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Dear Friends:
I am writing for praise and a prayer. First of all, in October, we
held our annual family pow wow - our fifteenth. We have had many
others before this but fifteen years ago we decided to open it to the
public and to other tribal people. I want to say thank you for your
prayers. This is not a Christian pow wow, but the whole committee is
made up of Christians. We run a traditional family pow wow but we
try to make sure all of our staff and entertainment are Christians or
people with godly moral values. The pow wow was a great success.
First of all, it was the largest one we have had yet. We had about
120 dancers in our grand entry on Saturday night. There were about 30
gourd dancers throughout the day. We had 18 vendors selling their
Indian crafts. Somewhere between three and four thousand spectators
joined us throughout the day. Our Head Staff did a great job.
We hired some of our Christian brothers who take our traditional ways
seriously. Darin Cadman (Dine/Kickapoo) out of Montana was our Head
Man dancer. He did a fantastic job and learned our southern ways
very quickly. Bryan BrightCloud (Chirichahua Apache) was our
emergency MC. He did a fantastic job! Thank you for agreeing to be MC at
the last minute. We had Bob Woolery (Osage Cherokee) from Missouri
as our last minute Head Gourd Dancer (replacing Bryan who became our MC).
A great Christian and very traditional in his Native walk. We had
Uzziel Martinez, Yaqui actor out of California, do his one act play
"A Comanche Remembers". Scott Shafer (Mississippi Choctaw)
out of San Antonio, Texas was our Arena Director. Then we had a new
act this year that I plan to use again: the Henderson Family out of
Florida. They are Creek of Alabama and run a ministry called "Puppeteering
for the Creator." I have been working with them to
contextualize their puppet show and they are doing a fantastic job sharing
the Gospel, not through white or green or purple puppets, but puppets with
brown skin and black hair and dressed in Native regalia. These were
our Christians we hired this year and they all did a fantastic job in the
Lord. Again, thank you for your prayers. We had to borrow some
money to finish paying for the pow wow, but our God always finds a way to
provide so we can pay it off quickly.
Now the prayer request. November is my one of my busiest months.
I have been on the pow wow trail since September. I have attended
nine pow wows and still have two more to go. November brings the
time when what I do for the Lord is in greater demand. Last week,
one day I spoke and danced for 250 kindergarten children, and the next dat
to 200 of the highest ranking officers of the Air Force. This week I
will be dancing and speaking to schools, government officials, then back
to the Lackland AFB to speak and dance before four to six hundred foreign
diplomats from 75 countries. From November 12 - 22, we will be
traveling about 4,500 miles and do 19 presentations and hit two pow wows
(counting the one this weekend.) So I need your prayers for strength
and health as I will be dancing and speaking two to four times a day for
two weeks.
I would like to share a testimony from this weekend. First of all an
Indian man came to me with tears in his eyes. Three weeks ago at our
worship service at one of the pow wows we had prayed for his mother, who
was losing blood and dying. He came just to thank me for our prayers
because his mother had been healed. But something else wonderful
happened this weekend that could only be of God. We had set our drum
at the pow wow. Only four of us could make it but the drum sounded
awesome and powerful as we sang our traditional worship songs. I was
asked to sing two honor songs I have written in my tribal language: one
for WW II Vets that I wrote back in 1998, and one I wrote last week for
Viet Nam Vets when Col. Frank Plummer, a retired Choctaw Indian who
is in charge of developing and raising the money for one of the most
awesome military memorials I have even seen, had asked me to compose a
memorial song to honor our Viet Nam Veterans. We sang the song for
the first time on November 11th as they dedicated the Viet Nam section of
the Memorial. We sang both of these songs at the pow wow this
weekend. When we sang the one for the Viet Nam veterans, people
started dancing and then little by little they all came and stood by the
drum and danced in place and listened with great reverence. We sang
our hearts out. Louder and louder we sang and the drum got louder
and faster. When we finished the song, something strange happened.
No one cheered or clapped as they usually do after a song. In many
ways, I was glad they did not. I just looked down at the drum to
hide my tears. Then I looked up and there was not a dry eye among
the 50-75 Indian people that stood around the drum with tears on their
eyes. One by one they started to slowly walk away from the drum.
Then Viet Nam veterans came and started to shake our hands and with tears
in their eyes, thanked us profusely for the song. Several Indian
people came to us and said, "That was the most powerful song we have
ever heard." Another Indian man came to us and said, "The
Spirit of the Lord came down to us tonight." One Indian lady
came to me and shook my hand and gave me a $20 and said, "I want to
thank you for that song. My brother died in Viet Nam. The song
brought peace to my heart. Isn't it great that we (Indian people)
never forget those who gave their lives for our freedom." I
feel that this song is the most powerful song God has ever given me.
I find it hard to sing. We sang it on November 11th before
2,500 veterans and their families. It was awesome.
God
bless and again, thank you for your prayers.
Robert Soto
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