“Early on, in Milwaukee, I got into trouble as a young man with a lot of other friends. We weren’t a gang as such, but we had a lot of trouble that we got into, to the point where it took me before the judge when I was 16 years old, 17 years old. And the judge gave me an ultimatum of either joining the military (this was back in 1962) or going into the reformatory for the trouble that I got into.”

When he arrived home in St Theresa, Ernie was so troubled by the thought of dying that he couldn’t rest. He decided to go to Garden Hill and talk with someone who he thought could help him with his problem. It was a man he heard talking about Jesus on the radio.

On a flight from Winnipeg to Garden Hill, Manitoba, Ernie was paralyzed by fear because of a question that he couldn’t get out of his mind. “If you were to die at this very moment, where would you go?” He knew about Heaven and Hell, but he didn’t think he go to Heaven. It’s a serious question that caught his full attention… and he shares how he sought to answer it.

Ernie is from Garden Hill, MB an Island Lake community about 300 miles north of Winnipeg. Because of a sickness when he was a little boy, Ernie was unable to do some of the things that other kids could do. Early on he learned that education was very important, but alcohol was ruining his life. One day, he was confronted with a frightening question he couldn’t answer… and he couldn’t let it go.

Challenging days continue across Native North America and throughout the world. Many are facing difficult challenges… and with these challenges, difficult questions. So where do we turn? Where do we find hope in times like these? Soapy Dollar, Mescalero Apache and host of The Storyteller points us to where he has found it, and where we can too.

Abuse almost pushed Carroll over the edge. “I remember this one night, I said, This is enough of this, and so I loaded up the rifle when we went to the bush the next day, and I just hid behind a tree, and I see my dad coming, I cocked the old rifle, and had it on his head, and I was following him through the bush, and I just wanted to pull the trigger so bad. But I know to this day, I know now, that it was God that kept me from doing it. I would have blown him away, no question.”