Wednesday, August 20, 2014

August 2014 Newsletter

First Baptist Church of Eagle Butte

P.O. Box 170, Eagle Butte, SD 57625

(605) 964-3617 (Office) / (605) 891-1704 (Pastor’s Cell)

August 20, 2014


Dear Friends,


I begin this letter with my deepest apologies, since I have not sent out a newsletter in about three months.  The truth is that so many things have been happening so quickly around here that I have scarcely had time to write about them all! 


The summer began, of course, with the end of the school year.  Windswept Academy celebrated the little ones’ graduation from Kindergarten, and the older childrens’ completion of another grade level.  The ceremony was crowned with Windswept’s school play, an original piece written by our own Rachel Cowan.  Not to go into too much detail, but I played two roles-the Philistine giant Goliath, and an emissary of a top-secret government agency!  The children played their parts well, and their families were all exceedingly proud.



As the summer progressed, our church sent a number of our Sunday School kids to Victory Center Bible Camp-a Christian Camp near the outskirts of Pierre, SD.  Here, they played games, sang songs, ate good food, and enjoyed all the joys that Summer camp usually affords.  But unlike most Summer camps, Victory Center exposes the children to a healthy amount of Biblical teachings and Christian testimony on a daily basis!  On most years, our church sends about three of our Sunday School children to the camp.  But this year, God opened the door for us to send more-fourteen, to be exact!  We rejoice in His miraculous provision to extend the reach of this ministry, and look forward to continue sending children to camp for years to come.


Baptisms!  Woo Hoo!





If there’s one thing Baptist ministers love, it’s a good baptism-and I am no exception.  This summer, I had the great pleasure of baptizing three young people from First Baptist Church-Precious, Kaydance and Allisa.  Above, you can see Allisa coming up out of the water.  Each of them prayed to receive Christ months ago, and I have since put each of them through a discipleship class, so they could know what they were getting into.  After each of them had a better idea of what the Christian faith entailed, I asked them if they still wanted to follow Jesus.  After each of them had given me a resounding “yes”, I scheduled their baptism.  What a joyful day that was!


A Great Stride Forward for First Baptist Church



Recently, the Heartland Baptist Association decided to bless our church with a special honor-the deed to the property on which our church and parsonage stand!  President Brad Maupin himself was on hand to present the deed to us, which I joyfully accepted.  This marks a great gesture of the association’s confidence in the future stability of our church for years to come.  God is good!


A Visit From Some New Friends


In the summertime, First Baptist Church plays host to mission teams that arrive from all over the country to minister to the Lakota people.  These teams provide the additional assistance that we need to accomplish our biggest goals.  This summer, our teams were used of God to accomplish great things.  I am happy to honor them here.






The first group to arrive was from United Bethel Mennonite Church in Cincinnati, Ohio.  This group, consisting primarily of young people, brought Vacation Bible School to Eagle Butte, as well as to the outlying settlements of Iron Lightning and Bear Creek.  In the evenings, they would sing songs of beautiful harmony in praise to God. Every part of their work was deeply felt and appreciated.






When they were not engaged in doing Vacation Bible School, they were doing service projects in the church and general community.  One woman in our community had a garage that was covered with graffiti.  But the young people of United Bethel painted it over to look like new.  On of the light fixtures in our kitchen stopped working, so they kindly replaced the light fixture.  We were overjoyed by the work that these brothers and sisters in Christ did among us, and we hope to work alongside them again in the future.


A Visit From Some Old Friends





The people of Hamilton Baptist church have been leading a confederation of churches to Eagle Butte every Summer for the past 14 years, and each time the effect has been nothing short of magnificent.  This Summer was no exception, as they put on a Vacation Bible School in Eagle Butte for all the young people of the community.  All week long, everyone from age 4 to 94 had something at the church that they could go to.  There was a regular VBS for the children, a special VBS for teenagers, and an evening Bible study for the adults.  I’m happy to say that three children professed faith in Jesus Christ during this VBS!

