One week in Pine Ridge, South Dakota. One week in White Clay, Nebraska. One week in Oglala, South Dakota. That is all we needed for our lives to be completely transformed. For our hearts to be broken and the cares of our own problems to be set aside. One week is all we needed to let God speak to us in a place that seems abandoned, hopeless, and desolate.
The reservation life is not life at all but the diminishing of life passing day by day. Trash and beer cans covering what is left of the land. Trailer houses lined up with broken windows and boards. What we saw and experienced seemed as if we were in a third world country. However we know a God who is much, much bigger than any circumstance we live in. We know a God who cares and loves for every one of the Lakota people and wants to give them prosperity, dreams, and hope.
“Listening to Daryl’s story broke my heart I couldn’t stop crying.” Daryl was a man who was living on the streets in White Clay, Nebraska. A population of “14” that sells 10,000 cans of beer a day. ONE DAY. Men and women lined up to go into the liquor store opening up at 10 a.m. A forgotten people by the world, but surely not by God. To God they are a chosen people. As we sat in on Daryl’s story we got to hear his story and how broken and abandoned he was since he was a child. “My father told me to shoot a man when I was just 8 years old.”
Everyone has a story. Everyone is doing what they are doing because they have been afflicted in one way or another their whole life. It is by our obedience to God that we can work alongside Jesus and help in the transforming of lives. When you go to places like Pine Ridge Reservation it is almost impossible to not want to help God. You want better lives for the people that live there. You want them to know there is hope and you don’t have to be living this way. God is the only way and He wants more for you.
You get to look into the eyes of the children who are bored, lonely, and curious and tell them Jesus loves you. We get to be the body of Christ and show LOVE to the people and children. Like they say: a simple hello can save a life, while holding a child that never gets any love or affection will do even more.
Join in being part of something much bigger than ourselves. “So the last shall be first, and the first last: for many are called, but few chosen” (Matthew 20:16). God has chosen the Lakota people. He is calling them into relationship. He wants to give back what has been taken from them. Their land, freedom, and hope.