Juvenile Detention Center

This picture isn't the greatest.....part of the building is covered by the "hillside". This is the Juvenile Detention Center (Wanbli Wiconi Tipi) --- a beautiful facility -- housing at this time about 20 young people. It has 47 available beds. It is a very new facility -- I believe it was finished in 2004. We had a tour of it on Wednesday and were VERY impressed with the programs they have for the young people. We asked if they would allow us to come in and do a religious program with their young people. "We would love to have you come and help us with our youth." And so we started immediately....last night (Thursday - October 16) from 6:00 - 7:00 we gave the "kids" our lesson on Creation. Again we wanted to start right at the beginning. We had a lot of fun with these kids....joking and laughing. The guard that brought them to the room was invited to stay and he did - so we knew things would stay under control.

I (Barb) went over a Bible verse with the group - Hebrews 11:3 It is by faith that we understand that the whole world was made by God's command. In the CEF (Child Evangelism Fellowship) way of doing things --- we should repeat the verse several times to get it "into their heads and hearts". So we worked on getting it said loud enough "so the guard down the hall could hear it". It worked pretty good because they said it pretty loud several times. Then Gary introduced the lesson with his snowshoes -- something he had made -- but only God can make something out of nothing......

After the lesson and singing the song How Great Thou Art, we went over the Review Questions. We had warned them ahead of time that we were going to check to see how well they listened. The very first question was "What does the word Genesis mean?" I thought that was a tough one!!!! The young man in the far corner shot his hand up....."beginning". I was very impressed. Gary had only mentioned that in passing right at the beginning of the lesson.

We passed out finger jello :-) and cookies at the end and sang one more song.

I really look forward to next week. You could tell that these kids have heard God's message before....one knew that we have to repent in order to go to heaven and everyone of the twelve questions got a correct answer from someone! Now they just need to change that head knowledge into heart knowledge. Perhaps we can bring them a step closer.

Please keep this group in your prayers (sorry no pictures of these young people - as you can understand it is not allowed).

Thank you once again for your awesome support!

Gary and Barb