As if this were not enough, the group also put on two basketball camps-one in Eagle Butte, and one in the outlying settlement of Cherry Creek.  The young men of both communities absolutely loved playing at the camp.  But they also heard the personal testimonies of those who were running the camp, and were exposed to the Gospel. 





While all of this was going on, some of the more construction-minded men of the church set their minds to fixing things around the church.  I thought it over and asked them, “Could you take a look at the foundation of my house?  I think there might be something wrong with it.”  In the picture above, you can see what my basement wall looked like.

When these practical-minded men saw my basement wall, they were immediately alarmed, and offered to build a retaining wall to strengthen it.  I was floored by their generosity, but happily consented.  You can see their finished work in the above picture, right below the first.
But while they were trying to build the retaining wall, two other horrendous problems reared their heads.  First, they uncovered a nest of forty snakes!  FORTY!  Using snake repellent, they expertly managed to drive out the plague of snakes.  I killed the last one with a cinderblock.  Above, you can see me holding it as a trophy.
As soon as this problem had been dealt with, one of my water pipes burst, flooding my entire basement.  Fortunately, there was at least one experienced plumber on hand to replace the leaky pipe.  I later learned that the pipe had burst in February, and that only pressure had been holding it together this whole time! 
Now, see the grace of God:  My basement had three huge problems lurking within it, but God saw to it that none of them gave me any trouble until just the right people were on hand to fix it!  Such is the kindness of almighty God.


God’s Servants from Tennessee





Sevier Heights Baptist Church, from Tennessee, has been coming to Eagle Butte for several years now.  Their chief focus has always been on the outlying settlements of the reservation.  These small communities are very far removed from the main roads, and they often go unnoticed by those intending to do missions work.  It is for precisely this reason that Sevier Heights makes it their business to seek out these settlements and form relationships with their people.  Some of the youth of this group, who have been coming for a few years now, have formed long-lasting friendships with the children of these settlements.
This year, Sevier Heights went to the communities of Red Scaffold, Thunder Butte and Iron Lightning.  They carried VBS to each of these communities.  They played games, sang songs, did crafts, and presented the Gospel.  I am happy to report that two children prayed to receive Christ while attending this VBS!  Please pray for these children, as they live many miles away from any church that offers regular services.



Our Church Was Broken Into




For the third time in two years, our church has been broken into.  According to the deductions of the police department, it happened this way:
One Sunday evening, two young men climbed over the back fence and began leaning up against the church wall, where they drank a soda and threw it on the ground.  Then, they decided to try to get inside, so they tried all the back windows.  Having no success, they went around to the front and shattered one of the windows leading into our women’s restroom.  That window proved to be less convenient than they hoped, so they shattered the other one.  Then they climbed through, one of them badly cutting his hand in the process.  Then they went through the fellowship hall, opening all of the cabinets and bleeding all over the place.  Next, they found our First Aid kit in the kitchen and bandaged the hand wound.  Finally, they stole some juice and peanut butter, and left.  Seriously-they went through all of that for juice and peanut butter! 
Police took DNA samples of the blood and are on the lookout for suspects.  Our church leadership decided that, in an effort to prevent this sort of thing from happening in the future, we should put bars on our windows.  Though it grieves me that this should be necessary, we will work to make the church secure.  It was built through the sweat and sacrifice of God’s people, and we refuse to let people pick it apart.


The Church Comes Together in Support of Its’ Missionary


 As I mentioned in our last newsletter, our own Amanda Benson will be leaving us next year to become a missionary to the Philippines.  This means that she needs to spend part of this year finding sponsors, and that means sending out a lot of mailings.  Our church wanted to help her in this endeavor, so we hosted an “envelope stuffing party” at the church.  People brought potluck dishes, and everyone spent about an hour folding mailings, stuffing envelopes and licking seals.   We are overjoyed to be sending our first missionary overseas!

