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Good Shepherd Mission is part of the Episcopal Church in Navajoland Area Mission and the Southeast Region. We have three churches: St Mark's in Coalmine, NM and St. Joseph's in Many Farm, AZ, and Chapel at Good Shepherd.
Good Shepherd Mission is located on the Colorado Plateau, in the Four Corners Region of the Navajo Nation. We began 120 years ago as a medical mission and continue in ministry with the Navajo people and all who visit. Today we have 50 acres, a historic church in the Episcopal tradition, organic/traditional gardens, a coffee cafe and beautiful retreat spaces and options from camping to retreat house bunk-style to private rooms and a private cottage. We are a destination for many mission groups.
Good Shepherd honors the spiritual life of the Navajo as we all seek ho'zho - unity, harmony, balance in our walk together.
- Come visit our beautiful gardens and greenhouse - and come garden with us! And take home fresh food for your family.
- Our coffee shop - Hummingbird Internet Cafe, is open most mornings and late afternoons - just when you need a good cup of coffee while you use our free WiFi services.
- Our summer Mission Season is busy busy, and Quiet Days and meditation retreats begin in September. Check our our Events Page for what is coming up next.
Worship times
Volunteer opportunities
GSM Garden: plant, weed, water, identify Native and other plants and grasses, help us set up bees and learn to work with them (and harvest honey), plant blue corn and the three sisters: corn/beans/squash, water in the greenhouse, juice some greens to share, help us set up a Waffle garden and planting in circles around "ollas," bring some ollas and place them in the garden, plant greens in the greenhouse, learn to "layer" the compost pile, go to a neighboring farm to get manure for the compost pile, set up water catchment system, clean up any litter that has blown onto the grounds, separate the recycling, carry compost buckets to the garden.
GSM Parish Hall: purchase and install treads for stairs, fix a couple of ceilings with new tile, repair crumbling cement at North and East entrances, set ceramic tile at North entrance (we have the tile), fix ceiling and floors of the "Sun Room," strip and refinish upstairs wood floors, reorganize the Sunday School room and set up Godly Play stories, repair crumbling exterior stucco and paint, paint door and window sills, add downspouts and rain barrels.
GSM Hummingbird Cafe: Replace roof, repaint wooden bridge and window sills, put down new wood floor, build beautiful shelving, set up patio in back next to adobe oven, build picnic tables, plant a row of herbs or strawberries on the patio, build out the kitchen area behind counter with stainless steel sink and work table.
GSM Utah Building: Paint a ceiling, floor or hallway walls, install wood stove, teach a cooking class, hang a picture of veggies or herbs, bake a pizza for the community, bring a couch/futon and a chair or two.
GSM Ho'zho' Retreat House: Repair falling plaster (the roof has now been repaired so we can do this), bring some twin bed sheets (white) and pillows, paint peeling outdoor stucco, paint wooden roof overhang (short ladder).
GSM Old Vicarage: Open up door leading to master bedroom, install a closet kitchen, spiff up the laundry room, repair heaters, put foam around pipes and plumbing to prevent freezing, refinish wood floors.
St Mark's (Coalmine NM): Finish out the Sunday School room, install a heater in Sunday School room, help us raise funds to build a hogan church.
St. Joseph's (Many Farms, AZ): Help us repair our hogan church: new roof, new sheet rock walls, and interior new wood stove, bring chairs, build an altar.
Ministries
Shima'
Shima' is our Mother, Earth created in Beauty, who guides and infuses life. The whole of the land and sky - Beauty in Four Directions - the life-force at the heart of our work. This is Shima'.
We are artists, farmers, protectors of our precious and sacred way of life on the Navajo Nation in the Four Corners of the Southwest and the land of our ancestors. The land of our shimas. We are growing sovereignty and self-reliance with each bar of soap, every bag of stone-ground cornmeal, every spoon of juniper ash and every jar of honey. Help us protect the precious. Share in the sacred with us.
Sáanii Ajooba’ (Women of Kindness)
In the past, our mothers and grandmothers gathered at the Good Shepherd Mission and formed a sewing group. As children, we watched our matriarchs as they sewed many colored remnants of fabrics together as their life flowed through their hands into a quilt to the people they loved.
The work of our mother and grandmother is very alive today and the artistic talent is still a thriving tradition and the transforming potential of using fragments to piece together a whole is especially relevant today with quilts, beadwork, painting crosses and sewing stoles. We're obligated to use these gifts as God would want. God gives us gifts not only for our pleasure, but for his pleasure and glory—which may bring us pleasure as well.
We are introducing our offerings of quilts, clergy stoles, and beaded hatbands, and much more to come!
Weasie Belone
1 Kit Carson Drive
PO Box 618
Fort Defiance, AZ 86504
United States
