closing time....

continuation of thursday

at the end of kids time we passed out free snowcones to the neighborhood kids. it was very popular and the whole community came out. word spreads very quickly and people of all ages came out. pinky chipped in $10 for ice and syrup for making the snow cones. it was a great way to end our week with the community.

as we were making dinner 3 relatives of pinky's appeared at the house. pinky had asked them to come talk to us. sonya is pinky's niece and she brought along her boyfriend brendan and brendan's uncle ettison came. sonya talked with us about life at red cloud indian school, her commute to school, taking lakota, and life on the res. she asked us about our school and communities. there's a lot of similarities between us and several differences as well. sonya is a gates scholarship winner: all her tuition for college up through a phd if she chooses to go to graduate school is covered by this scholarship. it's a really prestigious scholarship and 9 students at red cloud got it this year. ettison talked about people who leave the res to live in bigger cities but they always come back for spiritual rituals. he was away from the res for 10 years without coming back at all and now he makes sure to come back more frequently. he has lived in nyc and la working in the film industry doing hair and make up for natives and now is in art school in santa fe. he wanted to make sure that we realized that while the res is very rural in most places people do frequently travel to hang out in bigger cities. he was very surprised to hear that park ridge has such little cultural diversity being so close to chicago. brendan was really quiet. ettison had really cool looking eyes: blueish and different shades in places with very small pupils...its hard to explain...ben thinks its like looking into blue mist.

mary the program director from lutherans outdoors in south dakota and pinky came to dinner. they were both very excited to see the progress on the basement. we took a group picture with pinky and the kitten before she left!

we had worship out on the deck of the house. we led the scripture reading and wrote the prayers. the kitten slept in jeannine's arms during the whole service. the stars were amazing and we could see the milky way!!

after we got ready for bed the youth had some planned bonding time and got very little sleep.

we left right after breakfast and had a closing conversation at wounded knee. we talked about what we think it means to help people and what we had done this week to help. we decided helping is more than just what the community sees us do. we dont have to build something to make a difference, we helped build character and spiritual health both for the natives and ourselves. we talked about how most natives we met asked us if we had been to the reservation before. it means a lot to them that we take the time to visit and they hope that we will come back. building relationships is often more important than anything else. listening is really important.

then we had a long drive. we had dinner at china restaurant in albert lea jenny's fortune read "someone is interested in you" and ben's was "good things will come to you in due time." for the record jenny is still with us. then we had ice cream at dairy queen while we waited for delaney's mom to pick her up.

we're staying at bethel lutheran in rochester. the church is huge and awesome with an amazing youth hall - we might actually sleep in the nursery though.

as a closing prayer we'd like to say "the badlands were awesome. good job with that one God."