We had company for dinner the other night. We had pizza, spaghetti, watermelon (the last from summer), Pepsi, and juice. It was a really fun time with a troubled family and we are going to see them again soon. In this family are mom and dad who haven’t married yet. They have four little girls and have been functioning together as a family for 10 years, or so, now. Mom would love to have a wedding. (We’ll be talking with them more about that soon.)
They left another reservation to find peace and a fresh start. Dad was a “gangster”/drug dealer; and what’s more, he had his foot chopped off in a fight with a drunk relative. (Amazingly, doctors were able to reattach it. But he is still in constant pain and has a lot of healing left to do. He is not getting great medical care, of course.) As they have been trying to get headed in a good direction, they have had one trial after another. The hardest trial was the suicide of a relative in their front yard this past summer. Everything in their home was to be burned or given away due to the religion of the family, but this is nothing compared to the depression and despair they have battled since then. One other relative tried to commit suicide after his cousin did. So this family has been on “suicide watch” since then.
This little family is actually not so little, their nieces and nephews are often at their little two bedroom house (the entire house is about 20 feet by 20 feet). They brought two of them to our house the other night. These two have also been at our VBS kids’ clubs in the summer with the three oldest girls from the family. Since then, they (the cousins) have been homeless and moved around so much with their mom, that they and their three siblings have not been enrolled in school yet this year.
We ate together, and talked. That night their six children and our own four played with dress up clothes, “the littlest pet shop” animals, and colored with crayons. They went to see our chickens roosting after dark and found some eggs in the hay. They swung on our swing set and slid down the slide in the dark. Then we all settled down and watched the video of their house being worked on this past summer by two teams that came to White Swan. It was a sweet reflection on good memories.
How do we love this family well? How do we know what to do or say? In order to step out in faith and believe the Gospel for them we think back on our own stories. We know that if God can save us and change us, He can do the same for them. We believe He is drawing them; and while the Holy Spirit is working, we tell them of the Good News as well as the good we see God doing in their lives. We walk with them, simply walk with them, and speak of Him who is Good!
