Day 3's adventures

Good morning everyone. We decided to turn the blog posts into the day-after posts. So here's the scoop on yesterday's events.

We, the team, had a day (day 3) of stories along with finally starting work on the tiny homes.

As you may know from yesterday's post, we got to meet Pinky Clifford. She and her wonderful staff have been working on improving the housing situation of Pine Ridge. While making tiny homes is one of Pinky's dreams for her community, her calling has been to help her people by helping them get financial assistance and better credit scores, as well as reminding them that it's ok to have ownership. (Traditionally, that which is too much or too big to carry is given away.)

It was really cool to hear her story and how it has changed her community of Fraggle Rock. The community got its name from the show Fraggle Rock because a police officer needed to call it something when the area didn't have a name yet.

Along with exploring Fraggle Rock, we got to explore the tiny city of White Clay, Nebraska, which is where we're staying this week.

It was fun to see the town with its colorful church and storefronts, and along with the walking tour we got to hear the story of how the town changed for the better and is still changing.

Abram, also known as Curly Sioux, shared his story of how he came to serve at Lakota Hope. When he first started volunteering here, the town of White Clay had four liquor stores since it was outside the Pine Ridge reservation.  Seeing the people on the streets intoxicated, the law enforcement not being adequate, and the hopelessness hanging over the town, Abram moved to have the liquor stores legally removed.

It was a long process and, for a time, it looked like the liquor stores would win the case. But God moved in unexpected ways and Abram won the case on a Nebraska law loophole. While the case was going on, the liquor store owners were trying to renew their license but, during that time, a church had made itself home in White Clay. The law was that liquor stores couldn't be within certain distance of a church, so the liquor stores were closed on a technicality.

The town changed for the better, the level of intoxication dropped dramatically, and people living in the town started to feel hope again.

After exploring, we finally got our hands dirty by working on the tiny home after lunch. It was a bit confusing at first, figuring out what still needed to be done since each house is at different stage in the construction process. But that didn't stop us from jumping right in.

After a long day of adventures, we had our evening devotional by a smoldering camp fire with a scoop of ice cream. Paul and Shelby shared their stories of being the hands and feet of God in White Clay and had this bible passage to share with us.

Matthew 25:35-46