On a related note, if any of you are interested in finding out more about Miss Benson and her ministry, you can visit her website at oboejo.wix.com/foundfaithful

A Visit from our New Friends in Iowa






We enjoyed the great treat this year of receiving visitors from a church we had never known before- Earlham Church of Christ, based out of Iowa.  The group they sent out was primarily construction-oriented, but they also sponsored two community meals, each of which was attended by over a hundred people.  But when they set to work building things, they truly began to shine.
At our church, they did two projects that were long overdue: the construction of a changing table in the nursery, and the mounting of our two basketball goals in concrete.  Our nursery is now much more serviceable, and our basketball goals are no longer threatened by wind or vandals.  Since the Earlham Church of Christ was not satisfied with only doing this, they also built us some picnic tables.
But despite all these accomplishments, they did even more at Windswept Academy.  They completely repoured the concrete flooring of the school’s library, which had been badly cracked and broken.  They repainted all the downstairs rooms of the old building, thereby preparing it to become teacher housing.  They installed a shower in that same downstairs area.  And they christened the house to be a residence by building a large dining room table for it. They acted as though the projects were easy, and that they weren’t a big deal, but everything is a big deal to someone who-like me-doesn’t know how to do it!
It is worth mentioning (and rejoicing over) that two young girls from our Off-the-Wall ministry prayed to receive Christ on the same Friday when the Earlham Church of Christ was here.  This brings the total to seven professions of faith in Eagle Butte and the various outlying settlements this summer!  What a blessing to be here to witness it all!

Creative Arts Camp!





It isn’t often that a Pastor like me gets a visit from his own home church, but that is exactly the privilege that I received this summer.  The men and women of Burkemont Baptist Church in Morganton, North Carolina arrived late one Tuesday evening and immediately began to bless our fellowship.  During the course of their visit here, they put together something that our church has never had before: a creative arts camp.  This was a camp at the church that celebrated all kinds of arts and crafts, with a Gospel focus.  The children of this community, who greatly love the arts, welcomed it with open arms.  For three days, our church was full of young people enjoying woodcrafts, puppetry, cooking, weird science, and many other things, too numerous to mention.   In the pictures above, you can see the children learning how to make ice cream in a Ziploc bag and painting wooden peace symbols with colors that tell the story of salvation history. 



In the picture in the above, you can see one of the two community meals that Burkemont hosted while it was here, each of which was attended by over a hundred people!  Not pictured here are the many, many blankets, fashioned by the women of Burkemont Baptist Church, that they distributed to the children at Noah’s Ark Preschool, and to the residents of our local nursing home.  But  these things were not enough to satify Burkemont’s desire for service.





Some men from Burkemont, having skill in construction, joined their efforts with the Burkemont youth to do a number of projects that were sorely needed at the church and the parsonage.  For example, the roof of my shed was badly damaged, and had begun to leak, making it unusable.  The team stripped my shed of its old shingles and replaced them with a metal roof.  Then they used the best shingles from the shed to patch the roof of my house, which also needed repair.  They added a stall in the men’s room, so that two men can now use it at the same time.  They built wooden steps into our fellowship hall, so the elderly will be able to more easily enter during the wintertime.  They replaced our old dishwasher, which no longer functioned.  They installed new kitchen cabinets and reorganized the kitchen and fellowship hall, giving us more space than ever before.  They added additional bookracks to the backs of our pews, allowing us to store our Bibles and hymnals without damaging them.  They replaced all of the broken windows in the church, effectively undoing the work of the burglars who came in a month ago.  And they even volunteered to make the bars on our windows, which we need to keep burglars out in the future.  What an exciting and successful missions trip it was!  Many thanks to the people of my home church, for giving so generously of yourselves this summer!






A Confederation of Churches From Mississippi




As the summer drew to its’ close, a group four different churches arrived from Mississippi-Crane Creek Baptist Church of Perkinston, Juniper Grove Baptist Church of Poplarville, Lumberton First Baptist Church of Lumberton, and Mt. Zion Baptist Church of Hattisburg.  New life Baptist Church of Kingley, Iowa was also represented.  All of them working together brought a creative arts camp to the reservation, as Burkemont had done…but they brought it to the outlying settlement of Red Scaffold, an hour and a half away.  Working primarily out of an open field, these men and women shared the Gospel with the children of that community through art and song.  And while they worked in Red Scaffold, some of their fellows were busy inside of Windswept Academy! Through their efforts, the entire interior of the building’s new addition was sheetrocked, complete the first layer of mudding and taping.  As God’s providence would have it, the building was not ready for sheetrock until the very week when these people, who knew how to hang sheetrock, arrived!  The mention of this good news leads me to a piece of news so good that it still causes me to tremble at the thought…


