Contact Information
Son Tree Native Path
P.O. Box 3751
McAllen , TX 78502-3751
Phone (956)-686-5757
mailto:SonTree@aol.com

 
We got to San Antonio with an hour and fifteen minutes to spare.  Xavier (Comanche and one of the men who invited me to help them start this church) and Lucian (Cherokee, I think) and some of the Indian people of the community had prepared a fantastic barbecue ribs dinner with frybread.  We had very little time to discuss the formalities and what we planned to do.  While we ate, my good friend Lucian, and a couple from the church we would be meeting at, went to prepare the circle.  The next hour was more than eating time, but what do you get when a bunch of Indians get together under one roof?  Nothing but jokes and ways of relating funny things toward each other and finding ways of laughing at our shortcomings.  I wish we had had a video recorder to record the conversation we had right before the church service, or maybe it is best you were not there.

 
So we really did not know what to expect.  Through some miscommunication, we planned the event at the same time a pow wow was going on just ten minutes from the church.  I would have gladly worked around the pow wow but we were told the pow wow had been canceled and we had already announced the date for the service.  As we got started, I counted 33 people attending.  Ten of them were not Indian people, but people from the church that was lending us the building.  Eight were Indian people from my church (including me), and fifteen Indian people from the community came to join our first service. 

But most of them did not know what to expect.  So as we opened in prayer and blessed our drum and our songs and shared the prayer requests that had been given to me before we started the singing, I made sure I explained every step of our service to both the Indian people that were there for the first time, and the visitors who just came to observe.  I wanted to make sure they all understood the biblical mandate of every step of our church service.  It was a blessing.  Some of our women started to dance around the circle and even Lucian who is almost eighty came up with his cane and limped around the circle a few times.

 
When the service was over, I was getting hugs from all the Indian people and these are some of the things they told me. One Indian lady came and said, "Tonight was the biggest blessing I have ever received.  You have to come back and I will be praying we can do this on a regular basis."  When I told her we were planning to do the service on a monthly basis, she rejoiced and gave me a hug and said, "Thank you so much."  Another Indian lady came and said, "I truly hope we can have more of these meetings.  I have not been to church in a long time and I really enjoyed what I experienced.  I promise to invite my friends next time."  Lucian came to me and said, "I have been waiting for this for a long time.  Thank you so much for coming."  An Indian family came a little late and the Indian man just sat there without much facial expression.  He just observed everything that was happening.  At the end of the service he came to me and shook my hand and said:  "I really enjoyed the church service.  I hope you can keep it going for us."  Another Indian man came and said, "The words you said to us really make sense.  It was not preaching but more like teaching us what the Bible said through a story."  So keep us in prayer.  We are praying that we can have it every month. The next service is planned for December 10.  Pray that we will be able to use the same building again.

 
One thing that happened as we were preparing our circle and our drum is that, Xavier, the man who invited us, asked if he could share some thoughts.  I have known Xavier for about sixteen years.  He has been MC for many pow wows and many times I am the center of his jokes and stories.  He is a good old tough Comanche and I think it is funny that a Comanche and a Lipan Apache would get together to start a church since historically those peoples hated each other and were enemies; and today we still throw little jabs at each other over silly things.  But he shared a very moving testimony that I had never heard before.  About ten years ago, Xavier's younger brother died.  He called me and asked me to help him conduct a Native church service that would honor the life of his brother and the Comanche people that they came from.  On the way there, God gave me a song and I decided to dedicate this song to his brother. 

If you have our first CD, it is Creator Came Down, the title song. Not to mention any religious organization, but as I took our drum out of the van and started to walk toward the church, one of the church leaders came to us and said, "We do not allow any kind of pagan rituals in our church so please take the drum back to your car."  I did not know how to take this because I have been called a pagan all my life but never by a spiritual leader of a church and to my face.  Xavier, the mighty warrior that he is, kept his cool and just said to him, "You don't have to worry about the songs.  This man is a Christian and a Pastor and I assure you that all the songs you will hear today will be about Jesus, either in English or in our Native language."  He let us in. 

 
We did our part in the church but then went and sang our songs in the cemetery.  There were about two hundred Indian people there. 

 
He told us that when we finished our part at the cemetery, many people came and told Him how our songs and the ceremony had blessed them. After the ceremony, we were invited to go to Xavier's father's house by his father.  We went and his father thanked us for the beautiful ceremony.  We ate with the family and then came home.  That was what happened at Xavier's brother's funeral about ten years ago.  But at this service, Xavier told us that our visit was a miracle.  That we had been the first Indians his father had ever invited to their home.  Even though his father had married a full blood Comanche, he did not allow any Indians to visit his house.  He told us that our ceremony and message and songs softened his father's heart for Indian people and for the very first time accepted his children as Indians.  What a blessing!

God Bless,

Robert Soto    Lipan Apache Warrior for Jesus

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