This is Chante. I'm not really sure how to actually spell her name, but I was told very firmly that its pronounced "Shan-Tay". She lives on the Ahousat First-Nation's Reserve. I met her there on the Canada day weekend. I was part of a team from Maple Ridge lead by my buddy Oscar that has gone up there the last four years to support the people there. Oscar's father is the hereditary chief of the band.
Every year they have a sports day, and they have events for people from every age bracket. Chante came and asked me my name and how old I was, and so I asked her the same questions. After she had told me she was 7 years old and corrected me for pronouncing her name wrong, she pointed to the sky and said, "my dad's up there". As my brain raced to come up with a response appropriate for a 2nd-grader who just let me know her father had passed away, she proceeded to volunteer even more information. "Want to know what happened?" Again I'm left without any real response, but she doesn't really seem to be waiting for me to talk at this point. "He got drunk and hung himself".

* * * * *
When my brain started working again, one of my first thoughts was, "how is a 7 year old child supposed to find the emotional capacity to deal with something like this?"
The thing that made this incident so tragic is that it is not an isolated case. I had more conversations with other people, some kids, some older, and suicide, from what I've seen, has affected every single person in this band somehow. The unemployment rate is in the high ninety percentile, and domestic abuse, drugs, and alcohol are rampant. There are many who feel ashamed of their native heritage. There is a sense of hopelessness, especially in the youth.

Despite all the darkness, I saw positive change that weekend as well. We were not the only visitors to Ahousat that weekend. The North American First Nations Chief, Lynda Prince, came and spoke about the message of Jesus, which was reconciliation and hope. She also talked about how she had been sent to a residential school as a child, and had had to learn to overcome her bitterness.
Our team was able to pray for a number of the Ahousat band members, and all weekend people did crafts and played games with the children. The kids soaked up every drop of love we had to offer. I saw people experience healing as they came back to visit the community that they had once lived in but had run away from, and a number of fathers who publicly apologized to their families for the hurt they had caused by not being around and by drinking.

I think for me right now, the biggest evidence for a God that is alive and at work in the world right now is the healing and reconciliation that I have seen people go through during things like last weekend's trip. Jesus is in the business of healing people, including myself, especially myself, of our brokenness, our past, our failures, our weakness, our crushed dreams, our dirty secrets, and our mangled messed up lives. He takes our wounds that we wear like knife marks, and he soothes each one in a way that only a physician that understands our soul can.
Sometimes I don't let Him fix me right away, it hurts too bad, I don't want anybody to touch it, but then its like a bone that doesn't set properly, and you have to break it again to make it grow right. But He is always ready to continue that healing process if I am willing.