“The Words Will Come When You Pray From Your Heart” with Josie Lawrence

Well there’s a lot of things in my eye that are going on I need to be taken care of we just had a to new council members that are elected me again we need spirituality in our council like I said we’re not gonna count with two starter meetings with a prayer and then we had our meeting say nah I don’t like to see the available or council now but I see their minutes nobody ever prayed doctor me then and I brought distorted their attention our council member in our district I said you need to pray so when you have our district meetings I pray before we have our meeting I know we need this no matter what in our lives we need prayer [Music] can I ask something about that do you have a sense of why maybe prayer isn’t as prevalent than anymore seems like I struggle with that too with kids that I work with no not really yeah seeing the value or understanding why it’s so important do you have a insight into that all right think like an old world up that we attic without prayer we will nothing we can accomplish anything without prayer we need for guidance from God to give us guidance we’ll do the things that will improve things on a reservation like our Tribal Council and you’ll give them knowledge to the right thing to lead us in a good way this is why they need to pray they need guidance knowledge and now that’s what I used to pray for when I was on the council it helps to solve some of the problems I had an uncle and I that used to come up to get his mail every day and he gave me good guidance on prayer you know a lot of times I used to go to the elders for advice I used to go to my own companies nice to see ya oh this is no I’m gonna do this distance any disease it’s not good he’s gonna say don’t Matthew don’t do that you couldn’t do it this way this is the wish so I never got into any problem by listening to me the elders his wisdom I know I learned that from them you know one time ago you thought we’re talking about when I was in alcoholism I kind of got away from with my religion prayer mmm this one young lady that was here early her husband was a great man he was he used to pray in Dakota language taught give advice funerals and you know after I sobered up I used to watch him you know how he prayed and not today I do love that my Dakota language by observing him and I today I use some of these words when he prayed to God in the court of language I used some of those words and not I asked him when I first started I was never a person that could speak in a crowd or spoke to meet me two people in a crowd so I used to ask him how is the seitan she that means cousin sate Archie I said someday I want to pray like you do I want to talk to people like you do I said how do I do that how do I pray I said how do you pray I guess was the question Athena you know he didn’t say nothing for a long time he stood and looked at me he said Tom she do you have a heart see ya that’s where you pray from misses your heart and once you do that start talking to people from here it won’t come easy once you start praying in the world go home you don’t have to be taking ahead of time what you’re gonna pray just think of what you’re going to pray for if you’re praying for somebody in the past and you don’t pray for somebody to quit alcohol you think of all those things and then you pray from here to ask God to help them to help you and this is how I learned how to pray was from watching and observing the tamashii the cousin of mine so today I’m really happy person I do I’d like I said before I work with all different religions we have a pastor that Native American he’s the only Native American pastor we have on this reservation he name is Larry Ely either he searched his name Dakota RT the people’s church the college he’s a Lutheran but I recruit him a lot when we have week he called on me to pray and we have something going on here like if he comes at Rea I ask him to pray true and we have victory and his other ones it’s assembly Agard away Baptist I got a nephew that are studying to be a minister at the Baptist Church over here I got a grandson that’s a Baptist minister in Albuquerque I heard my granddaughter’s and her kids are too so I work with all religious nah I guess my main really believe is the higher power God he’s the one that helps me with everything without him I wouldn’t know what to do like when my family got an accident I didn’t know what to do until the priest came we started talking about God and what happened you know this put me through to long that tragedy and like I said today I can talk about it you know without following apart you might see and what it’s still hard but I saw I do hoping is how it will help other people that they’ll remember ever has to go through this what I went through and I’m gonna keep this up until I can’t anymore but I’ll never give up