We went to Tucson this past weekend. Kent needed to visit with some pastors and we also had some supporters in the area we needed to see. We drove our RV house there on Thursday afternoon. We got to cook outside over a fire for the evening meal. Actually Kent did that cooking. He loves cooking when we do it outside. It was a delicious mixed vegetables and sausage meal. We invited our friends over for it. Yum!
Then Friday Kent took off early and Daylene and her mom Edna picked me up. We first went to a craft sale at a nearby RV park. I met some of their friends there. Then we three went to see the local Catholic Historical Mission.
The name is San Xavier mission and was founded about the time our country was being born. These priests must have done a good job as the Indian population seems to have many of them converted. Even the graveyard looked more Catholic than Indian. Anyway, the Tohono O’odham Indian nation now owns,runs and restored the mission buildings. The buildings are beautiful. the carvings and art inside the church are so wonderfully restored. It was fun to look at a 30 minute video of the work and understand more about it. the restoration is an ongoing project.
We took pictures as you could around the mission. And you can see that there is one dome missing. It was hit by lightning and burnt and has not been replaced.
Info about the mission
Inside the church was very ornate with much symbolism in each carving.
Beautiful cross at the mission
The mission is on a high point on the desert so can be seen for miles around. It said that was to allow the Indians to see the mission from afar.
This is the largest barrel cactus that I have ever seen. Almost as tall as me. Wow! It was on the San Xavier Mission grounds.
This is a great mission to visit. You can see I enjoyed it.
On Saturday we got to see our friend Mike shoot for a clay pigeon shoot off. There were tons of people there…I think hundreds. there were shooters as young as about 12 and every age to retirement. There were many who were there to watch the shooters too. Mike has done this for years and has always told us about it. Since we had to go for others reasons too we decided to go on the time we could see Mike shoot.
Looking down the line of shooters. There was almost a mile of shooters there.
Mike’s group at this time of the shoot
Mike shooting..can you see the tiny little orange thing in the middle of the picture?..That is the clay pigeon they are shooting.
Waiting for his turn to shoot
Kent, Daylene and Edna sitting in the shade
We had a fun day with them in between his shooting and also watching the shooting. We came back to Phoenix on Monday morning and are back to our normal schedule.
Love Jan for the Roaming Reimers
March 1, 2012 at 5:28 pm |
Nice blog, sounds like you had fun with Beldon’s. . . interesting history too!
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