Day 2: Prom Dresses, Ramps, and Lakota Love Songs

Good Evening people!!!! This is Molly, Pam, and Gene bringing you our day 2 recap from Mission, South Dakota!!! 

We started our morning bright and early with breakfast again at 7:30am with FANTASTIC scrambled eggs (by Gene). The boys played some morning hacky sack before heading off to our work sites just a short drive away. Our groups split up once again after Linda (our supervisor at Tree of Life Ministries) gave us our work choices for the day. The girls (Pam, Molly, Barb, and Melanie) once again were finishing up de-cluttering, cleaning, and organizing their main office/storage room, and the boys were continuing their project of working of the ramp from yesterday. The girls were happy to finish cleaning out the storage room and the ministries 2 racks of prom dresses and 2 racks of suits were able to have a new place to be stored and saved. The boys were thankful that the weather had backed off from hot and humid to something that was much more comfortable to work in outside! They finished the framing of the wheelchair ramp (a very sturdy ramp which was tested thoroughly by jumping on it). Gene was impressed by the focus and hard work put out by the boys construction crew! There was no slacking this morning! 

By lunch time, the girls had finished their project and the boys had finished the first part of their ramp project. We are lucky enough that our work projects are close enough to the house we are staying at that we can all come back and enjoy lunch here at our home base. After lunch, we all got new assignments for the afternoon! The girls were re-assigned to Tree of Life's new thrift store to work. The thrift store is part of their larger complex to help serve the community and is very large and very nice! We were thoroughly impressed with their operations and all they are able to do and planning for the future (Like a drive-thru soup kitchen and extensive indigenous native green house!). At the thrift store, we unpacked donation pallets, sorted, and got new clothes and items out on the floor ready for sale! Meanwhile, the boys were out working on a new project repairing local baseball fences at the high school. And that was the end of our second work day!

We then had a wonderful dinner of tacos (Taco Tuesday!!!!!) prepared by Lance, David, and Melanie! Shortly after, we had another visitor come and talk to us about the Lakota culture and community. Justin Baker, who is actually the gentleman the boys are building the wheelchair ramp for, talked to us about his experiences as a local Lakota member of the tribe, his spirituality, his work teaching Lakota culture, the history of the Lakota people and surrounding tribes, his equine therapy program (which we may visit later this week!), and he even sang some traditional Lakota songs with his drum! It was a fantastic evening of learning and experiencing Lakota song, culture, and history. He had immense insight on the Lakota community and people, and we enjoyed visiting with him and his wife! AND!!! The coolest thing was during the end of our visit (after talking for over an hour) we learned that Justin and Jessi knew Ann and Kevin Nelson (a family who used to go to LUMC and were very active)!! They casually asked if we knew them and the room exploded with excitement as we learned about this connection we all shared and how small the world really seems sometime!  (Ann sang in the choir.  She and Kevin adopted Jessi's daughter Kennedy.  They stay close and it was a thrill to meet them.  I texted a picture of Jessi and I to Ann - she was very surprised. - Barbara)  After Justin left, we did devotions lead by Connor, Caleb, and Howard keeping with our theme about parables we learned of the workers and the vineyard. We are now resting and planning for our fun day tomorrow (aka our rest day) where we will be going on a float trip!! Tune back in tomorrow to hear all the exciting details!!! 

Good Night!!! 

Molly, Pam, and Gene

P.S. In yesterdays blog and today you may see pictures of a cut-out picture on a stick... that is Flat Kate!! Our dear friend Kate, who usually comes on all our mission trips, started a job in Virginia last week and was unable to come this year :( BUT we created a way for her to still be here with us in the creation of Flat Kate (like Flat Stanley) so her smiling face is always encouraging us and keeping us company! WE MISS YOU KATE!!!

Kate trying on one of the prom dresses

Our "after picture" of finishing the storage room

We are super impressed by Pam's organization of the closet

The finished framing of the ramp!

Pastor down! Pastor down!

A little morning hacky sack is good for the soul