It is lunchtime, and folks have begun drifting into the Sheds’ modest home in Northwest Territories, Canada.
(Note: Information for the following report on Baptist work in the far
reaches of the Northwest Territories was gathered by Editor Lynn P.
Clayton during a trip to the region earlier this year.)
It is lunchtime, and folks have begun drifting into the Sheds’ modest home in Northwest Territories, Canada.
Glenda Shed, the wife and mother, stands over the stove, dishing out
spaghetti, caribou meat sauce and pleasant greetings to whomever
arrives.
Several children are eating around the table while
other children and adults are scattered around the kitchen, enjoying
the meal cooked from a Texas recipe. Laughter lightens the air, and a
smile enhances each face as David, the husband and father, moves around
the room.
The setting is Rae-Edzo, a small town 3,300 miles
north of Dallas, Texas, and just a couple of hundred miles from
the Canadian Arctic Circle. Rae-Edzo sits six miles off Highway 3,
which ends 70 miles away at Yellowknife, the last town headed north
from civilization in south-central Northwest Territories.
One has a difficult time finding the town on most
maps of Canada. However, God obviously knows right where it is – that
is the only explanation for the thriving Baptist work going on there.
Rae-Edzo is the governmental center of the Dogrib Tribe.
Dogribs, or Tlicho, are a Dene Tribe officially recognized by the
Canadian government. There are only some 2,600 Dog Ribs, and 1,500 of
them live in Rae. But then, only 37,100 people live in all the vast,
generally-barren regions of the Northwest Territories.
So, it comes as something of a surprise when one
finds David and Glenda Shed and their daughters Audrey, Gracie and
Francis living there, being used of God to minister to the Tlicho for
more than 11 years now.
It is even more surprising that the Sheds have been
accepted into this society where all outsiders are looked upon with
strong suspicion.
A Royal Mounted policeman who is stationed in
Rae-Edzo says of the Sheds, “They are good people doing really good
work.” The policeman has no idea he is talking to a reporter from
Louisiana who is writing an article about the Sheds’ work in the region.
When told about the houseful of people the Sheds fed
on the day this reporter was in their home, the federal policeman notes
– “They were feeding them because those folks likely
would have nothing to eat if the Sheds had not fed them. That’s the
kind of people they are.
“When the Sheds moved to (the Northwest
Territories), they moved right down there in the middle of the people,
not out on another side of Marion Lake where the teachers and
government workers live,” the Royal Mounted policeman recounts. “They
moved right in there with them and started helping them.”
Had it not been for a determined group of Navajo
Indians living in the four corners region of the United States and
Canada, with a heart for reaching their Dogrib cousins, the adventurous
Shed family from Killeen, Texas, might not be in Rae-Edzo now.
The Navajos discovered their cousins back in the
early 1980s and negotiated the right to build a house in Ft. Rae. Since
the mid-1980s, this house had been used for mission work on several
occasions by the Navajo.
However, keeping a full-time missionary in the area was very difficult.
Meanwhile, the pull of God’s call kept moving David
and Glenda Shed further north from their Texas home. At first, God drew
them to Prairie Bible Institute’s graduate school in Calgary, Alberta,
Canada.
“Five Southern Baptist pastors from Killeen, Texas,
whom I admired had attended the school, and we felt that is where we
should attend,” David Shed explains.
After attending Bible school at Prairie Bible
Institute in the 1970s, the Sheds moved back to Texas where they
started a security company that became significantly successful.
Eventually, Shed began to prepare the company for his absence for what
he thought was travel to Saudi Arabia. He was going to be employed by
the Saudi government to install an extensive border surveillance
system.
However, as that door closed, God began leading the family North again.
“We came back to graduate school to work on my
master’s degree in inter-cultural studies,” Shed explains. “While I was
in school, I began working with the Black Foot Indians in Southern
Alberta.”
Shed heard about the opportunity to serve in
Rae-Edzo just before Christmas 1993. He went the next day with a group
of Navajo men and their mission leader, Art Norris. When the trip
ended, Shed boarded a bus and went to see where God was calling him and
his family.
In the following months, preparation was made to
move to Rae-Edzo. After waiting on the frozen Mackenzie River to open
to ferry operation, the family entered the village on May 18, 1994.
“We met with great opposition,” Glenda Shed recalls of the family’s move north.
“One Tlicho elder stood up in a public meeting and
said, ‘Those white people are here to steal our children, our diamonds
and change our culture,’” her husband adds.
Other than traditional livelihood, there are diamond
mines on their land from which the tribe receives royalties, and where
some of their people work.
