Thank you, Wellspring Family! Again in 2021 you have shown your great love & generosity with the Christmas Shoebox Gifts for children of the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota!

This was now the 10th year for Wellspring Church to be involved, and we are so very grateful!

It was a huge success, with 352 Shoebox Gifts from Wellspring and another 102 from two small churches in Tennessee, for a total of 454 Gifts! But more than the numbers was the value of heart & soul, and hard work that goes into this every year. It is a huge job, concentrated in a short amount of time, by very loving people. We thank Chris Ann Tufts and her wonderful crew of workers, as well as each of you who shopped for contents for the Shoeboxes and contributed to the shipping costs which rise every year. It’s a project that takes a body of believers with big hearts!

If you want a LAUGH, all the shipping cartons were shipped at the same time, but… The ones from Connecticut got to the Reservation two days earlier than the post office said they would! (Imagine that!)The ones from Knoxville TN first made stops in Memphis TN, then for some silly reason went on to Billings MT, Seattle WA (!!!), Des Moines IA, and finally to South Dakota. Ha! We wouldn’t have had enough money to send them to Seattle WA if we had wanted to! But they trickled in, one by one, and all arrived to the Reservation in time. Praise God!

On Friday night, December 17, in temperatures with a wind chill of minus 10 degrees, and snowing, the cars started driving to the Red Building in the Porcupine District. Our Board Member, Mary Young Bear, and our ministry partner Pastor Matt Hadden from Chanku Waste Wellness Center and Creator’s Fellowship Church, along with all their many helpers, handed out the Shoebox Gifts. They also handed out bags of candy and to-go meals which the tribal government provided. This was a wonderful joint effort of the Lakota Christians and the Oglala Sioux Tribe! Cars full of families with children came through the drive-thru line for 4 hours!

We are so very thankful! Wopila tanka!

Much love, Dan & Bonnie Licata, Wo’iyopastake Ministry