first experiences

sunday

we went to the traditional worship at Our Saviours in Sioux Falls. we chose traditional over contemporary, which happens at the same time - and the pastor darts back and forth between both services preaching a total of four times!

we hoped to leave right after but when you are visitors all wearing the same mission trip t-shirt everyone wants to talk to you :)

then we met Senator McGovern - this was particularly exciting because on the drive to Sioux Falls Gerry told us that Senator McGovern was the first person he ever campaigned for!

on our journey we stopped at the corn palace in mitchell. danielle thought it would be a field and there would be a castle made of corn that we could play on. it’s actually in a town on the main drag and the locals take pride in the changing facade each year. they had cool hats and we took some pictures - one with a complete stranger who thought we were joking that we wanted to take a picture with her. correction - she wasn’t a stranger she was the woman with the sunglasses. we talked to “cornelius” who was struttin’ around in a corn costume.

we drove through the very tip of the badlands.

upon arriving in manderson we were slightly disappointed that didn’t meet pinky right away - we therefore decided that she’s even more of a mythical figure. the guy behind the counter at pinky’s store was about 7 feet tall - delaney thought this was pinky at first.

once at the house we’re staying at we met our counselors from lutherans outdoors in south dakota (jodi, brian, and hannah), played screaming toes and WHOOPAH! heard the rules, got settled in, and worshipped before heading to bed.

monday

five alarms each about a minute apart woke us up just so that brian, henrik, and danielle could go for a run.

we visited Red Cloud Indian School. our tour guide Ron, a graduate of the school, told us about the history of the school and about the chapel on campus. they won an architectural award for this chapel! it’s made out of pine and is directional located according to the movement of the sun. at one point in the day the sun will shine through the stained glass image representation of Jesus and all of God’s children to the window on the opposite side of an Indian Madonna and Child. in the stations of the cross, commissioned by alumn of the school, the soldiers depicted are Crow or Calvary Soldiers and Jesus is a Lakota Indian. jeannine was totally impressed by the doors of the church - so we took a group photo in front of it.

we got to see Red Cloud’s grave site. danielle saw the biggest dandelion of her life in the graveyard. and we learned about the importance of smoking a pipe and that the smoke is never inhaled.

then we visited the art gallery in the heritage center. they have several original warrior shirts and there’s a gallery set up to look like a classroom at a boarding school with photographs of the wounded knee massacre on the wall. some us thought that some of the pieces should be sold for more and other should be sold for less.

we had a picnic lunch at daron’s buffalo farm. then daron took us out to feed the buffalo. delaney, henrik, and brian kissed a buffalo. buffalo tongue feels like sandpaper. they’re eyes are on the side of the head to they can’t really see what they’re eating.

daron brought us to the shade by his house to smudge and he told us the story of the white buffalo calf woman. we also found out that daron is a sundancer - we were very impressed.

then we led kids time. all the kids were very willing to come with us to the park. one kids drooled all over henrik. we played duck duck grey duck. they were very excited to make bracelets.