"What is the trouble, Nabash?"
Big tears were slowly rolling down the cheeks of the little six-year-old Navajo Indian girl. But Nabash shook her head for she could not answer.
It was a wintry night, but the fire in the center of the dirt floor made the hogan comfortably warm. The hogan Nabash lived in looked much like a great upside-down cereal bowl, made of mud and sticks. She was sitting between her mother and father upon a soft sheepskin on the dirt floor, close to the bright fire.
In spite of the warmth and safety of her home, this little Indian girl's heart was troubled. She was thinking big thoughts for such a little child. She was wondering, "Where will my spirit go when it leaves my body?"
She did not know what kind of a place it would be, but Mother and Father always spoke of it as "going among the devils." Suddenly her heart was filled with fear. There would be no nice, warm hogan there, she was sure of that. There would be no rest, and perhaps not even a little sheepskin to sit on!
But even such gloomy thoughts and fears cannot keep a little girl's sleepy eyes open, and soon she fell asleep on the warm sheepskin, and Mother rolled a big blanket around her.
In her hogan home Nabash never heard the name of tI. Lord Jesus. She had never heard the Bible read, nor a blessing asked at meals, for her people did not know the true God. Instead, some evenings after their meal of bread and coffee, when her father had put away his silver-smithing tools, he would tell the stories of the Navajo religion.
Nabash would snuggle up close on the sheepskin, for she loved to hear stories. Father would tell about "The Goddess-Who-Is-Always-Young," about the "God of the Dawn," the "God of the Twilight," and many others. Nabash believed very earnestly in all these gods, and learned to pray to them.
When she was eight years old her parents chose her from among her brothers and sisters to be sent to school. Very few Indians can read or write, but Nabash's father felt that one in his family should be able to conduct the family business for him.
It was exciting, and a little bit sad, to be leaving her hogan and family. As she rode away on her little pony with her small bundle of clothes under her arm the hills in the distance kept blurring as she blinked the tears away.
How new and strange the school life was! She found herself in a big dormitory with lots of other girls of varying ages, all with straight, black hair and dark, brown eyes like her own, but somehow looking so different. Perhaps it was the plain little school dresses they wore. Nabash fingered the pieces of silver decorating her tight velvet blouse, and looked down at the bright full skirt that hid all but the tips of her moccasins. These girls did not have their legs wrapped with cotton bands like she did either. Navajo women and children wrap their legs so that snakes will not be able to bite them when they are out with the sheep. Nabash decided to take hers off as soon as no one was watching, for they probably did not have snakes here like out on the desert.
The matron gave her an English name, Dorothy. Dorothy means, "the Gift of God," but little did the matron know that she was really to be a gift of God to her people, one day being able to guide them into the way of eternal life.
Each week a missionary visited the school. Dorothy would sit quietly, trying not to listen to the Bible stories, but thinking about the gods of her own people. Her parents had warned her not to believe these stories, and never to leave the old Navajo religion.
Dorothy was still often troubled about where her spirit would go when it would leave her body, but she did not want to listen to the white missionary, for she did not care to go to her heaven. She wanted to go to the Indian's heaven-or wherever it was that they went-and she was sure there must be two different places!
When she was ready for the fourth grade, she was placed in the Mission School. Here the Bible stories were told every day, and Dorothy could not help but listen a little bit. Soon she began to think about them.
When she went home for vacation in the spring it was "lambing season." Dorothy loved to help care for the newborn lambs. One night after having been out with the sheep all day, she found as she put them into the corral that one little lamb was missing. She decided to go back at once and hunt for it before it might be found by a hungry coyote!
As she hurried along, one of the stories she had heard at school came to her mind. It was the story of the Good Shepherd who hunted for His lost sheep until He found it, and brought it back. She remembered, too, stories she had heard about how God had answered prayer. This great God, she knew, could see her lost lamb right now.
Dorothy looked all about her, but there was no sign of the lamb. Pausing beside a bristly cactus she bowed her head.
"Dear God in heaven," she prayed, "You know where my little lamb is. Can you show me?"
As she prayed there came to her mind a clear picture of the little lamb lying under a certain clump of bushes she had passed that day. She hurried to that place, and there lay her lamb!
She started back to her hogan, holding the lamb close to her heart. But she was thinking now of herself. How like the little lamb she was-lost out in the darkness of sin with the Lord Jesus still seeking for her. Why should she not give herself to Him this very night?
Clasping the lamb tightly in her arms, she knelt down on the grassy hillside, bowed her head and gave herself to Jesus. She hugged her little lamb closer, and knew that she, too, would be kept in Jesus' safe care.
From then on Dorothy was never troubled with the old fears that had filled her heart. God's Holy Spirit made real to her the truth of the Savior's own words, "My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me; and I give unto them eternal life; and they shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck them out of my hand."
Before she went back to school her people warned her very strongly against becoming a Christian. But before the school year was over she made a public confession of her Savior, and was baptized. When her parents heard of it they were very angry. They told her she had left them, and deserted the faith of her fathers.
Dorothy needed an operation on her eyes, but her parents would not give their consent.
"I know why your eyes are bad," her father told her. "The reason is that just before you were born, when I was dancing in the `Yeibichai' ceremony, I put the mask on crooked and danced with it that way. No white man's operation will help you. What you need is to have a 'Yeibichai performed over you."
A "Yeibichai" ceremony! Dorothy knew that that meant a long heathen nine-day dance, and then a ceremony conducted by the medicine man. She knew in her heart that it could not possibly help her, for the gods of her people had no power. What the medicine man might do to her eyes might even make them worse. How she wished her people knew and loved the living God who had real power to help!
Her father would not listen as she refused, and in anger tried to command her to obey him. When she still refused he said bitter, unkind things to her, and it filled her heart with sorrow, but God's Holy Spirit comforted her as He reminded her, "My grace is sufficient for thee."
Dorothy continued to shine brightly for the Lord, and gradually her people saw that she meant to be true to her new-found faith in the Lord Jesus. Slowly her father's anger began to turn to pride, and although he did not accept the Lord Jesus himself, he would introduce Dorothy to others as, "My daughter, who is a missionary."
Soon after she was saved, Dorothy began to pray that she might serve the Lord. One day as she was reading her Bible she found the verse, "For by grace are ye saved, through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God: not of works, lest any man should boast."
"The gift of God"! Why, that was what her name, Dorothy, meant! Then it seemed as if God spoke to her, saying, "I have given you eternal life through Christ, now I want you to be a gift to your own people to lead them to Me!"
Dorothy later had a successful operation upon her eyes, and today she is a happy missionary among her own people.