“There is also strong spiritual warfare here,”
Glenda Shed continues. “We meet with spiritual opposition here daily.
Community leaders and tribal elders have told us to leave.
Sometimes, we even got warnings to leave from fellow
believers.”
In addition, the Sheds experienced several other
difficulties they firmly believe are part of spiritual warfare being
waged against them.
“The oppression is sometimes intense as medicine
power, and curses are being used,” Shed explains. “Alcohol, drugs and
many types of abuse are rampant in the community. All of these
pressures have resulted in Audrey’s (16 years old) return to Alberta.”
Shed says that when they arrived, there were very
few Tlicho “born agains” in the village. A strong Roman Catholic church
is at the center of the Tlicho culture, he explains. The priest has
served the church for more than 40 years. Most middle age people spent
years in Catholic residential schools. Cultural traditions are
synchronized into the existing church.
“We have what we call a help ministry,” Shed
explains. “We just started trying to help people, and as we win their
confidence, we started sharing the gospel with them.
“At first, only drunken men would enter our home,”
he continues. “Over the years, we built relationships with children and
then their parents.
“We started Bible studies here in the house, and
then, we had to move the meetings into a small 16-foot-by-16-foot shed
kind of building here at the house where we were running about 30
people.”
Since the ministry started, Shed has baptized 44 people – “14 last summer.”
The Sheds explain that last summer, a group of Cross
Over young people came to Rae and worked with the community’s young
people.
“A real revival broke out,” Glenda Shed notes. “The
Cross Over kids have kept in contact with the Rae young people,
encouraging them.”
This spring, Bob Fish from Southern Baptist
Theological Seminary in Louisville, Ky., came to live with the Sheds to
help out with a busy schedule and minister to the youth.
The Sheds say that about 15 young people remain active in their fellowship.
Recently, the congregation, now known as Tlicho
Christian Fellowship – “If we had the name Baptist on it, people would
not come near it” – started constructing a church building. The Baptist
work is registered with the government now as a “legal” church, which
gives them the right to rent land on a 99-year basis. The Dogribs own
all the land in their territory.
“We never know where the money is coming from, but God has provided,” Glenda Shed admits.
Her husband acknowledges that fact.
“A Cree Indian church south of Edmonton had raised
$7,000 to start a church building for themselves, and when they heard
we were trying to build a building, they sent the money to us instead
for our building,” he notes.
Most of the church facility has been built by
volunteers, some of whom traveled to the area from the United States in
order to participate in the project.
“We also encourage the local members to work on
their building to promote ownership,” Shed says. “We don’t want people
to think this is a white man’s church.”
There is little doubt – everything about the Sheds is a “faith ministry.”
Shed receives donations from individuals and a
couple of Southern Baptist churches. He also has been named a strategic
co-ordinator of the Canadian Conference of Southern Baptists and
receives a small stipend for that.
Dwight Huffman, a native of Pineville, is the
Canadian director of that organization. They are in the process of
strategizing to start Southern Baptist works in other Northwest
Territory communities. Most of these communities are accessible only by
ice roads or flight.
Recently, pilot Solomon Crow of Yellowknife has
joined forces with the workers and is renting a small plane to take
Shed to some of the communities as money is available. Solomon says he
hopes to have a plane in the mission as soon as possible so that
regular trips to more northern communities can become possible.
Also joining the ministry is James McCray. He has
been ministering in Rae-Edzo since last summer and for a month this
past winter. He recently graduated from Southern Seminary and is going
to the Northwest Territories via the school’s Nehemiah Program. For two
years, he will receive a salary from this project.
“James has been very instrumental in getting the
youth organized and holding Bible studies and playing Risk,” Shed
explains.
The Sheds depend entirely upon contributions from
individuals and churches in the United States through the
Inter-Cultural Missions, 9685 FM 2657 Kempner, TX 76539. That is a far
cry from the $11,000 monthly income he enjoyed before moving to his
mission field.
“(But) I do not foresee ever living and serving
anywhere else,” Shed emphasizes. “We know God put us here and we plan
on staying here.”
Indeed, the Sheds continue to focus on their vision for help ministries among the Dogribs.
For instance, they have been asked by the local
government to expand their ministry to unwed mothers and homeless
youth. They also have been asked to build onto the Navajo house or
build another home in the community.
“Perhaps there will be more ways to partner with
churches down south to accomplish all the Lord has for us,” notes Shed,
who says he hopes work teams from churches in the United States will
begin to look north.
“We believe God will continue to provide,” Shed says.
And in turn, the Sheds will certainly provide
“helps” to God’s little ones, these isolated First Nations people, many
of whom have never heard of Christ but certainly have a place in God’s
heart.