My team and I spent this past week flying around northern Saskatchewan with the Lieutenant Governor of Saskatchewan (pronounced Leftenant Governor) and his "entourage". Every year the Lieutenant Governor travels to different small northern native communities to reward students with academic awards. Last fall, he saw Absolute's work at one of their leadership conferences and immediately started planning to have us join him this year in his travels up north. There are a lot of concerns with the youth in these communities. In 2008, there were 9 teen suicides in one single community up north. There are a lot of problems as well with teen pregnancies, and alcohol and other substance use. His Honor wanted to give these students an exciting, motiviational presentation to remind them of their worth and the power that lives within them. He told us that he wanted to restore a new hope in the lives of these kids.
So we started off early Monday morning with half of our gear and an overnight bag at the very tiny airport in La Ronge. We weren't quite sure what to expect, and to be honest, I was not excited for this week at all. I was very discouraged thinking that it was not going to be very successful. I was quite worried about it actually. When we got to the airport, we were greeted by four very nice, fairly young pilots. They were very helpful in loading our gear onto the planes. We had two planes just for us and our gear. The Lieutenant Governor had his own plane with his enourage which meant that we got the other two planes all to ourselves. Luckily, Cameco and the RCMP sponsored our trip and paid for the cost of the two planes. The flight company provided two boxes of donuts for us on the first day, and coffee, granola bars, chocolate, and other treats for us the rest of the time. The first day we didn't touch the tray of treats because we thought they must be for someone else, we didn't think we were important enough to be given all this free food!
By the end of the week we had visited 6 schools, taken 7 flights, and performed for about 1,500 kids in 6 different communites.
All of my worrying had been for nothing, because the schools we went to were awesome. Obviously there were some schools who paid less attention than others, but we usually captured them with our stories. It was encouraging to see some of the kids ask us about Hero Holiday trips and how they can get involved. We're hoping that we will have had a big influence there since they have never seen a big presentation like that before with lights and music and the whole deal.
On Monday night, we spent the night in a community called Buffalo Narrows. I think that it was one of my favourite towns. When we got there Monday night, we started setting up immediately in the school gym and as our musicians began practising, a large group of highschool students began gathering outside of the gym doors listening. Some of our team members chatted with them for a while as they shared with us what it's like to live there and explained their lives to us. They followed us to the house we were staying at and then showed us around the neighbourhood. All of these kids were dressed the same way: long baggy sweatshirts and gangster hats and they all rode on BMX bikes around town. They were the small gang who ran the town. Except, we were surprised to see that they were not bad kids. None of them were doing bad things, they were just hanging out and looking for things to do. They took us to the corner store and we bought slushies and candy with them. It was really fun! You could tell that they looked up to us and wanted to show us where they were from. It was interesting to see the accents that they spoke with as well!
On our way back from the corner store, something eventful happened. And not eventful in a good way. As we were walking back from the corner store, one boy threw his bike to the ground and started chasing after one of the girls, who we found out later was his girlfriend. He had hit her. She ran off crying, trying to get away from him, but he persisted to chase after her, calling her babe, thinking that he could just apologize and everything would be better again. But life doesn't work like that. There was no way that we were going to stand for this. Our leader chased after the guy as I went after the girl. He told the guy that it wasn't cool what he had done and that it wasn't acceptable. We assume that the kid was brought up not knowing any better, but something needed to be done. The boy got very defensive and told Johnny he wanted to fight about it. We explained to him that violence doesn't solve anything and that he needed to walk away. In the meantime, I had caught up to the girl and was consoling her as she was crying. I told her that she is worth more than that and that she shouldn't have to put up with that kind of behavior. She was only 14 years old. Her boyfriend of one year was 17 years old. The abuse had been going on during their whole relationship. She told me about the bruises she had on her arms and that he forced her to do things that she didn't want to. It broke my heart to hear that a 14 year old girl had convinced herself that she was worth no more than that. I told her that she didn't have to settle for second best, but her friend told me that there was no one else... that she doesn't have a choice because there aren't any other guys in the town for her to date. I realized the only thing that I could really do in this situation was console her and pray for her. A few minutes later, her mom showed up. One of her friends had called her, and her mom got out of the car and yelled at the boy and told him to leave her daughter alone. I told the girl to come see me after the show the next day because I wanted to make sure that she was alright. While all this was going on, Johnny had called the cops. Within minutes, the RCMP was driving around the community in search for him. I talked to the girls' group of friends and explained to them that they shouldn't be standing up for this type of behavior either. That they have a huge amount of power to stand up to this guy and stop the abuse from occuring. The next day, the girl came to talk to me after the show and told me that her boyfriend had been taken into custody by the RCMP and that she had gotten a restraining order against him. That was the answer to all of my prayers. The girl was so thankful that we had helped her out.
I am so thankful for the opportunities we were given this week. The communities we were in surpassed all of my expectations and proved my assumptions wrong. Yes there are bad things that happen in the world, but we don't have to let them control our lives or define who we are. This week reinforced the idea that in my mind that our lives are powerful and that we can change the world. Of course it isn't going to happen in one day, but each day that we continue to work, we get one step closer to accomplishing our goals. Adolf Hitler was a terrible man with a great tactic. Change the heart of the youth, and you will change the world, and we are seeing that out in full.
Some other highlights of the week were seeing the northern lights explode in the sky above us. Not just like a blue or green line in the distance, but the whole sky exploded in colour above our heads. Blue, pink, green, purple swirls of colour filled the sky and we were so amazed. I've never seen anything so majestic and beautiful in my entire life. I was awestruck.
Another awesome thing was going for a speed boat ride over rapids. We got completely soaked, but had a blast! It was the last boat ride of the season for the company so he made it extra fun!
Right now, we're spending two nights at our founders' parents' house near Prince Albert. We got to sleep in for once and are so excited to have a long weekend off :)
Sorry I haven't updated in a while, but i'm hoping that this long update was long enough that I didn't forget anything!
Thanks for your prayers everyone!
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