Great News! The Tiny House is finally finished, and has received the stamp of approval from the county. I'm now living in it, moving things, and getting settled. Thanks for your prayers and support. Here are some pictures:
Wednesday, April 11, 2018
Sunday, March 4, 2018
Friday, June 9, 2017
Tiny House Update
After a long, confusing, and sometimes difficult process, we have a building permit! The foundation is now poured and here's a time lapse:
Tuesday, February 7, 2017
God Moves In Mysterious Ways
Kids Club is one of the biggest parts of the ministry of
Sacred Road. It’s hard knowing that we
only reach two of the seven housing projects on the Yakama Reservation. There are also three just a short drive off
the Reservation. One of these housing
projects is the tiny fishing village of Celilo, Oregon. For a while, Mary Granberry has floated the
idea of doing a Kids Club at Celilo to get a bigger view and heart for Natives
elsewhere and see a few kids there that used to live in White Swan. It was a
long shot but we decided to give it a try last summer. Here’s what happened:
We pull the trigger and load up the interns and try and do a
Kids Club at Celilo. I have everything
loaded and we head out. On the two hour
drive, Mary tries to reach our contact, Moniqah, in the community several times
without any luck. We stop for lunch at a
park, mull our options, leave the interns to eat lunch, and a couple of us
drive ahead to Celilo to try and find Moniqah.
Mary, in an effort to preemptively dampen expectations, reminds us that summer
school might have just started and the kids might not be around. As we drive through the neighborhood, looking
for house number 21, we quickly realize there are only 17 homes. Now we’re
wandering around a neighborhood where we don’t know anybody and we’re
strangers. Most Native communities are very closed and apprehensive about
outsiders. I’m fearing that we’ve
colossally failed, but we stop at a random house because there’s a man sitting
outside. Chris Granberry talks to him,
and, it turns out, Moniqah lives across the street. Moniqah is home, her kids are home, and we’re
pumped!! We tell them we’ll be back in just a few minutes and have Kids Club.
When we get back to the park, we excitedly tell the interns what happened and
I’m standing there eating my sandwich, when Emily Maxfield says, “Is that
Jason?”
I turn around and see Jason, a boy from White Swan, who we
haven’t seen in a year! I’m excited to see him and we start talking while his
teenage cousins look on quizzically. While we’re talking, I find out that Jason
is here with his uncle and they’re looking for a hose and a tarp. Soon, his uncle shows up, and it turns out…he
knows Chris Granberry because Chris married he and his wife years ago. So, we’re all standing around talking and
reconnecting and it turns out they are with the Yakama Nation Youth Activities,
and they’re going to Celilo with a bouncy house, water slide, games, crafts,
and food. This is the one day of the year when they do this kind of thing! So
now, we’re even more pumped as we quickly agree to join forces and have a joint
Kids Club-Block Party.
We had a great couple of hours playing with the kids of
Celilo, basketball with teens, making crafts with old veterans, hearing stories
from elders, and being part of a party that totally surprised us. Several elders invited us back. It was a
glorious, amazing, blessed time. Heading into it, I was full of doubt and
unbelief. I thought no one would show. I thought it would be an awkward mess. I
thought we would be given the cold shoulder by an unfamiliar community, and a
Kids Club without previous connections would crash and burn. Little did I know what God had in mind that
day. And little do I know what He’s
doing each and every day as I doubt, waiver, and dither about.
Church For Drug Addicts
On Sunday, we send
out buses and vans and pick up people.
It’s a normal thing for people to also get dropped off by friends or
family. But this wasn’t a normal
Sunday. When Marlene was dropped off, it
was clear right away that something was off.
Marlene was talking to herself, being quite loud, and acting strangely.
We suspected she was on drugs. It was
about 9:30 and Church starts at 10:30, so not many people were there yet - just
a few of us getting things set up. We
needed to do something because we didn’t want to have an intoxicated person
around the kids, because they need to feel safe. Mary Granberry talked to her and got her some
coffee. I went back to my regular
routine of preparing for the kids. During Church, Sarah asked me to open the
bathroom because the lights were off and the door was locked (a regular
occurrence with the bathrooms). After
opening it, Sarah told me someone was in the shower and clothes and water was
all over the floor. My first thought
was, “Oh man, one of the kids is taking a shower during Church!” But when I
asked Mary about it, she informed me it was Marlene in there and she was
keeping an eye on her.
The service continued and at one point, we looked out the windows
and Marlene was running around and tossing giants pieces of firewood. Fortunately, the kids went back to what they
were doing and it was a fairly normal Sunday.
After Church ended and after the kids were all gone, I found out that
the police had picked up Marlene and dropped her off before Church. I also found out that when Chris was
preaching, she was yelling and cursing in the bathroom. She wound up outside so
we could minimize the disruption and chaos.
Some of us on staff were a bit dumfounded, wondering, “Why would the
police do that, instead of arrest her for public intoxication? What were they
thinking?”
