The Storyteller

"I knew I was doing wrong." Chug describes his awareness of how his life was going. After spending the night in jail for a DWI, and with his wife in the hospital after giving birth to their son, the shame and pain of life had become to much. He began looking for a way to end his life. But something happened that changed his course.

"I remember sitting in the evening at the Silver Spur in Pierre. And I remember looking up and watching the crowd and hearing the music. I could see the smoke. I could see people laughing and dancing and everything going on around them. And I distinctly remember saying, 'God I don't want to live this way anymore'."

"A lot of people don’t understand, but He said we were peculiar people in His Word, and I guess we are, and I would rather be peculiar then to indulge in those things that I once did. I just can’t say it enough or couldn’t express it enough, the love that I have for Him. It’s just, it’s sometime that I can’t explain, but I know that He’s working in me each day and helping me put the puzzle of my life together."

"I can remember sitting there knowing it was wrong and knowing I didn’t like it, but I wanted to be like my friends and so I drank. I worked there and reapplied to go back out to Haskell, and I went out there and stayed for three years, and I never graduated. Course, if they could have passed me from hanging out in the bars, I guess I’d of got a good grade there."

"I prayed about it, and that’s what I did. I totally quit abusing alcohol and abusing my life and letting it go to waste. I want people to know that this is the only way, that the Lord is the only way. He’s our strength. People who are listening to me, I strongly urge you to come to your senses and to believe what I have just testified on. And to know that there is a God that loves you all, no matter what you’ve done in life."

"My friends, so-called friends, were drinking and that’s the only way that I can solve my problem of being sorry for myself. The guys back home that I partied with, I started seeing them die off, even the younger ones, younger than me have died, and not knowing the Lord. It grieves me very much."

"I can remember my dad beating up on my mum and giving her black eyes. One night my sister and I, my little sister, my mum was beat up so bad and it was in winter time. The snow was deep, and I figured it was safe for me, and my sister was walking already, she was about three years old, five years, four years old, and I took her to my grandpa’s where I know we would be safe."

"Just feeling the change and knowing that I was a new creation, everything was just like sewn up by the Lord. I knew that I had a purpose, that I was to glorify the Lord and to just be a servant; that’s all I want to do is just to be, in everything that I do, I want to be last, just help people. I don’t want any kind of recognition or anything, because it all belongs to the Lord."

"I can remember laying there, and it was cold because it was November, and then I remember the ambulance picking us up. I could hear my Dad moaning, and I could hear my sister crying, screaming, and getting to the hospital, I can remember the cold metal when they x-ray you, and it was really hard because my Dad didn’t make it."

"There is a hope in knowing Jesus Christ that our Indian people don’t have to die from alcoholism, they don’t have to die from abuse from family members, or drugs or anything, but that they have hope in Jesus Christ, and that’s what keeps me going. That’s what keeps me going and sharing to all His people."