On Eagles Wings - Ron Hutchcraft Ministries

Update from Ron Hutchcraft with Team U.S.

We were about to face some of the hardest hearts of this Summer of Hope.  And some awesome answers to prayer.

The challenges were evident as a local Christian leader briefed our team on our fifth reservation, Rocky Ridge.  He told us about the local religions that regularly summon the spirit world – including, in some cases, animal spirits that possess them.

Tragically, the young people here are clearly in desperate need of answers.  Many of their young people are spending much of their life in a pain pill fog.  There have been at least six young funerals recently from pain pill overdoses.  Young people here are so desperate to escape their emotional pain that they are knocking out their own teeth and mutilating themselves to get pills.

And where there’s pain, there’s anger.  It erupted in a gang fight the night before the team arrived.  We were told, “It’s common to be packing a gun around here.”  These are reasons why we are so grateful for your prayer for the spiritual and physical protection of the warriors.  On the practical side, our team was counseled to not wear anything that could be construed as a gang color.

The first two nights at Rocky Ridge were hard-fought.  People were walking away whenever there was a Hope Story.  On every other rez, the Hope Stories riveted the crowd.  Personal conversations ran into a wall here.  And the big guys – the basketball stars who rule the rez – were the hardest hearts of all.  The team faithfully kept hammering away, sharing their Hope Stories, preaching the Gospel.

By Night Three – and after a month of spiritual battles – it was a tired team that took the field.  But one of our young leaders stepped up to challenge them just before the battle.  She encouraged them to stay focused in the home stretch of this amazing Summer of Hope – to remember that souls are at stake as much in our final outreaches as they were in our first ones.

“Teresa” (First Nations, Canada) shared her Hope Story, and it was a divine match for this reservation.  She knows about the world of drugs – it was the world she was immersed in during her years away from Christ.  She talked about the bondage of the painkiller haze and the real life Jesus has given her.  

But “Josh” (Dakota Sioux) was in no shape to be the Gospel presenter and to give the public invitation this night.  He was fighting pain in his stomach and lungs and was struggling to focus.  And these were perhaps the hardest hearts of the summer so far.

But God dramatically answered prayer for this powerful warrior.  He struggled as he shared his Hope Story of rejecting Jesus as the “white man’s god,” of dealing drugs and of finding that “my first day in prison was the first day I was ever free.”  That’s when he opened his heart to Jesus.  Strangely, there was still the restlessness the team had battled all three nights at Rocky Ridge.  So Josh just stopped for thirty seconds.  His silence silenced everyone else.

Josh’s testimony:  “As soon as I got to the Gospel, all my sickness left in a moment.  Suddenly I felt like I could run for miles.”  Then came the invitation.  We had no idea what to expect.  But the battle had been won in the heavenlies.  The big boys – the hardest of the hard hearts here – walked to center court, declaring their commitment to Jesus Christ.  The Gospel of Christ had again proven to be “the power of God for salvation” (Romans 1:16).

God’s power was evident even outside the gym.  One girl responded whose heart was so hard that she wouldn’t even come in, let alone listen.  Her face mirrored that hardness.  But “Marcy” (Seneca), who was that girl before Christ broke through, kept after her.  And she led her to Jesus.  Several team members told her the immediate effect of her commitment – “Your face has totally changed!”  She was glowing, probably for the first time in her life.

One of our cooks watched the miracle in the gym that night.  She said to the team, “They saw the love you had for each other.  They saw the joy you have – and they wanted it.”  That’s what people talked about over and over – there was an amazing, contagious joy on our team – our weary, depleted team.  

It was a joy outbreak that God used to change hearts.  A joy much better than anything any pain pill could ever give.

And here, in the reservation of the hard hearts, the goodbyes were some of the most emotional of the summer.  It was the big boys, going to each team member, thanking them for coming, sometimes with tears in their eyes.

Once again, it was a victory for which only God can get the glory.  

Once again, it was prayer answered big-time.  

Now, the prayers of the team focus on the miracles they’re still believing God for:  the God-sized amount of money needed to finish this Summer of Hope victoriously…the final U. S. reservation, the most dangerous and violent we’ve faced this year…and the upcoming ministry at the largest gathering of Native young people on the continent.  There’s much to trust Him for...and so many reasons to trust Him.