First Day On The Reservation
Well, the first day on the ‘Rez is half way through. The group divided into 4½ teams which worked in various places.
Four of us, me included, went to begin the project at Mr. Slowbear’s house. The church has had a heart for him since Pastor Ted met him last year. He is over 70 years old, and lives alone about 2.5 miles off the main road, US 18. He has no electric or gas, he does have a woodstove in the center of his room and a water spigot outside. The house is made of two distinguishable parts: An older L-shaped set of two rooms, and an addition that is about 8 years old. He apparently lives almost entirely in the addition. The room behind it looks like it was remodeled about the same time as the addition was added, and the last room, the base of the “L”, looks as though it has not been maintained for some time.
Mr. SlowBear's interior before cleanup
While the ladies worked on cleaning up the garbage outside, the men worked on cleaning out the inside, which was home to at least five dogs and six puppies. There was an average of an inch of dirt, dog dirt, and garbage on the floor in the addition. We didn’t touch the second room, because it didn’t appear to be used. When that was done, we fixed the screens. We were considering putting in the new door, but we noticed that the old door seemed to be broken for a reason – so the dogs could get in and out. So we may need to put in a dog door.
Another crew went around the neighborhoods of Oglala to hand out fliers about the VBS that we will be holding this week, starting tomorrow. When they were almost done, the battery on the van went out – fortunately God sent us looking for them at just that time, and we were able to jump the battery. Back to the canvassing, please pray for the children’s hearts, especially for Thursday and Friday, when the whole field is total mayhem. The ½ crew went to the field to clean it up and cut the grass, and then help canvass the neighborhood. I call them the ½ crew, but they do a full crew’s job.
The final traveling crew (which hasn’t returned at the time of this writing) went down to White Clay to begin working again on that back room.
And the food crew stayed here to help with the lunch that the Rec Center has every day, and prepare drinks and food for the crews that went out. It’s nice to come back and have everything taken care of already – no cleaning up from the morning, no setting up for the evening.
Well, we’re looking forward to the rest of the week! Please pray that we have patience with one another, especially in the heat.
