Hello dear friends,

It’s hard to believe that it has already been almost four months since we moved to Madras to begin full-time ministry in Warm Springs. In some ways, the time has flown by; in other ways, it feels like longer than that since we left White Swan.

We did have a chance to spend a couple of weeks back on the Yakama Reservation in March, helping with the Spring teams in White Swan. It was an encouraging time to be back around our church family there for a bit. We were blessed to be able to help roof an elder’s house and work on a vocational training space that Sacred Road is setting up for youth and young adults in the White Swan community. While it was great being up there for that, it is difficult going back and forth too much with a little one and we realized that it also makes it difficult to maintain the consistency we’d like to in Warm Springs, so we’re thankful that we’ve been able to put all of our focus on Warm Springs after the Spring teams wrapped up. (We also plan to have Spring teams here next year!)

Youth at Young Life getting ready to hydro-dip (paint patterns) on water bottles, mugs, vases, baseball bats, etc.

Over the last couple of months we’ve seen more kids show up to Young Life as they keep bringing their friends. One of our fellow leaders there, James, is a tribal member and teaches at the school. He says that the kids act completely differently when they are with us at Young Life; depending on the kid, many are either emotionally closed off or frequently fighting and getting into trouble at school. At Young Life, we’ve seen these same kids laughing together, trying things that are out of their comfort zone, and looking out for each other. It is clear that God is moving in their lives and they are starting to realize they are loved, safe, and worth something.

Holly has also begun helping out with more food needs in the community over the last month or so. A few of the youth and kids we know have begun letting us know when they are in need of food (if food stamps haven’t gone out yet, if they are currently functionally homeless, etc.) Holly has put together backpacks of food, food boxes, and cooked meals depending on the situation.

We’ve also helped with some good community events over the last few weeks. Two weekends ago was the “Say Their Name” relay in Warm Springs, bringing awareness to Missing and Murdered Indigenous Relatives; many people we know have been deeply affected by a family member who has been murdered or is missing. Tomo ran in the relay (a 26 mile long stretch that was broken into roughly 3 mile legs), while I (Evan) volunteered with the folks who organized it.

Last weekend, we volunteered at an event to honor elders that was held at the longhouse. Tomo and I showed up early to get a fire going for the traditional salmon bake, before helping with various odd jobs throughout the day. Holly also prepared 30 cakes and 25 lbs. of macaroni salad for the meal and had the chance to help out the ladies in the longhouse kitchen for several hours. There was a kids mini pow-wow during the event and Ezra, Holly and I were honored to be asked to join in on that. At each of these community events we’ve had plenty of people asking who we are, where we come from, and what we are about. Already, we have gotten more opportunities to serve people in the community in the future through some of those connections. God is clearly opening doors as we get to know folks.

In addition to all this, we’ve been plugging away at the day-to-day tasks: meeting needs in the community by working on people’s houses (so far, a lot of our projects have been through connections either at the the Warm Springs Baptist church or through youth we know), working on preparing worksites and kids club supplies for the summer (which is quickly approaching), developing connections and awareness of Sacred Road within churches in Oregon, and staying on top of the paperwork. We also had a commissioning service at Hope Fellowship in White Swan on April 16th that was a great encouragement to us, as our church family sent us off with prayer and a charge.

Current needs:

We are still looking for $2,500/month in pledges to the Warm Springs General Fund to cover recurring ministry costs. These monthly pledges are what allow us to continue helping people in the community with their homes, meals, and other needs, and also keeps our ministry vehicles on the road. Please pray and consider if you would be able to commit to giving toward that each month - any amount helps!

We are also starting to collect school supplies to give to kids in the Fall. A new friend at a church here in Oregon got us connected to someone who is donating a bunch of backpacks, so we're looking for folks to help fill up those backpacks. This is something that Sacred Road has done each year in White Swan and we're excited to do the same in Warm Springs! If you're interested in helping out, please e-mail me at eshaw@sacredroadministries.org for the full list of school supplies we need.

Praises and Prayer Requests:

Please pray for preparations as our first summer team arrives in less than a month! With this being our first summer living in Warm Springs and not bringing work and kids club materials from Yakama, we have a lot of additional work to do to get ready (painting new car mats for kids club, purchasing lots of tools and supplies, making our garage functional for storage and a workspace, getting meals ready for the teams, etc.).

