MARION — There was no running water and only a little bit of electricity for the group that traveled west to the Navajo Nation for a mission trip. 

For six days, the members of the Saints Youth Group at Saint Gabriel’s Episcopal Church in Marion had no cellphones. They used outhouses. The work was hard. But that didn’t seem to matter much to the Tri-Town teens.

From June 23 to 29, trip members worked on different projects at the Navajo Nation while also learning more about the people and land they had visited.

“I had a really fun time,” Cassidy Carroll said. “It felt good to help other people.”

A local church helped coordinate projects that would help people in need at the reservation, according to Wendy Reardon, Saint Gabriel’s director of youth and family ministry.

Those projects included building a wall at one person’s home and a wheelchair ramp at another.

The wheelchair ramp had already been partially built, so those assigned to that worksite “finished it off,” according to Luke Pierre.

Lily Ambrosi said the ramp project required “mapping” and “planning.”

“Ours was a lot of thinking before we do anything,” she said. “We kind of just had to sit there and contemplate and think about what we were going to do.”

Throughout the trip, the group learned about the Navajo, the land they were staying on and the people they were serving. One Navajo woman told the mission trip members that during World War II, her father was a “code talker,” according to Hazel Kelly.

Code talkers were soldiers that used the language of their native tribe — like Navajo — to send secret communications.

The woman also took the Tri-Town teenagers to a site where Navajo hid during the “Long Walk,” 19th-century forced marches led by the federal government.

“It was cool that we're actually standing on the land where it happened and a big part of history,” Kelly said. “We were actually right there. Our feet were on that ground.”

Over the course of the six days the Saints Youth Group spent at the Navajo Nation, the youth group members got to better know the people they had been helping. They exchanged addresses in order to write to each other in the future. A woman at one of the project worksites said “Don’t forget me,” according to Fiona Roveda.

“It was just so awesome to see the relationship we built just over those few days,” she said. “It was just a really memorable moment.”

Reardon said the mission trip members “worked hard” during a “hard week.”

“They really were great at listening to the stories, and they were truly interested in the stories,” she said.

And in spending nearly a week at the reservation, there were lessons to also be had in being in places and observing life far different from that experienced in the Tri-Town.

Ambrosi said the trip members eventually learned more about a family at one of the project sites. 

“They were all so happy,” she said. “And I just was like, you really don't need a lot to be happy. You just really need the people around you.”