
6 minute read
FEATURE
Presence Over Place
When the Church Shows Up
Having a three-foot hole in your roof is a disaster in the best of circumstances. And winter in Grants, New Mexico, only heightens the challenges. With temperatures as cold as -6°F and snow up to three feet deep, a situation like this can not only put a structure at risk, but also put lives at risk. This is the situation Steiner and Elizabeth Cody found themselves in last winter.
Located on a Navajo reservation, the house the Codys lived in was Steiner’s childhood home, but it had been abandoned for 12 years before he moved back into it with his wife, Elizabeth. During that time, the property had been used as a dumping ground for everything from broken appliances to thousands of soda cans.
“The house was in incredibly bad shape,” recalled Tobin Savage, pastor for all five of the Gallup District churches. “Steiner and Elizabeth were trying to live the best they could, but there were definite struggles.”
The Codys are relatively new to the Adventist faith community, having joined after a chance encounter with a Grants Seventh-day Adventist Church member at a laundromat six years ago. Elizabeth was standing outside, crying after an argument with Steiner, when a woman approached her, prayed with her and handed her a pamphlet advertising the Amazing Facts Bible study program.
“I sent off for them and did the whole course during the pandemic,” Elizabeth said. “The lessons that really resonated with me, I always shared with Steiner. We’d go out to the garden and while he pulled weeds, we’d talk about what I had learned and then pray about it together.”
When Elizabeth finished the course, she contacted Amazing Facts and asked for information about the Adventist church nearest to them. In 2021, they became members of the Grants church, located about an hour’s drive from their home.
The Navajo reservation is large and largely undeveloped, meaning many roads are what some locals call “rabbit trails”—extremely narrow and unmaintained. In the snow, these roads are virtually impossible to find. This, combined with the fact that the Codys do not have a car and neither Steiner nor Elizabeth can drive—he due to lack of license and she due to health conditions—means the Codys attend church infrequently at best.
Two years ago, Savage became aware of the Codys’ situation, which at the time did not yet include a giant hole in the roof but still encompassed what amounted to a mountain of work. He was determined to do something about it. Savage organized a group made up of members from the three churches closest to the Codys’ home, and 18 people spent a day working on the house.
“It would have taken me four weeks working all day long to get done what they did in one day,” Steiner commented.
An award-winning weaver by trade, Steiner lives on the spectrum and finds social interactions difficult. Though his rugs bring in hefty sums, due to their complexity, he can only complete three or four each year. The cost of transporting the rugs to the market to sell cuts significantly into his profit margin.
“His works of art take him months,” Elizabeth shared. “It’s blood, sweat and tears.”
Though Steiner admits leaving home is extremely challenging due to his severe social anxiety, his experience with the Gallup All Nations Seventh-day Adventist Church has been different. “Being at the Gallup church was the first time I was able to interact in a public setting without feeling stiff and awkward,” he said. “There’s something special about that church and the people in it.”
Elizabeth faces her own challenges; she suffers from diabetes and other medical conditions, some with no visible symptoms, and it took her a decade to acquire disability income, despite her conditions rendering her bedridden for days at a time.

After the church's initial clean-up day, Steiner and Elizabeth continued their dogged attempts to improve the property. Savage helped repair damage to the inside of the Codys’ home—replacing sheetrock, rewiring and hooking up their water heater to electricity, as they had been living without hot water for years. Over the course of two years, the Codys cleaned up another 20 percent of their property, despite the mental and physical challenges they both faced.
Then the roof caved in, creating the three-foot hole. The interior of the home began to grow black mold, impacting Elizabeth’s health even more. Their financial and health situations made it nearly impossible for them to make further progress on their home and property. “Our living space was getting smaller and smaller,” Elizabeth said. “It was dire.”
Once again, the Gallup District churches jumped in to help. In mid-July, a group of more than 30 people converged at the Codys’ home and repaired the other half of the roof. They also hauled garbage to the dump, including three refrigerators, two stoves, several couches, washers and dryers and nearly two dozen 55-gallon bags of soda cans.
This time, the efforts were supported by Diné Adventist Radio (DAR). With headquarters at the Gallup church, DAR is a network of seven stations across the Diné (Navajo) reservation that broadcasts Adventist World Radio in English and Navajo.
Two stipulations for bringing the radio station onto the reservation were that the station would support efforts to keep the Navajo language alive and that they would help with community service on the reservation.

“When we get a chance, we go out and meet members of the cummunity and help them where they are,” said Steve Pester, network manager for DAR. The project lit a fire of service and collaboration between the churches and the station—one Pester and Savage hope will continue for years.
“We’re trying to bring Jesus to people in this community by helping with their homes,” Pester said. “Helping each other is what our church needs to be doing more than anything.”
For the Codys, church is so much more than a distant building; it’s a community stepping in when life seems insurmountable. It’s love showing up where they are—proof that church is defined less by place than by presence; less by pews than by people.
By Becky St. Clair. St. Clair is a freelance writer and lives in the Napa Valley area of California with her husband, Jason, and their three children, Kayla, Lizzy and Gabe. The Codys are members of the Gallup All Nations Seventh-day Adventist Church in the Texico Conference.