2019 was a good year for our ministry. Check out the highlights:
- TE Josh Charette (Turtle Mountain Chippewa) notes strong growth in the church plant in Billings, Montana. The church Great Plains Gathering is also noting a vibrant youth program which is called “Youth Enrichment.”
- Josh has completed the 2 intern houses that were purchased adjacent to the church. These are both occupied and mortgage free. The Church building and both houses are debt free.
- One house houses Jonas Patterson (Native Hawaiian) and his family. Jonas serves as an intern at Great Plains Gathering. He is preparing Licensure and then Ordination as well as serving at Great Plains Gathering.
- A part-time Pastor is in place at Great Plains Gathering. He began his ministry this past September.
- TE Chris Granberry and the work at Sacred Road Ministries continues to thrive. They anticipate another significant building program in 2020.
- Sacred Road Ministries will launch a full time ministry on the Warm Springs Reservation in Oregon. SRM has been working at Warm Springs in the summers for nearly 10 years. The target date for the work to go full time there is early 2020.
- Tomoyuki Ito and Evan & Holly Shaw will lead this ministry in Warm Springs. Tomo is in his last semester of study at Reformed Theological Seminary, Atlanta.
- Joshua Tsavatewa (Hopi) was ordained as a TE in June 2019. He is in the Pacific Northwest Presbytery ministering at Sacred Road. He is our 2nd ordained Native American Pastor.
- Nicholas Ross Dick, a member of Trinity PCA, Bozeman, Montana and himself a American Indian, serves as an Ordained Deacon. Nick works at the Montana State University campus as Project Manager for American Indian/Alaska Native Student Success. He is also very active in campus ministry there.
- TE Greg Baney (Cherokee/Choctaw) will be plant a Native American church in the Soddy Daisy area of Tennessee. Greg is our 3rd ordained Native American Pastor. The Tennessee Valley Presbytery has approved the Soddy Daisy location for a church plant and Greg and his wife Trisha have begun reaching into the Native American community there. The church has taken the name Woodlands Gathering.
- Daniel “DH” Henry is currently and Ordained Evangelist in the PCA, he and his wife, Emily and their 3 children are serving under Western Indian Mission in Window Rock, Arizona. They have been there for 3 years learning the Navajo language. They are coming along well.
These are truly exciting times in Native American Ministries
Humbly submitted,
Jeb Bland
Coordinator
Native American/First Nations Ministries
Mission to North America