Windswept Academy is Turning a New Page in Its’ History




After years of planning and building, Windswept Academy’s new building is nearly completed.  Everything about how the school operates is now about to change.  The children will have an indoor place to have recess in the winter.  The library will not need to be used as a makeshift cafeteria, but only as a library.  The school now has enough space in it for eighty students, and seventy-five have already enrolled!  This represents literally FIVE TIMES the population of the school three years ago!  And I will have the honor of preaching the Gospel and teaching the Bible to every single one of them!
But perhaps the thing that I am most excited about is the fact that the old school building can now be used as a house by the headmaster and his wife, Clint and Amy Holley.  They will no longer need to drive an hour and a half, round trip, to get to school every day.  And though I have known them for years as friends, I will soon know them as neighbors, too. 
None of this would have been possible without the help of hundreds of friends from all over the country.  Many of our Christian Brothers and Sisters gave sacrificially to make this dream a reality.  But this summer, some of them sent construction teams to do the work that we could not hire done.  For that we fall on our knees in praise to God for the kindness he has shown to us through His servants. 
We also thank the brethren of Lancaster Baptist Church of Lancaster, Missouri, Barnes Academy of Georgia, Hamilton Baptist Church of Virginia, Covenant Baptist Church of Tennessee, Earlham Church of Christ of Iowa, Gospel Baptist Church of North Carolina, Underwood Baptist Church of Alabama, Friends’ Baptist Church of North Carolina, Capital Heights Baptist Church of Pierre, South Dakota,  Crane Creek Baptist Church of Perkinston, Mississippi, Calvary Baptist Church of Wisconsin,  Juniper Grove Baptist Church of Poplarville, Mississippi, Mike and Anna Levi Chavez of Tennessee, Lumberton First Baptist Church of Lumberton, Mississippi, Elgin Baptist Church, Mt. Zion Baptist Church of Hattisburg, Mississippi, and Merryville Christian School of Tennessee.  Thank you for giving of your time, your money and your energy to work alongside us this summer.  Though you are no longer here, the mark you have made on our church, on our school and on our reservation will be impossible to forget. 




So perhaps you are wondering how you can become a partner with us in our ministry here in Eagle Butte?  If so, then we are happy to tell you, since we welcome assistance from the body of Christ. Here is what we need the most:

Prayer.  It may be true that our church is getting along very well at the moment, and that God is doing great things here.  But it is precisely when a church is being used by God that Satan does all in his power to destroy it.  So please pray, my brothers and sisters.  Pray that our leadership will keep their hearts pure and humble, and that we will live at peace with each other.  Pray that we will be protected from the power of the enemy, and that God’s Holy Spirit will shine through in our lives.  Pray that the Lakotas in the community will come to know the Lord, and that the commitment they make will not be a superficial group of words, but a real change in their Spirits that will alter the course of their lives for eternity. 

E-mail addresses.  For those of you who have e-mail addresses, please send them to me.  That way, these monthly newsletters can be forwarded to everyone in your church who wants one!  Just send your name and e-mail address to me at benfarrar777@hotmail.com, and I’ll make sure you receive this newsletter as often as it comes out.

Financial Assistance.  Our church is fortunate to have members who are generous in their giving. But some of our most generous members are, nevertheless, very poor.  We have long been blessed with assistance from outside churches and individuals, and we try to use those gifts wisely and well. 

If any one of you wishes to bless the church with a financial gift, you may send it to:

 First Baptist Church of Eagle Butte
P.O. Box 170
Eagle Butte, SD 57625 

May God bless you all, and draw you closer to Himself each and every day.

Yours in Christ,


Rev. Ben Farrar

Pastor

First Baptist Church of Eagle Butte

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