Later in the week though, as we thought about Marlene’s
situation more, we were happy the police brought her. She’s been involved with our Church off and on
for a maybe a year or so. She’s been in and out of jail, and addicted to drugs
for some time. When the police picked
her up early Sunday morning, she asked them to take her to Church, and they
did. As a Church, we work with a lot of
addicts - current, and recovering. Most of the kids are children of addicts. I
love that we are a Church for drug addicts, and when the police have someone
who needs help, the Church people can help.
The Church is a hospital for the sick, and unless the sick people are
showing up to get help, then the Church needs to rethink some priorities and
purpose. Ultimately we were unable to
help Marlene as she won’t go to rehab, but Hope Fellowship is a place where
broken people are loved, helped, and pointed in the right direction. And while she wouldn’t go to rehab that day,
Marlene knows we love and care for her and will help her when she’s ready to
get help.
Spinning Wheels
I rarely get to do work projects, so I was excited to go
with Chuck and patch over a busted out window for a family. The window was broken in an attempted break
in. Now, in freezing winter weather, the
house was cold and the family asked us for help. This winter has had the most snow in 20 years,
and almost none of it melted.
And so the adventure began.
When I go outside to gather tools, I mostly just step into
giants piles of snow and feel snow slip into my shoes. All the locks for the toolsheds are frozen. Piles
of snow block the door and all the lumber is buried, making it nearly
impossible to get. So I have to do what
I’ve been doing all winter, shovel more snow.
After a bit, I give up on the lumber and decide to get the work
truck warmed up and over to the tool shed.
However, the truck is dead and opening the hood requires moving more
snow and ice and tiny fingers to reach the latch. I don’t have tiny fingers. My fingers can just fit in the gap, and
barely touch the hood latch, but it won’t open.
I try various implements from my car before it finally gives in and the
hood is open. Jumper cables attached, I turn the key and…nothing. The car won’t crank at all and indicates the
battery is fully charged. So something
else must be wrong – the ignition switch, electrical something. I have no
idea. I abandon that truck and try
another one, except it’s blocked in by a 3 foot snow mountain. I try backing
the truck out, but I can’t get the right angle to drive around the snow
mountain. In frustration, I turn to Plan B: Drive through the snow
mountain. I rev the truck and drive
through the snow mountain, but the truck promptly makes a horrible sound, spews
black smoke, and dies. Now I’m full of
anger, frustration, and fear that I’ve blown the engine. Thankfully it
restarts, and Chuck and I load up our tools and head out to go board up a
window.
The roads are icy, forcing us to drive there slowly and get
to work. We are all ready to start screwing in the board when we discover that
all five batteries are dead – every one of them. So we have to leave the work project, drive
slowly to the church building, get working batteries, and drive back slowly. This project is taking too long, stressing me
out, and we’re cutting it close on time because Chuck has to pick up his kids
from school. A short distance from the house,
a giant farm machine armed with a massive pokey snow plow, heads straight at us. Logically, I scoot over a bit so it can pass
by. Of course, once we try to get out, the truck slides off the shoulder and is
now royally stuck. I get outside and try to push and rock it while Chuck
drives, but to no avail. Then I lose
it. I start cursing: the snow, the
truck, the farm machine that made us run off the road, the Rez, and pretty much
everything. As I’m doing that, from the
distance comes the farm machine. It
turns out he saw us slide off the road, turned around, and came back to help
us. In no time, we are out of the ditch
and the window is done with time to spare.
On the ride back, I asked Chuck, “Does it ever feel like all
we do is spin our wheels? We’re trying hard, but nothing ever happens. You just keep turning and nothing improves,
but only gets worse?” We talked for it a bit and that helped, but I had a
Eureka moment the next morning when the Men’s Prayer Breakfast met and we read
Psalm 53. Verses 1-3 lay out that
everything stinks: no one does good, nobody seeks God, and everyone is fallen
and corrupt. In verse 4 it turns: God
will punish the wicked and scatter their bones, putting them to shame and
terror. And then it ends with “Oh, that
salvation for Israel would come out of Zion! When God restores the fortunes of
his people, let Jacob rejoice, let Israel be glad.”
When I’m angry, frustrated, and sad, it’s easy for me to
look around and think: “God doesn’t care.
He doesn’t see. He’s probably
making everything more difficult for me, and laughing at my failures.” It’s
like Asaph in Psalm 73, it’s easy to slip into the belief that evil people will
win and they are happy.
But the truth is: God has sent salvation, is sending
salvation, and will send salvation so that we can rejoice and be glad. We do spin
our wheels a lot. Life can be really
hard and frustrating sometimes. But we
are not alone – God is with us, working things for our good and His glory, and
He’s put people alongside of us who can hear our gripes and hold us up when we
feel like we can’t keep going.
Wednesday, February 1, 2017
Christmas
Here are some pictures from Christmas (Service, Deliveries, and Sledding Day). But first, here's a Christmas video made by Davy Granberry.
Sledding Day:
The bus full of gifts, foodboxes, blankets, and helpers:
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