CORDOVA, New Mexico (AP) — With congregations dwindling and villages emptying out, maintaining hundreds of historic adobe churches – made with mud and straw centuries ago – is a daunting challenge across rural New Mexico. Community leaders who are the churches’ caretakers in the absence of regular clergy are trying to save them because they represent a crucial center of faith, family and cultural traditions for their struggling hamlets. But as youth leave in droves, their ranks are thinning, putting a unique faith and social culture under threat.