The Tipi Wakan (Sacred Tent) Mission in Cannon Ball, N.D.
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RICHMOND, Va. — The roads from Virginia to the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation in North and South Dakota span more than 1,600 miles and have been well-traveled this year as Virginia Baptists and the Native Americans at Standing Rock have joined hands and hearts on mission for Christ. More than 300 Virginia Baptists drove and flew to the Dakotas this summer to serve through both a partnership of the Roanoke Valley Baptist Association and the Woman’s Missionary Union of Virginia, as well as through Virginia Baptist collegiate summer missions’s GO teams.
Four Native Americans from Standing Rock made the same three-day drive to Virginia earlier this year to participate with Roanoke Valley in construction and literacy ministry in Powell River Baptist Association. And two girls from the reservation participated in a week of GA camp at Crossroads Camp and Conference Center through a scholarship provided by the WMUV.
Two Native American girls, Alexandria Fire Cloud and Xenia Iron Road, at CrossRoads Camp. They are pictured with Jackie Marsh, wife of Pastor Boots Marsh of Tipi Waken Mission, who drove the girls to Virginia.
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Standing Rock Reservation is the fourth largest Indian reservation in the U.S., with 2.3 million acres on the border of North and South Dakota. The reservation is home to about 8,500 people who deal with issues of poverty, alcoholism, domestic violence and unemployment. Only one-third of the population is employed. Desolate land and extreme weather conditions make this area a difficult place to work and live.
Bob Hetherington, executive director of the Roanoke Valley Baptist Association, and his wife Judy, made their first trip there in the 1990s when he was pastor of a church in Key West, Fla.
Mission teams from Roanoke Valley have traveled to Standing Rock for the past five yars. The first teams were able to serve in two districts. As relationships and trust were established the number of districts expanded. This summer 10 Virginia teams were able to serve at seven sites. And with churches and associations outside of Roanoke becoming involved and WMUV joining the association as a partner in this ministry, two weeks were scheduled.
Roman Weasel from Standing Rock sings the Flag Song in Lakota.
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RVBA’s partners at the reservation are Pastor Boots and Jackie Marsh, Tipi Waken (Sacred Tent) Mission in Cannon Ball; Pastor Alex and DeAnna Sosa, First Baptist Church, Long Soldier, in Fort Yates; Donna Archambault (home Bible study in McLaughlin) and McIntosh Baptist Church, a non-native church on the reservation. Hetherington credits Marsh and Sosa’s passion for the spiritual needs of the people as instrumental in opening additional sites.
Teams at each site work with children, youth and adults conducting Bible study, recreation, crafts, sports and skill sessions. A medical team travels to each site, providing vision and blood pressure checks and foot care. Construction teams built picnic tables for each site and made improvements to church facilities.
“Developing relationships is the key,” says Hetherington. Team members use many tools to provide an opportunity for personal interaction to share the love of Christ and the gospel. Those returning for their second or third year are eager to return to the same site to reconnect with those met on previous trips. “Over the years we’ve developed relationships and trust and can see things happening now that could not have happened in earlier years,” he says.
Two tractor trailers loaded with items donated by churches from around Virginia arrived just ahead of the teams. Hundreds of t-shirts, flip flops, baseball caps, Frisbees, kites and other items filled boxes. Most crafts for adults and children are wearable items that can be worn after the teams depart.
“We use any tool that will help us engage them in a personal way,” says Hetherington. Team members work with children assembling and flying kites. The important part is not the activity or item, he says, but the opportunity to work one-on-one sharing and living out the love of Christ.
Patty Hartzog from Calvary Baptist in Roanoke teaches a young girl to sew.
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This year skill sessions and Bible study was shared with adults. Classes included sewing, quilting, basket making and woodworking. In the previous four years, the most effective ministry was in reaching children. This year more adult women and men were reached. Hopefully the skills learned with enable them to find productive ways to use their time and perhaps develop a means of income.
A family portrait ministry introduced this year was a great success. Families were invited to have portraits taken. Team members printed the pictures and placed them in a frame for each family.
Several members of a team of adults and youth from Calvary Baptist Church in Roanoke helped women and children sew pillows. Thirty sewing machines were taken to teach sewing and were left with persons taking the classes.
“Some of the most encouraging moments were seeing team members make connections,” says Donna Hopkins Britt, pastor at Calvary Baptist.
Four Native Americans came to Virginia last spring to join 63 people from the Roanoke Valley Association in an ongoing partnership with the Powell River Association. Arriving in a van with “Native American Mission Team” written on its side, Raymond Fire Cloud, Roman Weasel, Donna Archambault and Melda Lookingback worked alongside their Virginia partners on mission.
