Report from Standing Rock Mission Trip, August 2006

From Evelyn Lewis:

Sandra and I were pleased to represent Calvary and be a part of the 104 Roanoke Valley Baptist Association people who left on July 30 for a week at the Sioux Nation’s Standing Rock Indian Reservation in North and South Dakota. Click the map below to see a full screen map.

We were divided among four reservation sites:

Cannon Ball – This is a church with Boots Marsh as Pastor.

Fort Yates – New Pastor Alex Sosa & wife Deanna are from Texas and will arrive there on August 31.

Little Eagle

McLaughlin or (Bear Soldier) in the Sioux language.  This is where Sandra and I were located.

Our day was structured among these activity centers:

• Pre-School – Where we had playtime and a Bible Story
• Book Net – Someone reading books to the children
• Children’s Crafts
• Bible Study – For the older children
• Adult Crafts
• Gym and Playtime – Which was Basketball, jumping rope, throwing inflatable beach balls, kite flying and blowing bubbles.

We met each day from 1:00 PM to 5:00 PM and served a hot meal to everyone at 4:00 PM.  Some of the problems there are poverty, alcoholism, drug addiction, gambling and suicide.  We could not start the day earlier than 1:00 PM because many of the parents of the children were out all night drinking and could not get up in the mornings.  There are two casinos on the reservation which Pastor Marsh refers to as the “House of No Hope”.  The young children talked very easily and openly about drunken mothers and fathers and teenage cousins who had committed suicide.

I worked with the Pre-School children.  We had as many as eleven.  These are really cute children, but they have many needs.  Their attention span was very short with most of them being unfamiliar with the Bible stories and church activities.  We became their friend and showed them affection and love and gave them our attention and time.  During this time, we were able to work into our conversations topics showing God’s love for them.

The people working at the Little Eagle site told about flying kites with the children and then giving each child a kite as they left for the day.  After the children had gone home, the leaders cleaned up and then left for the drive back to their hotel.  As they were driving away, they looked over the little town and there were all these kites flying in the breeze over each child’s home.  What a sight that was!!

Basketball is a huge sport for the children.  The men in our group spent several hours each day playing basketball with them.  On the final day, we bought basketballs for the children, and each child asked us to autograph their basketball.

On the last day after we had taken the children home and we were cleaning up and getting ready to come back to Roanoke, some of the children started drifting back into the building.  One little boy asked us not to leave and if we had to go home, could he go with us.  That was hard because we couldn’t stay and he couldn’t come with us.  Another little guy kept figuring out ways to avoid getting on the van so we could take him home.  When he climbed into the van, he scooted up next to one of our men with big tears running down his cheeks. 

If you feel you have nothing to offer or you can’t make a difference, you’re wrong.  Sandra and I did nothing extraordinary.  We just went, gave our time and love to these people.

RVBA is planning to return to Standing Rock next summer.  We hope many Calvary people can go and that each of you will think and pray about committing to a Mission trip.

The 275 pairs of underwear that you donated to the Sioux Indian children arrived at the Cannon Ball church and Pastor Marsh will see that they are distributed.

If Sandra, I or the Pastor can answer any questions, please let us know.  Sandra and I want to thank each of you for your thoughts and prayers while we were on this trip.  In September and October, we will be showing a DVD collection of the trip photos to two of the WMU circles.  The COLUMNS will have the details or you can ask us.  Each of you is invited to come to these presentations and hear more about this Mission Trip.

Sandra worked with crafts for the adult women and teenagers.

Report from Sandra Overstreet:

I had the best job of all the 104 people from Roanoke.  I worked with crafts for the adult women and teenage girls.  Three of the mothers, who were also sisters, came to our meeting.  Their names are Lovey, Charity and Stefanie.  We also had three teenage girls to join us.

We decorated tote bags, and one of the teenage girls, Eden, was an artist and especially talented. She drew and painted a dream catcher on her tote bag that was beautiful and very colorful.

We sewed and decorated ditty bags, made bookmarks and made tye dye shirts for all the children.  One of the boys wanted to make the tye dye shirt for his mother rather than for himself.  Another boy wanted to make sure he had a shirt for his sister who could not come that day. The older children watched over their younger siblings and checked on them frequently.

We talked, we laughed, and we kidded.  After the first day, we said hello and goodbye with a hug.

Charity’s husband came by one day just to visit.  He is a policeman, originally from Wyoming, and said for such a small town as McLaughlin, there is a lot of crime.

Everyone was interested in our lives, what we did and where we lived.  They wanted to know about Virginia, what did it look like, and if we had ever seen the ocean.  We have the addresses of Lovey, Charity and Stefanie and several of the teenagers.  We have sent them postcards showing Roanoke at different seasons of the year.  We intend to keep in touch with our new friends in McLaughlin, South Dakota.