Palm Sunday is already past, Good Friday and Easter Sunday are both this week!

At the time of writing this, Monday evening, I literally just got back from Saskatoon. The first thing I want to share is that KS asked the Lord to forgive him of his sins and come into his heart this afternoon at Patterson Children’s Hospital in Saskatoon. 

KS is the great grandson of Vivian’s first cousin, Gen. By Indigenous reckoning, he is our grandson. Early Sunday morning, Gen was awakened to hear KS throwing up and having diarrhea.  Shortly after that he was not breathing right and was not coherent, so she called the ambulance.  The two of them live alone out on Piapot Reserve about 50 km north of the city. They rushed him to Pasqua Hospital, where Gen gave us a call just as Westhill service was ending.  By the time we got there, the decision had been made to air-lift KS to Saskatoon Children’s Hospital, and Gen looked to us to take her to Saskatoon to be with him. (She is his legal guardian. KS is 16, in Grade 10. No drugs were involved.) We stayed with them overnight. KS and Gen are still there in Saskatoon.

Here is what we know: KS has some sort of infection.  They gave him medications to keep his blood pressure up as well as his blood/oxygen levels. While the worst is over, he is getting the care he needs but will be in hospital for an indeterminate time. There has been no official diagnosis, so we don’t know what exactly is wrong with him. Please continue to pray for both him and Gen.

But, before we left, we asked and led him in a prayer to repentance and faith in Jesus Christ. Praise God!

So what else has been going on? I took some days off from Rising Above to work on a special education pilot project by Elections Canada.  The gist of it is that, as an indigenous elder, I have been asked to co-lead Election education modules in two high schools. One high school gave us two periods of Social Studies 30 class and the other high school gave us four periods of two Social Studies 30 classes as well as 4 periods of Indigenous Studies 30 class. 14 class periods in all over the past two weeks. On top of that we hired over 30 of the students to work at poll stations on election day!  It has been really interesting, a lot of fun, very different, and honestly exhausting.

I am looking forward to a bit of a break from any work later this week and next to spend time on my writing as well as get back to playing music. (But of course, it is spring and there is spring clean-up to do around the house. Oh my…)

We are still doing our prayer walks on Tuesday mornings and this week we will have some Eston Students join us.

I am still involved in the discipleship group at Gentle Road and I also got to spend some time in Weyburn helping introduce the discipleship course there.

And of course, just this past Saturday, we had the Indigenous Christian Discussion group which, although it was small, God met with us and took us into some deep fellowship amid joyful sharing. It was wonderful.

Some ministries go wide and some go deep.  It seems that those ministries that go wide, and reach a crowd, cannot go very deep into people’s lives. The Regina Discipleship Project goes deep and because of that, we don’t have the capacity to go very wide.

Deep and wide,

Deep and wide,

There’s a fountain flowing deep and wide,

For you, for me, Jesus died,

 There’s a fountain flowing deep and wide!

Thank God that He goes both deep and wide.

Later this week, we will be doing a back alley clean-up for a woman who is part of our Gentle Road Church family.  If anyone would like to volunteer for that, it would be appreciated.

With gratitude and blessings,

Nick Helliwell,

Regina Discipleship Project,

Rising Above Healing Ministries