Pray that God would use the summer teams mightily to reach people with the love of Christ, both in word and in deed.

Praise God for opening so many doors and allowing us to connect with so many people in just the first few months. Please pray that God would continue to open doors and we'd be able to continue building on these new relationships. Also, ask God for patience in all of our relationships in Warm Springs and that we would trust He is working in His good timing.

Please pray for our youth at Young Life. Specifically be praying for Daniel and Sally (nicknames for their protection). Daniel is in 8th grade; he has been kicked out of school and his house, and he is currently couch surfing. Pray for some elements of stability in his life and that we would have the wisdom to know how to help him. Sally has many younger siblings that she is often taking care of and lives in an unstable home. As the oldest sibling, she has a lot of pressure on her. Please be praying that the Lord would be close to each of them and they would know His love for them. Pray for guidance as we seek to love and care for each kid.

Please pray that we would reach our funding goal by the end of the year. Ask if God is calling you to support Sacred Road in Warm Springs in this way, either through monthly or yearly giving.

Thank you for your prayers and support as we follow where God is leading us in ministry here.

With much love,

The Shaws

A highlight from my summer was when Julie, one of the girls that I’ve known for many years, had just sat down for story time. She got her snack and excitedly waited for the story to start, but her caregiver came to pick her up and tapped her on the shoulder. Julie looked over and said, “The story is about to start! Can I stay?” Her caregiver looked at me and asked how long the story was. “About 10 minutes?” I said, and she nodded. Julie sat and watched the story while her caregiver also listened to a story about Jesus’ power - how He healed a paralyzed man and how He can also heal our hearts.

When I look back on this summer it feels like a blur! So much happened in such little time. I want to share a few stories that have encouraged me as we patiently wait for our move to Warm Springs.

God is working in peoples' hearts. One lady we have worked with closely the last 6 or 7 years - we’ll call her Caroline - has always been clear in expressing her gratitude for Sacred Road and the work we do around Warm Springs. However, this summer Caroline connected closely with two adult women from our one week teams. Caroline has shared many personal and cultural stories with them and has built a strong friendship with each of them. One of them she actually visited in Kansas City (while she was attending a conference) and the other she plans to visit in Portland. Although Caroline does not claim to be a Christian, God has been drawing her to strong Christian women. I pray the Holy Spirit is working in her heart as she fellowships with these women and continues to serve alongside the church. As we get closer to moving, I pray her heart would be soft to the Gospel and that she might attend our Bible study in upcoming years.

God has also been moving in and through the work that is being done. We were in Warm Springs for four weeks this summer and each week we built a ramp for an elder in the community. One lady was confined to a wheelchair and had to go to dialysis multiple times each week. Anytime she left the house she was carried to the car. Now, she will be able to safely use the wheelchair ramp. Another ramp was built for a gentleman who, at the end of the week, sat outside the whole day and shared stories about his life while our team finished the ramp. Praise God for placing us exactly where He wants us to be.

During the last week of summer teams, our group was invited to attend a pow wow, which involves traditional dancing, drumming, and singing. We've been to larger pow wows before where the competition is much more intense, but this pow wow felt more like a small community event that we were welcomed into with open arms. The MC invited us to learn a couple traditional Warm Springs dances alongside their kids and we were given an honor song by one of the drum groups. It was a blessing to be there.

This summer in Warm Springs, we hosted church groups from Washington, Oregon, Pennsylvania, and Kansas! Some teams have never worked with Sacred Road before and one team has been coming since the first team in Warm Springs in 2007! It was encouraging to work with two of our home churches and watch them build connections with a community that we love. If your church might want to bring a summer team in 2023, please e-mail: info@sacredroadministries.org for more info!

In Yakama they hosted five weeks of summer teams from all across the country. However, each week that a team was in Yakama, about 20 youth from White Swan were also on a worksite - painting, picking up trash, weeding, and serving their own community. We also had about fifty kids attend middle school and high school Young Life camp. Many houses were reroofed, painted, and cleaned up. One lady expressed her gratitude by hosting a hotdog roast and another gave handmade items to each person who worked and prayed over her home. If you want to see and hear more about what is going on, please follow Sacred Road Ministries on Facebook - we post updates with pictures throughout the week all year round!

Towards the end of the summer we also celebrated Ezra’s first birthday! With Ezra’s first word being, “ball,” we decided on the theme: Come have a ball!

