CLERMONT (FBW)–Pavement is scarce and gravel streets crisscross the remote town of Lame Deer, Montana. Teens huddle at a gas station in search of excitement or escape. A stray dog rounds the corner of a store where three wrinkled men slouch on a bench.

John Rocker, a deacon at First Baptist Church in Clermont in describing the town, located on the Northern Cheyenne Indian Reservation, said it is a difficult place to minister because of the entrenched habits of the Native Americans who live there.

“They fought us for the first few years, but it seems to me there’s been a turn around now,” Rocker said slowly. “We love them people out there.”

Rocker has been a “catalyst” for a partnership between First Baptist and Morning Star Baptist Church in Lame Deer that began in 2000, said Danny Davis, First Baptist’s senior pastor.

“He doesn’t want to just sit in the pew,” Davis said of Rocker. “He has a lot of determination and energy and he wants to do missions. Maybe he doesn’t feel like he can go to somewhere like West Africa, but he can go somewhere close.”

In spite of a serious car accident that left the 79-year-old Rocker depending on walking canes and wheelchairs to get around, Rocker and his wife, Mary, led a missions team to Montana last fall and are planning another trip this September.

“There isn’t anything more deserving than a mission like this,” Rocker said. “I can see where the money is well spent…. There’s nothing thrown away out there at all.”

Challenged by its isolated location (it is 100 miles away from any major shopping center) and the reservation’s unusually high unemployment rate, the Montana church struggles to keep up. Until recently they scrambled to find enough funds to purchase a new heater and carpeting for its parsonage.

They’ve taken a personal interest in us as a family,” said Dean Smith, Morning Star’s pastor. “They’ve just taken us under their wings…turning the parsonage into a home.”

Rocker video-taped Keli, Smith’s wife, fighting back tears and embarrassment as she shared with First Baptist’s congregation the needs of the small church. Showing the footage, Rocker gathered enough donations from the Florida Baptist church’s members to buy the parsonage a propane furnace and carpet the downstairs.

“People feel a concern for this pastor and his family and are delighted to hear the good news that’s happening,” Davis said. “They just want to help and maybe it’s something as unspiritual as a furnace, but they know it’s desperately needed.”

Smith added that the Rockers’ care and concern encourages them as they minister in the poor and isolated area of Montana. The boxes of clothes and goodies the Rockers send are a “welcome relief,” Smith said.

“I think God has laid upon their hearts the ministry to the Native American People,” Smith said of the Rockers. “We welcome their love and their hearts and their prayers.”

Four years ago, Morning Star had 20 members, mostly white staff from the nearby medical center and a few single, Native-American mothers. Under the direction of Smith, a Ft. Myers native, the church now is a pre-dominantly Native-American group with 50 members and several entire families.

“This is a church where there’s fruit and so there’s a real investment in the Kingdom because they are growing and people are being saved,” Davis said. “It’s a slow work but [Smith has] had a lot of fruit in the last year.”

During his last trip, Rocker witnessed the baptisms of nine Morning Star members at First Baptist Church in Colstrip. Without a baptistery, Smith baptizes members in Colstrip or in more moderate weather dips them in the Tongue River.

“Each one of those people came up to me and you could see Jesus in them, even soaking wet,” Rocker said of those baptized.

Rocker said the ministry of Morning Star has changed lives in Lame Deer. The retired businessman told the story of a man in his 60s who because of his conversion to Christianity is fighting his addiction to alcohol and looking for work.

Rocker said he felt he was able to relate to the people in Lame Deer because of his own problems with alcohol addiction. He said he escaped from his addiction without withdrawals or a rehab center.

“This was one of my gifts from God,” Rocker said he told the Montana people.

Rocker said the Smiths are “resourceful” in reaching the people of Lame Deer.

Smith attended tribal council meetings and opened the church for meetings of a local counseling center. In addition to the church, the Smiths also are responsible for Liberty Christian Academy, Rocker said, another ministry of the church and the school from which their oldest daughter graduated last year.

The Smiths, with the help of two volunteers, teach two of their daughters as well as 15 students from first through tenth grade from the reservation. Fourteen more children are on a waiting list. Smith said they hope to increase the school’s enrollment to 60 with the addition of three donated trailers several missions teams plan to remodel this summer.

“The pastor and his wife do the work of half a dozen people,” Rocker said. “They live on faith….You can see the love they have for them.”

Rocker said he plans to share the ministry of the Smiths in Montana at WMU meetings, church gatherings, and senior citizen clubs.

“People get more excited about something they can see, feel and touch,” Davis said. “Personal partnerships can really stir their hearts.”