They joined construction teams working at Plain View Baptist Church, as well as building on an associational bunk house for housing volunteers.
BookNet teams went to 14 schools in five surrounding counties reading to approximately 4,000 students and distributing around 12,000 books to the children.
“Believers on the reservation are isolated,” says Hetherington, that the opportunity for these Native Americans to come to Virginia and work and live with a group of Christians was a boost for everyone involved.
Woman’s Missionary Union of Virginia provided scholarships to GA camp for two girls from the reservation this summer. The girls immediately connected with camp counselors. They were especially interested in singing the camp songs — something they had never done before. Both girls want to come back next year in the Leader-in-Training program to work with other girls at the camp.
One Virginia team member tells of her work with a Native American woman this year. After sharing Christ through their devotion time, she asked the woman if she felt ready to accept Christ and the woman said she was not.
The next morning the woman came and told her that she had a dream during the night. She dreamed she was extremely thirsty and could not find water. She went to her neighbors, but there was no water. She then remembered the story of Christ and the living water. She asked to hear the story again. And this time she understood and accepted Christ.
The Hetheringtons plan to continue making the journey back and forth to Continued from page 3
Standing Rock to minister in Jesus’ name as God leads. “We feel like God is just opening more and more doors as we continue to follow his leadership,” says Judy Hetherington.
In 2010 the week of July 25 has been scheduled for teams from Roanoke Valley and the week of August 1 for teams from around the state. For additional information contact the RVBA office at 540-366-7631 or the WMUV office at 800-255-2428.
Virginia Baptists prepare to pack up and transport library books for Sitting Bull College in Fort Yates, N.D.
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Meanwhile, a GO team — consisting of four college students, two campus ministers and a family of five — spent almost two weeks working with the Sosas and First Church in Fort Yates.
One of their assignments was to help the library of nearby Sitting Bull College move its books into a new facility.
Sitting Bull is one of several tribal colleges and universities around the country offering higher education to Native Americans and others. Located near reservations, the schools often are the only educational resource available to its students.
About 90 percent of Sitting Bull’s students are Native American. Its library serves not only the needs of the college community but also serves as a public library for the reservation and those living nearby.
GO Team members paint the house of the pastor of First Baptist Church in Fort Yates, N.D.
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“While there were an entire room of boxes and several rooms of furniture, God blessed us as we worked and made the task relatively easy,” said Jamie Crews, a member of the GO team and a recent graduate of Virginia Tech. “There were several hundred boxes and it had taken the assistant librarians, Kelly and Kathleen, two to three months to pack up and get organized. It only took the team basically one and half days to move and unpack. It was truly God working through us because there were times when the boxes seemed never ending and far too heavy to lift, but we pressed on in service and love.”
Crews said the library staff was “appreciative and curious.”
“The head librarian, Mark, was extremely grateful for our actions,” said Crews. “He was sure, before the Virginia GO Team showed up, that they were still going to be moving the library when students returned for the fall semester. It was great to see the smile on his face for the several days that we were there helping make the process of moving go faster and smoother.”
In addition, the team lead a worship service at First Baptist Church, held a basketball camp for local children and painted the Sosas’ house and put up a fence around it.
“A couple of things decidedly stood out on our trip,” said team member Chance Godwin, a student at Virginia Commonwealth University. “First, that so many people out there need Jesus so badly. It’s easy to isolate ourselves in our Christian circles to the point where we can ignore a world that is terribly lost. So Pastor Alex’s quoting of Jesus hit close to home when he said ‘Go and make disciples means go and make disciples …’ — which leads to the second thing that I realized. God is working all over the place; in North Dakota, here in Virginia, at school, in my church, even in my home. There is no end of opportunity to be a part of what God is accomplishing, so the only thing holding me back from jumping in and participating is — me.”
Added Crews: “It was good to know that I, and the team, could bring true hope, through Jesus Christ, to this group of people. Also, I think that the children in this area are the real hope for these people to come to know God. I am praying that Pastor Alex and Deanna get the support they need for children’s ministry on the reservation.”
In addition to Crews and Godwin, other team members were two more students, Kristen Eno of Mary Washington University and Amanda Lewis of the College of William and Mary; two Baptist campus ministers, Daphne Almarode of James Madison University and Jim Collie of the University of Virginia at Wise; and the Gulley family of Roanoke — Michael and Tauna, and children Raven, Ivvy and Nyla.
Barbara Francis is a staff member of the Religious Herald.