In other news, Evan, Ezra, and I plan to make a trip back to Pennsylvania in the beginning of October. We are in the process of planning our trip now. If you are in the area and would like us to visit your church or you would like to host a dessert night or hangout night for a group to catch up with us, we would love to try to do that. Please e-mail, text or call!

We also are getting close to our move to Warm Springs. We plan to look for housing at the end of this year and move by Spring 2023 if all goes well. Please be praying for housing and that God would make it clear regarding where we should live. We will have more updates in the coming months on specific needs and ways you can be involved.

Thank you for praying and supporting our family and Sacred Road Ministries. God bless you and yours!

Prayer needs:

Pray that God will provide housing in or close to Warm Springs for our family as well as for Tomo, and that it will be clear where we should be.

Pray for each of the kids and adults that we connected with this summer: that their hearts will be made soft to the Gospel and that they will want to know more about what it means to be a part of the church.

Pray that God will provide patience and clarity for those of us involved in the process of figuring out details and providing proposals to the Sacred Road board regarding the move to Warm Springs.

Praise the Lord for the many ways we were able to be in community with people in Warm Springs and Yakama this summer! God is opening doors and moving in ways beyond our understanding.

Pray for our trip to Pennsylvania as we look to connect with more churches and people in that area.

In Christ,

Evan and Holly Shaw

These last couple months have been filled with so many good things, it might be a struggle to fit them into this one email!

To begin with, we just said “see ya later” to our third and final Spring missions team. We were excited to host folks in Yakama from colleges and universities all across the country for the first time since 2019. That meant work projects in the community like roofing, painting, pulling weeds, chopping firewood, and more. Overall, we did work on the homes of three different families, making or strengthening connections with folks in each house as well. We also had some team members working on a new project at Sacred Road - a shop that will offer training for the youth and young adults in our community to get experience in welding, vehicle and small engine repair, and carpentry.

The Spring teams also meant kids club, something else we hadn’t been able to do since 2019! There were about 80 kids every day across two locations, many of whom had never been to a kids club before because they were too young. The love that the Spring teams shared with the kids here was much needed - it was so encouraging to watch relationships between kids and team members develop each week. We’ve also seen an uptick in kids coming to church on Sunday because of those interactions at kids club! Ezra also experienced his first kids club (the first of many!) as Holly brought him several days each week. He loved watching the kids playing, especially with bubbles, and does really well with being around new people and groups.

Prior to the arrival of the Spring teams, Tomo and I, as well as a couple other folks on staff, went down to Warm Springs a couple of times to build or repair ramps for elders there. One lady we built a ramp for had been promised a ramp five different times (a couple of those by another church group), but no one had ever followed through. As the movie, “Grizzly,” says, broken promises on the Rez are dangerous, and it definitely made me upset to hear that. We spent two days working at her house and the Lord gave us plenty of chances to talk with her, listen to her story, and share why we were there.

If we want to continue building ramps for elders in Warm Springs, we need to raise enough money to do so. On average, the materials for a ramp costs us over $1,500. Please consider giving to the Warm Springs general fund so that we can keep reaching out to the Warm Springs community in this way! You can give online by clicking here!

There have been so many other good things God is doing: kids and youth coming back to church that we haven’t seen in ages, our youth band leading singing at youth group for the first time, a great Bible study on God as our shepherd, expanded vocational opportunities for our church family as they look towards the future, and more. Tomo's ordination service was also on Sunday, so that was an exciting day! Many of his family and close friends traveled to be a part of the special service. He's officially a pastor now!

There are still the hard, grueling things that are part of living on the Rez, and hurts that go deeper than words can describe. While those things are very real and can knock folks in our church off their feet, they have a church family who walk alongside them and a God who holds them close. Even in the dark, we are able to look at all the good things that God is doing and remember that he has a plan for his people.

Here are some prayer requests:

Please pray that enough financial gifts come in so that we can continue building ramps for elders in Warm Springs. Pray for every person in the houses we work on, that the Holy Spirit would work in their hearts and lives.

Please pray for Chris and Mary Granberry and their household, as they currently have three teenagers and one younger girl who have nowhere else safe to go living with them.

Pray for our church family, that they would continue to grow in their faith while reaching out to those around them.

Pray that all the interactions the Spring teams had in the community would bring hope to people in dark places, even after they are gone.

