that she felt drawn to come back to help us in a time of need. Here is her story.
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rowing up, I went to school on the Navajo Reservation. It was going OK for me until I started getting into fights. It got so bad that students would come to my house just to start trouble. Because of this, my mom and I decided I needed to go to school off the reservation at Holbrook Indian School (HIS). I started going to HIS in 2007 for junior high. This was before they had any special art classes. I was physically absent from the reservation, so I was away from the fights, but things were still rough for me emotionally. I thought suicide was the way out. I would blow up at the staff, and I was always getting sent to the principal’s office. I remember a staff member handing me a pen and paper and telling me to write down whatever I wanted to lash out about. I took the pen, but I actually started drawing instead of writing. The staff noticed that what calmed me down was arts and crafts. When I came to register for classes the following year, I noticed there were new classes, like drawing and other art classes. I wondered why they were adding these. When I started taking the classes, I noticed some supplies that had not been there before. I saw drawing stands and drawing pencils, which I was told were donated. If it wasn’t for those donations, which helped to start the art classes, I think I would have gone crazy. I graduated from HIS in 2012. Eight years after graduating, I returned to help by assisting a teacher with physical tasks that he could not perform
20 Pacific Union Recorder
Holbrook Indian School
