tānisi kahkiyaw, Sam nitisyihkāson
(Plains Cree language: Hi all, my name is Sam!)
With the great support of Siama, I have recently had the privilege to travel to the great plains of Saskatchewan in Canada, to once again visit George Gordon First Nation, an indigenous community of Plains Cree / Saulteaux and Metís people. A missionary couple (Daniel and Nicole Noort), working with NEFC (Native Evangelical Fellowship of Canada) have a ministry there in the community doing mechanic works, children ministry and running the little church in the middle of the reservation.
I have visited this community three times these past two years and it has been such a blessing and a privilege to get to know so many beautiful people living there. This visit had a double purpose. For my studies in Linguistics I am writing a thesis about Language revitalization and I worked together with community members to work on getting children and elders involved again in learning their anscestral language through interactive language activities. The second simultaneous goal was to strenghten relationships with brothers and sisters from the local church, to serve alongside the Noorts in their ministry and for the language revitalization project to be a way of service to the community in which I pray we could share some of the love of the Lord Jesus in the community and bring some measure of glory to His Name. Seeing the children and elders enjoy the language classes was a great encouragment and it was a great encouragement for my own journey with the Lord to do so alongside the family Noort. Please pray for them and their ministry (https://nefc.ca/) as the ground is hard and the enemy has many people firmly in his grip and the history with the residential schools has caused many to harden their hearts to the Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ.
I thank the team of Siama for making this special and encouraging journey possible and I pray that the Lord would continue to use you to make missionary travel across the world more easy so that the Gospel may be proclaimed to all nations.
God bless,
Sam Malschaert