Pray for the Warm Springs staff team, as we look at more and more involvement in the community, especially as we will have summer teams there once again. Pray for Holly and I, as we figure out how best to take care of Ezra in the midst of that.

Pray that when we begin to look for a place to live in or near Warm Springs (hopefully towards the end of this year) that God will make it clear what place is best, as looking at the housing/rental market in that area right now can be discouraging.

Thank you all of your prayers and support! As Chris likes to say, sometimes we feel like a little duck paddling as fast as we can down a river. The duck is going along at 20 miles per hour, but it's not because he's paddling as hard as he can, it's because the current is carrying him. Lots of good things are happening here on the Rez, but it's not because we're going as hard as we can - it's because the prayers of God's people are like a current carrying our church and ministry along.

Please let us know if there are any specific ways we can be praying for you!

Love in Christ,

The Shaw family

Tis the season!

We're coming up on Christmas again and we have so many things to be thankful for in the middle of a very busy season here on the Rez.

Firstly, we're so thankful for everyone who has given towards our Thanksgiving and Christmas ministry in Warm Springs this year! Because of the generosity that folks have shown, we were able to provide 250 Thanksgiving food boxes to the community of Warm Springs - not only did that allow us to provide meals for families who needed it this holiday season, but we were also able to make connections with the folks who we gave the boxes to.

Please pray that those little seeds and short interactions will grow into deeper relationships and questions about the gospel over the long term, especially as we look at living on-site in Warm Springs by this season next year. We know from the experience of folks here in Yakama that those relationships can take years to develop, but that they almost always start with things that may seem small in our eyes.

Putting together food boxes for Warm Springs with Tomo

I've found myself especially thankful that we're going to be able to have our Christmas service again this year, after not being able to last year because of COVID-19. I'm looking forward to it even more than I thought I would be, largely because it gives the kids in our church a good reason to celebrate and an opportunity to act out the Christmas story as a part of the service. It makes them feel really special and makes the message that they are loved by Jesus and by us very tangible.

We're also excited to head down to Warm Springs again in a couple of weeks to host a Christmas party at the Boys and Girls Club there. It's a time when we get the chance to see many of the kids we've come to love and care about over the years. We share fun and games, crafts, snacks, and the Christmas story with them. We also give them shoeboxes filled with Christmas gifts that have been donated from all across the country.

This year, thanks to Operation Christmas Child as well as churches who donate shoeboxes directly to Sacred Road, we will be delivering over 2,500 Christmas shoeboxes to people here in Yakama, Warm Springs, and to other Native communities and reservations across the Pacific Northwest. In places where we don't have a full time presence, they will go to churches and other groups who have the opportunity to share the gospel with each kid who gets one. Ideally, they also have relationships with some folks there as well.

Needless to say, with everything that is going on in addition to the usual things (like delivering firewood and weatherproofing homes for elders), it's been busy around here with sorting and wrapping shoeboxes, doing Christmas deliveries, decorating the church with some of the youth group, and more!

Please be praying that everything we do during this Christmas season would serve the purpose of pointing White Swan, Warm Springs, and other Native communities to the hope of Christ and what his birth means for them. Every Christmas, I am reminded that Jesus wasn't born in a fancy palace or big city but in a small town that was looked down on by many people, much like the towns of White Swan or Warm Springs. He chose to spend his time with those that other people rejected and not only to treat them like family, but to actually adopt them into God's family through his sacrifice.

What an amazing Savior!

Prayer requests:

We still need to raise $750 to cover the cost of the Christmas party for the kids in Warm Springs, so please pray that those funds come in (if you are interested in giving, please go to https://sacredroadministries.org/give?form=SpreadJoyWarmSprings).

Pray for changed hearts as we share the good news of Christ in word and deed this Christmas season. Pray that the Holy Spirit will work in us and in the hearts of those we interact with.

With the temperatures starting to get colder, please pray for those in our community who are either functionally homeless or live in homes that don't have sufficient heating. While we deliver as much firewood as we can, we can only do so much.

Pray for Ezra as he grows and pray for Holly and I as we continue to learn something new about parenting each day. Ezra had a lip tie and tongue tie released last month, and we are grateful that feeding has improved vastly for both mom and baby!

Thank you again for all your prayers and support. May you be encouraged by reminders of Christ's birth this Christmas season.

Love in Christ,

The Shaw Family