On Eagles Wings - Ron Hutchcraft Ministries

A Word from Ron Hutchcraft:

Connie is one of the amazing Native young people on our On Eagles' Wings team. As we count down to our spiritual rescue mission on ten reservations, we asked her to put a little of her heart into words...

A Warrior's View from Connie (Wichita/Seneca)

There are a lot of questions I don't know the answer to. "What date was President William Howard Taft born on? How many peanuts are sold at Yankee Stadium each year?" Those questions don't really matter much. But there are some that do.

"Why don't I matter?"

I hear that too often. Traveling to many different reservations, talking to girls from many different tribes, you hear it a lot. Sometimes they ask it outright, sometimes it's in the meaning behind the words. Other times it surfaces in just shutting down or in ceasing to care. There are other questions too. Why does nobody care? Can anybody hear me? Why do I feel so alone?

I used to ask myself these questions too. I used to live my whole life in darkness and I didn't see any way out. But someone shared Jesus with me, someone showed Him to me. And I was given a new life, a new heart. But someone had to tell me.

As the On Eagles' Wings Summer of Hope draws near, I think back on the many girls whose lives cried out these questions - cutters and rape victims, girls who, like me, tried to fill the emptiness with anything they could but just ended up feeling more empty, more alone. I remember sharing Jesus with them. Sometimes, a lot of times, they just smiled at me and walked away.

But sometimes, oh sometimes, they accepted Him, they believed. Sometimes, they found a hope and a future. And it wasn't just their lives that were changed. Mine has been forever changed. There is no way that I can go back to being a bystander. With so much pain and questioning and searching going on, I can never ignore that again. God has broken my heart in a way no human ever could - a brokenness that reaches beyond myself and my family, that lights a fire within me. This is what On Eagle's Wings does.

I get scared sometimes and worried - shouldn't I be earning money? Will it make my health issues worse? What if something happens at home? All important questions. But in the weeks leading up to OEW, one question gets louder and louder, so loud that I can't help but respond to it:

What are you going to do for your people? I have the hope their lives - and their eternities - depend on.

As important as my mission is, sometimes I get in my own way. Sometimes I get scared - it's still hard, even after doing it for so many years. But I know this is what God wants me to do. And I know that there are people like you out there, praying for me. Prayer is the most effective weapon against what the enemy will throw at us. Prayer strengthens, prayer empowers. Knowing that I am covered in prayer gives me strength to do what God has asked of me. And with Him, anything is possible.

Thank you for praying for me and for all my fellow warriors as we fight for our people."