South Dakota: Tree of Life Ministry

Summary: A ministry with Native Americans to address need on the Rosebud and Crow Creek reservations.  (#123615)

Description: The Tree of Life Ministry serves the Rosebud and Crow Creek Reservations. The people who live here have been a depressed people for well over 100 years. Decisions by a dominant society have left this culture in despair and alcohol driven.

The Tree of Life Ministry was started 15 years ago as a Ministry of Presence on the Rosebud Reservation. The time had come in the early 1990s that people wanted to come to the reservation and do volunteer in mission work.

In 1994, the Dakotas Conference decided to fund a full-time person as a director on the Rosebud Reservation. The first full year of work teams on the reservation was 1995. There were around 150 people who came that year. We have since moved our ministry to include the Crow Creek Reservation. In 1999, they hosted around 900 Volunteer in Mission persons from across the United States.

In 1998 the Tri-County Halfway House located in Winner, SD was put under the umbrella of the Tree of Life Ministry. We do a lot of renovation projects and we are moving into some major building projects. The Tree of Life has been very instrumental in getting four new daycares up and running in the past four years on the Rosebud Reservation, and three youth centers on the Crow Creek Reservation. Todd County, which is the Rosebud Reservation, is the fourth poorest county in the nation. Alcoholism and drug use is around 80% diabetes, unemployment is 87%, and the suicide rate is highest in the nation. The main purpose of our project is to let the people know that we care and we are here to help them better their lives; spiritually, economically and physically.

Our goal for the future is to give people the feeling there REALLY are persons who care and to be an extention of God's hands. We continually work on homes, buildings, (i.e., shelters, daycares, youth centers, senior centers, drug and alcohol treatment centers, community centers and etc... We have a clothing room, and work with many agencies in direct service.

The Advance gift helps us gain the trust and forgiveness that we try to earn from the native people. The gift is used in many different ways. Some cold weather in the winter find us purchasing a minimum amount of fuel for a single mother and her children or the elderly. We are called upon for food for a family that has to wait for food stamps because of red tape, we purchase a pair of shoes for a child so he can go back to school, because the ones he was wearing were so bad they made his feet sore. We buy and install a hot water heater for an elderly person that hasn't had any hot water in her house for 25 years. We go into an elderly person's home and make the doors wider so she can get her wheel chair through them when she comes home from the hospital after having her 4th amputation. She has lost both hands and both feet due to diabetes. The homes we work on are in very bad need of repair. We do everything from the roofing to putting in new floor boards and everything in between.