A Sweet day -- in several ways

We had a grand day at Promised Land again this Tuesday. As you can see the K-1 kids get just as close to me as they can. (a side note for my relatives.....does that look like mom sitting there or what!!!??? Knew I looked like mom but not that much!) Anyway....... We had another little boy - Kendall - ask Jesus into his heart. He was sitting right next to me and I could just about feel the Spirit at work in his heart. It is so amazing to be used by God!!!!

This was the day that we were all waiting for.....ice cream sundaes.....this was a treat that was promised the kids if they were all good--all the time. This was the first day for the little gal - Liv - on the left. She wanted to come all along but her mom never got the permission slip back to school....FINALLY she got to come. And on the best day too yet :-).


Thanks again for your lavish support!!! Keep lifting everything up in prayer!!
Gary and Barb

to Michigan and back again.........

We had a wonderful time over Thanksgiving visiting with our whole family.....Yes! even Rick was home from the Netherlands. And a nice bonus was meeting Tim's (Marti's financee) parents who came up from South Carolina.

Meeting with our church family was also GOOD! Such awesome support from everyone!!! And a special thank you to Sally Hulsman's Sunday School class for the big cards for us and the bookmarks for the kids out here. They put 6 REAL special verses on a "spot" of paper and hung them from ribbons. It will be so much fun to share these with our group of the same age.

Traveling back to South Dakota was something......!!!! We started out after dinner with snow right away, but nothing too worrisome. We got through Chicago in fine shape....and we were very happy to be heading west because the east bound traffic was tied up for about 9 miles. We continued on with sloppy wet snow --- Gary drove all the way and that made me very happy!! By evening the temperature stayed at 34 degrees so we felt rather confident that ice was not forming. We made it to Iowa City and decided to stop -- driving at night is not something either one of us enjoy. Oh! and if you did know --- we took our two oldest grandsons (Trenton and Austin) along with us -- they will stay until Christmas...... So the boys were real happy to know that we had landed at a motel with a pool.

Morning brought BAD roads. All the slop had frozen and there were spots that were awful!! From Iowa City to Des Moines we counted 70 cars in the ditch....some were in worse shape than others.....some had rolled....some had gone down into steep places and so on. We KNOW that God was watching over us once again because we made it through all the bad stuff and on through to dry roads where I could take over driving.

The boys got to bed rather late because excitement is high :-) so this morning has started rather slowly. And now they have gone "down the hill" with Grandpa to have a tour of the ranch. It looks like it will be a beautiful day as you can see with the glorious sunrise.

At Release Time today we will have the younger groups and we will be having ice cream sundaes today. This is the treat that was promised for good behavior.

We cannot say Thank You enough!! All the prayers that are being lifted!! We praise God nightly for his faithfulness.

Gary and Barb

JDC - a visit we always look forward to.

Today started out in a very beautiful fashion!!! ------Just to let you know - we have this type of beauty out here a LOT!!! :-) Also -- a better picture of the Detention Center.

At our noon meal our devotions were on Romans 12:9-21.....some really hard things to hear-----"love those who persecute you"..... But we felt that it would be a good place to start with the kids at the JDC.....Not directing this passage at them necessarily but that the Bible is full of directions for us on how we are to live our life for God. And so we headed back to the JDC with a little bit of a direction for our visit with the kids that have prayed to receive Christ. When we arrived we gave the guard a list of the people we wanted to see. He took it and left ....but then came right back. "You want to see a guard??!!" Well, yes we did. But unfortunately he was not working that shift. But we had to laugh at his response. Two of the kids were no longer there....Tiana and Nicole. But we were able to see the other 4. After seeing some of them several times they are much more open with us....not that they share a lot about themselves but it just seems like they feel more comfortable with us....we get a lot more smiles! We had told the kids it would be good if they would begin reading the Bible in the book of John. Jalynn had read to chapter 8 and Robert had read to chapter 15.......he said "I just kept going". He also said that he was in a part that was about "how to live". Cheyenne and Lelana were still not real comfortable with us it seemed.

We might not get to see these kids again. We will miss 2 weeks with them while we go home to Michigan. But we did get several of their addresses and so hope to communicate with them in that way.

Thank you for keeping these young people in your prayers. :-) See some of you real soon!!

