I’ve been trying to use this new blog to keep track of my experience of living on the rez here as a ministry intern. But its hard sometimes to find stuff to say. Success is usually measured by productivity, or some sort of result. I started writing this post saying that I didn’t feel as if I had any significant stories to share, but how that was actually refreshing because of the amount of hope I had for this place, which led me to believe that the only source of my hope could be coming from God, because looking around me it didn’t make sense to have hope. I don’t have much grounds to say this on, but coming from people who have been with the ministry a lot longer than me, this is a difficult ministry. I don’t mean to say that as a comparison to other ministries, because ministry in general is just hard. But since this is all new to me, I think my reflections may be simple and still in the beginning processes of formation, but I think they are still valid.
Being here so far has been about 3 things…praying, dreaming, and waiting. God could have not put me in a better place to learn exactly what power prayer holds. Our staff meets twice a week to pray, and it is there that I find my source of life, of energy, of refreshing, of repentance. There have been certain key scriptures that God has given us which give me hope and vision for what God has in store for the people I am coming into relationship with. It is here where I dream. Dream of what it could look like one day. There is much work to be done in terms of restoring dignity to a sorely underrepresented, forgotten, wounded people. Obviously a job fit for God and God alone to come in and redeem. So comes the waiting. Waiting on God for the next move. But it is exciting to be reminded through Isaiah of how God redeemed Israel…and the promises he made to keep his word, from way back when. But there’s not a lot of tangible stuff for our human minds to hold onto in the midst of this. So after a while, we wonder if we’re doing the right thing if, as far as our human eyes can see, we don’t see much change. It doesn’t make sense, using my human logic, to continue something that isn’t producing the results that it should.
This ministry is revolutionary to me because it doesn’t fit into words. It doesn’t always make sense. Yet I feel like this is right. This is what God wants us to do.
So I keep on having girls over on Saturday nights to play Cranium, or make gingerbread houses, or bake cookies. God, religion, relationship with Jesus are a small snippet of the conversations that we have, yet I keep on keepin’ on. Brenda and I have started a girls’ Bible study on Monday nights. We have high hopes for what God can do through the hour and a half we meet each week. Realistically, about 95% of the conversation is off-topic, and even at first, our hope was that by the end of the year if the girls’ were able to share a little more openly, we would have done a ‘good job.’ But we quickly realized how incredibly small of a box we were putting God in.
One thing, if you haven’t already realized, is how much this ministry needs prayer! I almost always feel overwhelmed when we pray specifically for native americans on the rez and for the pain that they have endured, and for what blessings God has for the reservation. it can be quite overwhelming to pray for in a small group of 5-6 people. so please, i cannot stress how much of a difference it makes to have a greater community praying specifically for this ministry. its for your benefit too…the kids that i’m beginning to befriend…..they have a lot of gifts to bring to the greater christian community, but there’s just all this, er, stuff, thats in the way of them being where they should be. so its up to us to pray for God to break strongholds, and pray for healing, for life, for restoration.
