Ian McCollum’s 2012 Missions Trip to Lake Traverse Indian Reservation
Thank you for your support & prayers to help me go to Lake Traverse Indian Reservation this summer with EPIC Student Ministries, my church group. House Painting The two things we went to do were get rid of lead paint on houses and run a kids club that was like a small VBS. With the house that my group was mainly painting, the lead paint was already scraped so we just needed to paint the carport. When we were there, the lady who lived in the house also asked us to paint her porches, swing-set, clothes line poles and shed. These extra things all needed to be scraped. The poles had about 8 layers of paint over rust! We were only supposed to be at her house for a day with our small group. Instead it was two or three days. I spent most of my time on the carport with an adult leader because I was one of the tallest people there who could reach the high points without a ladder. After the carport, I was asked by a leader to paint the side of a house by myself. It was really cold and sprinkling and really windy which made it difficult. Kids Club We did Kids Club for three days with kids 3-10 years old. The first day I walked into the park and heard stories about what it was like from other groups who had done this before. I didn’t really know what to do so I walked over to a leader playing ball with a kid who looked to be about seven. The leader gave me the ball and said he had to go. I asked the kid his
name and he would not tell me. He didn’t say much at all. Then he threw the ball at my face. The ball then bounced off my face and landed in a trash barrel. I picked it up and threw it to him and asked a leader what the boy’s name was. He told me “Richard.” Richard had me get on my knees so he could climb on my back. Once he was on, he told me to run and pointed toward the slides in the park. I ran and he pointed someplace else and told me to run. When I was on this second leg, he started to laugh and told me to run faster. I was confused when he told me to stop. He then told me to get on the ground again so he could get on my shoulders. Nobody has ever ridden on my shoulders! He then had me run someplace else. We spent the rest of the day with him telling me where to run. After a day of shoulder ridding, on the second day with him he actually started talking more than saying “run” and pointing. On my third day with him, during the club time, he wanted to build a castle. I told him we needed to pay attention to the lesson. He got mad but one of the older kids tried to help me. After the lesson was over, he was open to more playing and we had a great time together. I encourage you to pray for Richard so that in future summers he can go to the Kids Club and listen to the lessons and learn about the gospel and hopefully accept Christ into his life.
Washing of Feet Every night we had a club time for all of the groups that were on a missions trip. The last night the workers had our leaders come up so that they could wash their feet. They then had the church groups get into circles so the leaders could wash our feet and pray over us. We ended up spending about three hours washing, praying, and crying. God used this to really move me in an unexplainable way. It made my faith deeper and stronger. Our group was alone in the dark continuing this time of worship after all the other groups had left. It was so powerful.
We did this together. Thank you for partnering with me all the way through!