Monday & Tuesday in Montana

Monday started with the students prayer walking from the Thomas' house to the church. There are several pictures of them walking through town to give you an idea of Poplar.

Once they arrived at the church, everything had to be removed from the basement, put on a trailer and moved to a Quonset Hut which is owned by the Hess family to store while the basement is being repaired. Tables, chairs, everything in the kitchen cabinets, freezers (and everything inside the freezers), etc had to be carried up the basement stairs. Vance and Cathy were amazed at how quickly this job was done by the team.

The team then broke up into several groups - one group went to prepare a house to paint; one group painted over graffiti around town; one group helped move everything to the quonset hut; and one group moved sandbags at the Hess' house.

Jase has challenged the team that no matter what their job is for the day to be an intercessor wherever they go for the native people. We have learned so much about the culture here in the evenings from Vance & Cathy as we have dinner and fellowship.

The teen pregnancy rate is 2000% higher here. Teen suicide rate here is extremely high especially with young teenage girls. Over a 3 year period, there were 18 suicides and 17 of them were 13 and 14 year old girls. Alcoholism is rampant and sexual and physical abuse of  young girls is very common. A convenient store a block from Vance & Cathy's house sells more beer in a year than any other store in the US. All of these facts have just amazed me. The oppression on Fort Peck reservation is staggering. Satan has a stronghold here - please pray for these people.

Today, Tuesday, we broke up into several different teams again. Painting continued at Pearl's house; graffiti all over town was painted; cars were washed; and cabinets were removed from the church basement.

This evening the team went to the Juvenile Detention Center. We are not allowed to take pictures there. We were put in a "recreation room" there. It has 2 basketball goals. The students who came in were from the ages of 14-17. Our team sang a song just to break the ice. Pastor Vance and Jase talked to them about why we were here from Texas. Dexter Longley, Sarah Thompson, and Coach Burtch gave their testimonies. It was a powerful time and they really listened. We then played "knockout" and almost all of the students interacted and played with us. Vance told us that it was the quickest that he had seen the students interact. We plan to go back once or twice before we leave. Please pray that the walls these students have are broken down and that they will share with our students. Most importantly pray that they will come to know Christ.

After dinner, we ended our evening with a sweet prayer time in small groups. I love the sound of believers praying!