A Forgotten Nation

I’ve now been on the Yakama Nation Reservation for seven incredible months. The months following summer have been a conglomeration of blessings and trials. I often times want to write down everything that I’m seeing but when I actually have the time to write an update, I find that my words fall short and I can’t grasp the most rudimentary parts of my stay here. So as such I normally focus on what’s easier to express or share. Its why I use jokes that kids make about me to remind people I’m still here or post pictures of events to show snapshots of my day. I do this because those are substantially easier to relate to and quicker to explain then trying to spit out what feels like a lifetime’s worth of lessons that I’m only just beginning to scratch the surface of while here. There have been whole books written on the relationships between Native Americans and the church, on what poverty culture looks like, or what life on a reservation would look like. So, to summarizing ideas that took whole books to capture is no small feat. A parent of a team member once said that in his child’s week here he grew a year spiritually. I often wonder how much more God will grow me through a year here. As such growing comes with growing pains and is not all picking daisies and frolicking on the beach. This serves as a warning, this will not be one of those happy, whimsical updates I normally do. For my benefit and for that of my supporters I want to give an update that I avoid giving, an update of the good and the bad here on the rez.

 There are things that I’ve learned in the fall here that I never could’ve learned through my summer experience. For one the staff here doesn’t have a “down time”. Summer ends, staff take a quick few days off, catch their breath, and continue trucking through their ministry responsibilities. One of my most joy filled responsibilities that I’ve taken on while being here is to go to school lunches. Which means I get to go to high school, middle school, and elementary lunches. Its so entertaining to see kids/teens light up when you walk into their lunchroom. Frequently, pestering me with the question of “why are you here?!”. The answer that I normally give goes like “to see you guys of course” or “because I wanted to hang out with you”. They never really accept these answers even though I’ve been coming to their school for almost three months now. This playful response marks a much darker, underlying problem that I’ve seen repeatedly throughout my time here. The reason their so shocked by a strange bearded, white guy coming to their school is because so many of them aren’t valued or cared for by adults in their life. When you’ve been told countless times by your caregiver that your good for nothing or your left at home with all your younger siblings by your caregiver who wants to go out and drink, why would you think you’re worth anything? When you live in a broken down shed in someone’s back yard without food, how are you going to get algebra homework done? When your parents decide that they don’t want you at the house and kick you out at fourteen to find shelter on your own, how are you going to feel? When you live in a crack house with your younger sister, how do you think past living today. These aren’t instances that I’m making up from stories I’ve heard second hand. These are kids, real kids that I’ve spent time with. Teenagers that I’ve driven to youth group on Tuesdays or sat next to at YoungLife meetings. I can’t begin to tell you how many angry drive homes I’ve had since working here. To see injustice so blatant, so irrefutably and unmistakably wrong. To hug a little girl one day and have her shipped away by child protective services the next. People here go through hell, so when a random guy shows up at your school to sit next to you to eat an undercooked, lunch cafeteria hot dog, you wonder what he’s peddling. The funniest and saddest question I’ve gotten while here was asked at one of these school lunches. When I told them I moved here from Florida their response was a single word, “why…..why would you ever choose to move to White Swan”. They were so shocked that anyone would move to the center of their living nightmare.

My goal is not to depress or upset you though. There is a duality to the rez that I speak about frequently to those that care to ask me about what it’s like here, brokenness and beauty. An important hardship about working here is to balance these two ideas. It is unhealthy to only focus on the negative brokenness that I listed above. Additionally, it is also unrealistic to focus only on the beauty that is seen in cute pictures or stories I post. This advice is most needed on my part, for when I get sidetracked by the hardships I see. I also try to keep in mind the beautiful things that I’ve seen over the past few months. I’ve seen teens who live in unimaginable situations come to accept Christ. Heard testimony from a young woman who overcame addiction and has become a leader within the church. Seen multiple other youth love on the kids within the church just as they were loved by church staff, interns, and one-week team members over the past fifteen years. I’ve seen God direct situations and circumstances for the better even when I can’t begin to understand what He’s doing. I wrote in the middle of the summer about a group of kids that I had grown attached too. They were left home alone for days without food and most of them were still in diapers. Without warning one day they were evicted from the house they were at and taken by CPS to places unknown to me. I spent months wondering what had happened to them until a month ago when I saw two of them playing outside on a totally different part of the reservation. Furthermore, this week we held our annual Halloween “Trunk or Treat” at church. Imagine my surprise when who should come walking cheerfully down the gravel, but these same children. Native America is the forgotten third world nation in the heart of the United States, but someone hasn’t forgotten them, not for a single second of their existence. I daily need to remind myself that God loves the community here infinitely more and better than I ever could. I hope you don’t take this as a depressive rant from me even if that’s how it began in my head. God is at work here, doing mighty things even if He must use weak servants like me. He has plans for the rez, plans for Sacred Road, and plans for the future generation that is being brought up here at Hope Fellowship.

I urge you to pray/continue to pray for the ministry here. Please pray for the kids here who are abused and neglected by their birth family. Pray for the teens who are fighting to graduate when they don’t even know where their going to be sleeping tonight. Pray for the group of leaders that God is raising among the youth right now. Pray for the staff who tirelessly serve with humility and hearts full of love. Pray for the spiritual warfare that seems to run rampant throughout the rez. Pray for those who do not have adequate housing, with winter’s arrival hastening on. Pray for those that have yet to hear the gospel here, on other reservations, and in places around the world. Please pray.

Your brother in Christ,

Trey