“The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me, because He has anointed Me to preach the gospel to the poor. He has sent Me to heal the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord.”
It’s easy to take something like heat for granted, until you’re in a place where warmth is a luxury, not a guarantee.
We were delivering food, diapers, clothing, and jewelry making beads to a family we had come to know near the Wounded Knee Memorial on the Pine Ridge Reservation, home to the beautiful Lakota people.
As we stepped into their trailer, we noticed something right away. There was a hole in the kitchen floor that opened straight to the cold, bare earth beneath them. The wind crept in through the cracks, flowed in like torrent, flooding the inside of the old dilapidated trailer that is a far too common site on the Rez. And when I looked out the window, I saw it…an American flag flying half staff and upside down.
A universal distress signal.
Winters here often drop to 50 below zero, and when there’s no money to fill propane tanks, the primary source of heat and cooking fuel on the plains, families simply go without. Firewood is rare out here. And the cold is merciless. Every year Pine Ridge Reservation loses infants and elderly to the bitter cold.*
So we rallied. That year, we filled five propane tanks for families on the Pine Ridge Reservation, which includes the district of Wounded Knee.
But that flag in the window changed something in us that year. It became a clear and urgent call, to make heating assistance a regular part of our Compassion Fund. Since then, we’ve delivered firewood, helped fill propane tanks, and responded to as many needs as we can, wherever we can.
But there’s still so much more to do, and we can’t possibly do it alone.
With more monthly financial partners and one time donations to our compassion fund, we can meet many more of these silent distress calls, the kind that don’t always come with words, just wind and cold and flags hung upside down.
We hear them. We see them. We respond. What would Jesus do? He would respond. Will you join us?
“For I was hungry and you gave Me food; I was thirsty and you gave Me drink;
I was a stranger and you took Me in; I was naked and you clothed Me;
I was sick and you visited Me; I was in prison and you came to Me.”
*Each winter on Pine Ridge, some elders and other vulnerable community members die from exposure to extreme cold. While official annual reservation specific figures are not publicly reported, local health observers and community members confirm that cold exposure contributes to preventable deaths in the context of poverty and inadequate housing.
