About Us
The Early Days
This photo is from our early days where we would meet in a church parking lot, load our trucks and car pool to California Indian Reservations. Often six or eight missionaries would join us. We would knock on doors and hand out a Bible in English or Spanish and provide New Testament Bibles to the children. We have definitely expanded from those humble beginnings!
We always asked if we could pray with the family and, if hearts were open, we would share the Gospel. If they were not home, we would leave a tract to read with our phone number to request a free Bible. Oh, the stories we all could tell when we would visit the reservations and the adventures we had.
Our Vision
Our Vision is to present the Native Americans with the Gospel of Jesus Christ. We do this with the Bibles and Christian materials that we supply to the reservations. We also attempt to help those families in need with food and warm clothing wherever necessary.
Our Team
Our current Board of Directors include Don Rasmussen of California as President, Vicki Aznoe of Montana as Vice President, Linda Todhunter of California as Chief Financial Officer, Karen Eelma of California as our Secretary, with Darlene Tooley of Oklahoma as our Treasurer.
We also have advisors in California, Michigan, Florida Oklahoma, Montana, and New York, who help us locate churches on reservations in North America. Everyone associated with the American Indian Ministries is a volunteer, and over 90% of our incoming funds are spent on purchasing NKJV Bibles, KJV Bibles, Illustrated Bibles for children, Christian teaching literature, feeding families who are hungry, and sending warm clothing to Native Americans who need to stay warm.
Our History
It all began in 1983, when God gave Dr. Don Rasmussen a burden for the lost Native American Indians of North America. As a member of Gideons for many years, he and his first wife Nancy, who passed on to the Lord in 2013, realized that many reservations did not receive the Bibles and Christian teaching materials they needed to teach the Gospel of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. At that time, it was decided to focus primarily on Native Americans in the San Diego County area.
God then brought a Native American Indian family into their lives, Pastor George Luther and his wife Sarah. George was completing his degree in theology, and planned to minister to his own native American Indian people on the Hopi reservation in New Mexico. From this friendship came the birth of American Indian Ministries. As the ministry grew, the outreach was expanded to reservations in Arizona, New Mexico, Wyoming, Montana, Wisconsin, Oklahoma, Kansas, and the Nuu Savi Indians in the La Mixteca region of Southern Mexico.
For several years George and Sarah Luther, along with Dr. Don and Nancy Rasmussen, took Bibles and tracts to the homes of Native Americans on the reservations. Others, including Arthur Allen, Frank Lokits, Karen Eelma, Dr. Paul Blaze, Garry Bishop, Mary Goodison, Mark Murtomaki, Mindy Chenault and more came forward and told us the Lord had given them the desire to minister to the Native American Indians. When we became a Non profit Organization, Arthur Allen became our CFO, Karen Eelma became our Treasurer, Mary Goodison became our Secretary, Dr. Don Rasmussen became our president, and Melinda Chenault became our Vice President.
Unfortunately, Melinda (Mindy) passed away in August of 2016, however we are still using many of the Christian books and Bible lesson plans she authored. As other volunteers came forward, we continued going to the reservations presenting Bibles to families, illustrated Bibles to the children, the Book of John (called The Bread of Life in English, Pan Vida in Spanish), and a book that pastors cannot seem to get enough of called “Armed and Dangerous”. Originally distributed to teenage youth, the demand from adults continues to increase.
Many of those Native American Indians are now attending Bible classes and churches on and off the reservations using their Bibles and Christian books they received from American Indian Ministries.
Soon, our board of directors realized that it would be a difficult task to reach the over 2 & 1/2 million North American Indians in Canada, United States, and Mexico, let alone the approximately 58,000 living in San Diego County. As we asked the Lord for new directions, The Lord opened many doors for us to work with missionaries and pastors currently ministering to the Native Americans. Now we are able to send Bibles to reservations as far as the Mixtecas reservation in southern Mexico, the Crow, Sioux, Assiniboine Gros Venture, and Blackfoot reservations in Montana, the Navajo in Arizona, the Hopi in New Mexico and many more. There are 18 reservations in San Diego, the most in any county in United States, and they are often referred to as “Mission Band of Indians” including Kumeyaay, Payomkawichum, Kuupiaxchem and Cahulla tribes. Often, our Native Americans consider Christianity to be the “white mans” religion—and we don’t need to reminded what the Europeans did to our First Nation people on their own lands. Is it any wonder they sometimes look upon Christians with some disdain? We need to overcome this when we share the Gospel of Jesus Christ with them. We also need to counteract the cults that are increasingly invading the reservations as well as being well schooled in the mis-truths of those organizations in order to defend the Truth.
Many missionaries travel to distant lands to preach and teach The Word to many diverse peoples, and that is what Jesus commands us to do in Matthew 28. We need to reach out to all nations, however, we should not forget our own nation which shares our soil with totally separate nations of Native American Indian tribes. We need not go far to share the Gospel of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. We have a saying “You do not need to cross the sea to see the Cross.”
WHAT DO WE NEED
PRAYER… is a very necessary part of our ministry. We will not step foot on a reservation without prayer from our prayer team. Putting on our spiritual armor, understanding the cults and the ancient Indian traditional religions, which includes worshiping their sun god, and being well founded in scriptural truths, are all necessary. We need your prayers. Prayer has opened every door we have seen opened, and those prayers have kept us safe, as well as effective on our many trips to the reservations. Many theologians estimate that less than 10% of the North American Indians are truly born again. American Indian Ministries is trying to change that.
American Indian Ministries also needs you to go as a witness to the Native American people. We need your support to purchase thousands of Bibles, along with other supportive Christian materials and to send food and warm clothing to families in need, all of which is provided to them at no cost. We also need researchers to locate reservation churches, their pastors, and above all else, we need prayer partners.
American Indian Ministries is also helping pastors build their own reference libraries to better serve their people. Several pastors on reservations have lost all of their reference books and materials after wild fires in San Diego county, including one church being purposely burned down.
We have been helping this congregation for many years in the rebuilding of a new all metal church structure, which you can view in the photo gallery of our web site.
If you have a heart for reaching out to our First Nation people, and tell them that your God is above all of other gods, we welcome your call to American Indian Ministries. We have a mission for you.
Thank you for your prayers and support.