Love to all! Gary and Barb

Wanbli Wiconi Tipi - JDC

It's Thursday and we were able to go to the Juvenile Detention Center once again. We always get there and want to get a good precise count of the number of kids....... but for some reason it never happens. Plus it's different every week. But we had approximately 16-17 kids there tonight. The lesson was on Enoch and how he had a close friendship with God..... "Enoch walked with God" We asked "How can you be a friend with the Almighty God - Creator of All things??!!" Well, Enoch would show us how. The Bible verse for the night was Colossians 1:10 Then you will live the kind of life that honors and pleases the Lord in every way. You will produce fruit in every good work and grow in the knowledge of God. The kids really listen --- every time! They aren't afraid to look at you and let you look at them. We also listened to a song by "Broken Walls" - a group of Native American singers who use the native sound and drums along with a Christian message. The song talked about "the River of Life that's flowing from his throne. Won't you come on in and see - this river will set you free". When we gave the invitation to ask Christ into their hearts there were
seven hands that went up. One was the guard!!!! Three of them were kids that had already prayed to receive Christ the last time we were there. But we discussed it with them.....Robert said " yeah, I really wasn't sure if I had to again " But it was still something he wanted and so he indicated it again. We gave them Bibles of their own and asked them to begin reading in the Book of John. Gary asked them to read a chapter a night and when we come back in 3 weeks they should be about done....(Jalynn checked that out...how many chapters there were).

One of the young men who had indicated he wanted to pray to receive Christ didn't stay with the rest of them. It could be that the thought of the peer pressure was just too great for him.....because I had noticed how intently he had listened..... maybe next time. Please pray for him -- sorry but we don't know his name - but God does!!

The guard said that he was pretty much "traditional" (I took that to mean traditional Lakota)... but he wanted to know God more. And so I told him that he had to truly believe that Jesus had died for him and rose again and that He was the only way for salvation. "Do you want to do that?" He said "Yes".

So if you would add these names to your prayers....Cheyenne, Tiana and Tom.

When Gary and I leave there we are so in awe of God and the work he is performing in these young peoples lives. We feel so overwhelmed that we can be used in such a way. PRAISE GOD FROM WHOM ALL BLESSINGS FLOW!!

Thank you!!!! Without your prayers....... we hate to think what would be!

Gary and Barb

sharing a discovery I made......

Just a little tidbit----- I'm probably way behind everyone.......but I discovered that if you clip on the photos on our blogspot they will instantly enlarge and you can get a better view of them.

Love to all!!! Barb

The storm in Parmalee.......

This morning as we were listening to the news on the radio we were told that the community of Parmalee has been without power since the storm last week (Thursday, Nov. 6) and it is expected that they will be without for 7 to 14 more days. Parmalee is on the Rosebud Indian Reservation -- to the north of us about 20 miles. They asked for lamp oil, batteries and food.

We were just given a large donation of small blankets from the Love, INC store and the Overisel Reformed ladies had been busy knitting and crocheting slippers. We vividly remembered how cold it can get without electricity and so we decided that Parmalee would be a good place for some of these blankets and slippers. There was also meat left in the freezer from this summers Prairie Light Youth Camp.

We loaded up our truck with blankets, slippers (not all of what we were given), 3 hams, 8 packages of ham lunch meat, approximately 15 pounds of hamburg and 20 pounds of Canadian Bacon.....not a lot of food but any little bit helps. One of the gentlemen said "ham and add beans".. We brought it to a little building in Parmalee that serves as a church. It is the only building in the community that had heat -- where they were cooking hot food and giving out the donations. Everything was very much appreciated.

The photo above is what the wind did to the power lines coming into Parmalee.

Please pray for the community of Parmalee. They are a community that has been wracked with 5 or 6 suicides of young people this past year, and this only adds to their pain.

Thank you for your awesome prayer support!!! God is GOOD!!

Gary and Barb

Before church on Sunday morning - November 9

The trees were covered with frost this morning and with the sun shining on them they were a beautiful sight.

These deer were there at 10:00 in the morning as we headed to Valentine to go to church at the Assembly of God. Is he magnificent or what!?!-----right next to the road - proud as can be! As we came home at 1:00 in the afternoon.....HE WAS STILL THERE!! same place!

This herd of mule deer were still in South Dakota (the top photo was in NE)..bedded down on the east side of the road......it looks like they are permanent fixtures for the day also.

These beautiful pheasants must have kept warm overnight on the haybales. And now were enjoying the sunshine.

The roads are a story in themselves..... You do NOT want to meet anyone in these areas ---- unless you've got your backup skills down pat!!

This is just west of us ......

We want to share some photos of our Sunday morning. We took time out early in the morning to witness some of God's beautiful creation and some of the winter "wonderland" - which can come in all shapes and forms. Some good some not so "good"....but awesome nun-the-less. We also saw flocks!!! of grouse and lots of jack rabbits.

We did not have church in Lakeview because of the bad roads and also because the pastor who was scheduled to come out (and I am not sure how far he had to travel but many come from the east side of the state) is in his 80's and the elders of Lakeview decided it wasn't wise for him to be traveling on these roads.

We hope you enjoy ........

Gary and Barb