Today our South Dakota Lucas family was split no less than three different directions--Crystal, who had driven a van load of Amish was in Missouri unexpectedly running into missionary guest speaker Katie Saylor at the church Crystal used to attend when she was teaching at Mt. Zion; Jonathan, Danny, and Hannah to Lakota Chapel; and me to St. Francis Holiness Chapel where I was to tell the children's story for the day. When I found myself arriving twenty minutes early, I decided to keep driving slowly down a few streets of St. Francis to pray for the community.
My first turn was into the parking lot of this huge purple church, St. Francis Mission. Little did I know that only an hour and a half later after service at our own church, my husband would be sitting down with an elderly couple, hearing their stories, including ones from the wife who attended school at this very purple church-related mission when she was a girl.
Her memories were not happy ones, for at that time, indigenous children were harshly treated even by church people. The Catholic teachers yelled at the students for not speaking English even though their native language was Lakota, made them hold out both hands and hit them with rulers until the children cried, and various other cruel practices.
I drove slowly around, praying for the community, the homes, the schools, and the children.
And back at Lakota Chapel, Jonathan listened to the man tell how he, who himself was from Honduras with the native language of Spanish, married this lady, whose original language was Lakota, but who had learned Spanish and English. Later he became a Christian, but his wife had been so wounded by the religious school at this purple church that she was not the least interested in God, the Bible or religion. For seven years, he fasted and prayed that she would also come to know the Lord.
Finally one day he spoke to his wife once again about the Bible. Arguing that it wasn't true, his wife turned away from him as usual. But when she did, a strange thing happened. She heard a voice saying, "What if it is? You've never read it!"
The unnerving thing about the voice was that the words were in English, and the husband at that time only spoke to her in Spanish! The wife knew the voice was God.
There had been power in that voice, and the wife began to read God's Word. Soon she, too, became a believer. Her husband wanted to be a pastor, and she couldn't see herself being a pastor's wife, but today the two are pastoring a church in Sioux Falls.
The couple had other stories, too, such as how earlier in their marriage, the wife did not like to wear seat belts and the husband hated to nag her. Then came the day when a truck pulled out in front of them and they hit it. The wife catapaulted through the windshield and hit a tree--and died!
Someone ran to the nearest house to dial 911, and EMTs revived her. She was flown by helicopter to a hospital and has lived ever since--most likely careful to wear seatbelts after that!
They are in the area for this coming weekend where they are making Indian frybread and other edibles at a Rosebud Reservation Fair.
Coming up to a street crossing in St. Francis this morning, I noticed this upside down stop sign, and thought how it reflected the broken and upside down condition of much of the native people, just like the condition that wife was in before God saved her. Help us pray that the powerful voice of God would continue to speak even today to lost men and women, boys and girls.
My story today for about 27 children was about a little lost kitten named Secret, a true story that I experienced as an eight-year-old girl when my family lived in Keystone, SD. After hunting for three days for the lost kitten, we found that she had somehow climbed to the roof and explored the chimney, falling down into it and finally being rescued when we heard her mewing somewhere and Dad took down the chimney pipe to the woodstove to find it! I told the children how if they feel lost and lonely and sad and sinful, God is looking for them just like we looked for that lost kitten until we found her; that if they need to be found, to cry to God and pray just like that kitten mewed for help, and that God will help them.
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