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It’s been a long but good week so far. Day 4 seemed to pose extra challenges for several teams.

The travel team arrived at Little Eagle for a couple hours. The number of children there was lower than other sites, but our portrait team still took 22 family portraits! That was a new record! Unfortunately, we had to leave after only two hours and go to Bullhead, where they took 32 portraits! So suffice to say, our portrait team stayed late printing all of them out.

The folks at Bullhead reported that one member on their team had accepted Christ in addition to a Native! 2 conversions for the Lord, praise God! They seemed to be really strengthening ties from previous years as I saw several address exchanges with promises to write and send goodies.

Today is our last day capped off by a powwow at Fort Yates tonight. Some teams are heading on this evening, while most others are leaving in the morning.

Please pray for continued strength today and safe travel this weekend.

Enjoy yesterday’s pictures!

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On Day 4 of Week 2, we are posting up Week 1 Day 4! Please pray for us as we work today. We’ll try our best to have today’s updated posted this evening.

We had a busy day Thursday with construction continuing at Ft. Yates, McLaughlin, and an additional unexpected couple of jobs at Little Eagle Community Center.

The travel team had two site carnivals today – Bull Head & McLaughlin….lots of bouncing, face painting, popcorn, and snowcones. Even had a surprise tire explosion! Medical team continued to see many folks and continued with handing out dresses and jams as well as foot care, health screenings, and reading glasses.

The numbers continue to grow at all three sites – Little Eagle, McLaughlin, and Porcupine. Little Eagle and Porcupine folks are excited about seeing their old friends from VA at the same time they have enjoyed making new friends. The folks at Porcupine want to know if we’ll come back next year! So all in all things are going well.

Some of the supplies were delivered today for the construction work at Cannon Ball next week! And we understand the 2nd truck left Roanoke for Standing Rock – we’re ready!

Here are pictures from last week:

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Day 2

John Powell and myself are part of a travel team to take pictures at each site. Yesterday we were diverted to take John’s truck to Lowes in Bismarck to get supplies for the team at Fort Yates. On our way out of Grand River Casino & Hotel, we ran into Harold Cook. Our Lowes trip now included supplies for the team at McLaughlin.

Now, for those that don’t know, Bismarck is 2.5 hours away from Mobridge, the location of our hotel. Combined with stops at several sites for money and instruction plus a 3 hour visit at Lowes to round up all the supplies, yesterday was quite long.

Thus, we don’t have pictures from yesterday. We were supposed to be at Fort Yates, so we started there this morning.

Day 3

The day started wet and cool cold. Rain + wind + July 29 + 55 degrees = One Chilly Morning. The rain moved out by the middle of the afternoon, but still the temperature only went up to the mid 60s. We’re not complaining though – we’d rather take highs in the 60s and 70s than the 90s and 100s!

Upon arriving at Fort Yates, Eric Spano of Mount Pleasant Baptist Church told us that the day before they had 70 children. Today’s numbers were lower because they were competing with a Vacation Bible School at St. Luke’s Episcopal Church. Still, they had a large crowd.

Several children made wooden airplanes and were “flying” them around the building. Others decorated hats and bags. Out of the 30 plus people on that team from Mount Pleasant, only 3 were there last year. Still, they seemed to have everything in hand.

Curiously, only one family asked to have a portrait done yesterday. Very few adults come down to the center – mainly kids came.

We were told the same would be true at McLaughlin. Yesterday they served 140 meals, but only a couple adults showed up. Surprisingly word got out and 18 family portraits were taken!

By my estimate about 60 or children were there to eat dinner along with about a dozen adults. Still, we were told this was a “low” day!

Large construction projects are happening at both Fort Yates and McLaughlin. An addition is being added to First Baptist Church, Fort Yates. A house behind the center at McLaughlin is being renovated.

Please pray for strength – many of us are still willing to serve but are weary. Please pray that the construction projects will be completed on time. Pray that in all things Jesus would be emulated through us.

Below are 40 pictures with captions from today.

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Yesterday was a great start to our second week. The crew at Wakpala were nervous as, being their first time on the reservation, they were responsible for opening a brand new site. By all accounts, that went very well. The community center is a lot smaller than the ones at other sites, but they made it work.

The team at Little Eagle believe that, because there was a team present last week, the center would be clean. However, the center was open all night after the powwow this past weekend, so they had to use some elbow grease to clean before starting their programs.

Bob and Judy spent the morning at Ft. Yates helping the new team there get acquainted to the community. Afterwards, they traveled around to nearly all the sites to make sure everything was going okay.

I spent most of my day in Cannon Ball. The team there had a large crowd on their hands. There were at least 25 children, about 10 women, and even a few men. 13 families received family portraits from the traveling photography team.

The Roanoke team there worked with a high school team from Community Bible Church out of Cedar Rapids, Iowa. The Iowa church has sent teams to Cannon Ball for over 20 years.

Several of the food teams reported higher numbers than expected. Because we’re serving at the end of the month, many families have run out of benefits for July. One site leader reported that 10 different people inquired about a meal as they were hungry.

Please pray for God to provide resources for feeding more than expected. Please pray for continued strength as we love on these families. Please pray for Bob and Judy as they are our problem solvers. Please pray for safe travel as teams shuttle back and forth.

Enjoy these pictures and the following video. The first few are from Sunday’s meeting at Cannon Ball.  The rest are scenes from Cannon Ball on Monday.

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