Wounded Knee Ministry Report-May 2014

May 29, 2014

Jesus instructed His disciples on tending to the wounded, oppressed, and captives:

We found that our time in Wounded Knee to be extremely intense. Yes we know, for many of you who know us, you’ve said, “you guys are intense!” Well yes I suppose we are a bit intense, but people are dying and time is short!

To us Wounded Knee is ground zero in our vision for the Healing of America. As you recall we felt the Lord saying that “America cannot stand as long as there is a wounded knee.” Wounded Knee represents one of the most horrific examples of our nation’s ability to inflict pain, suffering, and death upon a people group simply because they stood in the way of what many at the time considered our national destiny.

The current state of Wounded Knee stands out not only as a festering wound to this nation, but as evidence before almighty God and the courts of heaven as to the tremendous injustice perpetrated upon one nation by another. Wounded Knee represents a people whose livelihood, freedom, and destiny were decimated and cut short for the sake of expediting coast to coast conquest and domination.

As long as Wounded Knee remains in its current state of despair, hopeless, and impoverishment, it serves as testimony before the Judge of all the earth of His church’s failure to implement His mandate for true justice to be established in the earth (Isa. 42:4).

Pastor Hollowhorn has told us that although many ministries have come to Wounded Knee, little has changed for his people. They remain hopeless, hurting, unhealed, and stuck in the abyss of despair. He said although many other ministries have come, none have focused on the healing of the Lakota people. He says that’s what makes FNCM different.

We told him and his wife Sylvia that we are in it with them for the long haul. We are not looking for flash in the pan ministry experiences, we’re not looking for numbers, but we’re looking to help Pastor Stanley and Sylvia, and dedicated believers establish a foundation that builds towards community transformation. Together, we want to build a foundation where Jesus will come to visit the people of Wounded Knee and the communities of Pine Ridge on a regular basis.

One of our goals on this trip was to spiritually secure the church property against demonic onslaughts and to pray for pastors family members. This past year Pastor Stanley’s family and home has been under tremendous spiritual assault with sickness among family members and appliance breakdowns.

We arrived in Wounded Knee Sunday evening (May 11th) just in time for an honoring ceremony for two elders who were WW II Veterans. Native people are very patriotic and have never backed away from fighting for this nation. Many have served in every war since the revolutionary war.

Right from the beginning we saw the intensity of the community’s situation. One distraught mother came asking for help and with weeping; telling us of how each one of her four teenagers was contemplating suicide. Although our team had a chance to pray with this woman, we gave her some prayer materials and will be in continued follow up by phone

For us everything starts with prayer and ends with prayer. Part of our strategy is to strengthen and encourage the pastor and his family, along with key individuals he is working with. Together, we are working with them to build a small prayer team to start, and then they can begin strategic prayer to break strongholds off their community.

Prayer on the land is a necessity if things are ever going to change in Wounded Knee but first, we must strengthen God’s people on the ground, and help bring hope and healing to key gatekeepers there.

There were certain things we felt the Lord wanted to accomplish this trip and one was to minister deliverance and healing to community members. Therefore, the first two days we prepared our team by giving them intensified training on specific strategies for praying with individuals.

We felt the Lord speaking about hopelessness and the importance for the Christians in Wounded Knee to see that God is bigger than their circumstances, and that if we pray God really can change things. Linda was supposed to teach on prophetic intercession Wed and Thurs evenings but sensed instead to first show those attending the Sentinel Group’s documentary on the First Nations revival in the Artic.

The movie encouraged those present and prepared their hearts for the intercessory prayer training over the next couple of evenings. Ivan taught on The Blessings of God, and removing the barriers that hinder us in receiving God’s Blessings during the weekdays.

Throughout the week we met and prayed with people who were in tremendous crisis due to lifelong traumatic situations. Suicidal thoughts and attempts are regular part of most families’ existence. Alcohol and drugs affect many in the community.

Our new team members were shocked on our outreach visits to see the incredible lack: extremely substandard housing without any furniture or maybe just 1 chair; clothes lines hanging all over the house with evidence of washing clothes by hand; subpar flooring, weather-worn roofs, children with inadequate clothing.

Only God heals. We are encouraged by those things our Lord did while we were there but recognize we are digging into very hard soil and presenting a new paradigm. Like Jesus we are focusing on bringing healing, health, and training to those God puts in our hands, however large or small.

If He grants more fine, but those who live in Wounded Knee must be able to stand, persevere, and battle to advance God’s agenda, pushing back the enemy in every quarter. We are there to teach, equip, support, counsel, encourage, build up, empower, and release.

Often the western church looks for exciting moments and quick fixes. However, FNCM’s ministry is one of focused prayer and persevering advancement which often calls for in-the-trenches warfare. Not many want to go there but without it we will not win the war in most Native communities.

We ask that you pray about supporting our outreach to Native communities and other groups. We have a real need to be able to broadcast our local trainings from our base here in the heartland out to native churches like Wounded Knee, Oneida and many others. This requires having the means – financial resources and technology – to establish both ends of the broadcast link.

Even now as we prepare for return trips to Oneida in August and Wounded Knee in September we are still short on the funds needed to cover our latest Wounded Knee trip. This amounts to about $700.00 dollars.