And I said, ‘Do you happen to remember, back in 1949, your mother coming into possession of a little Apache Indian baby?’ And she sucked in her breath – I heard it on the phone. And she said, ‘Why, why yes. Why do you ask?’ I said, ‘Well I’m that baby.’

I remember, early on, wondering a whole lot about my place in the world and if there was any significance to my life, or was I just kind of drifting along here like a twig sitting on the waves of the ocean, no significance, no background, no future.

“Danny was the big man on campus. He was the meanest, toughest, most foul-mouthed boy on the ranch, and we all wanted to grow up and be just as tough and mean as he was. But he would kick us around, hit us, yell at us, force us to do his chores and things, just a very mean fellow, but one day Danny just changed, totally without any explanation, without any warning his life changed. His demeanor changed, his vocabulary changed everything about him, and nobody knew what had happened.”

You’ve heard alcohol referred to as “spirits”. Have you ever wondered why? Ted’s story may help shed some light on this. What he experienced was frightening beyond imagination. But it didn’t matter because he was determined to be set free.

When alcohol is your master, it effects every part of your life. For some, it comes on slow. But eventually you begin to realize the grip is not you on the bottle, but the bottle on you. Ted speaks candidly of his journey to find freedom, and the demons he faced along the way.

Growing up without a dad was not easy. But it was in the loss of his father that Jimmy came to know God as Father. Listen as he reflects on how that happened.

It’s not often that a boy gets to see his father die. It’s even less common to hear someone talk about it. But that’s what Jimmy does as he shares what happened the day that his dad unexpectedly took his last breath.

Hazel grew up on the Cheyenne River Indian Reservation in South Dakota. When her family moved to the town of Dupree, she experienced prejudice for the first time. At a young age she ended up getting married to a non-Native man in order to get away from abuse. The result was not what she was expecting.

I finally turned my life to God. I got on my knees and I cried and it seemed like another year went by, just not getting His presence back in my life. I think for all the misery and the shame and the name that I disgraced, began to haunt me and to really eat away at my soul, and I even thought that God was on the other side of the universe at times, and little did I know that He’s slowly weaning me off in a way out of all that substance use and to unwash my mind of the world, and just the crying and the pleading was really the work of God once again in my life.

“I used to sit on the hillsides back when we had no electricity or running water in our community I grew up in. And I used to gaze into the sky at night and the only friends I had were my dogs. I would sit there on a hill. I’d wonder where, and why and all these things. My sense of belonging… and all these questions were always there.”