The hard-driving and long-suffering Jess and I got home from a mission trip to Pine Ridge Indian Reservation last Saturday night at about 11:00 p.m. I won’t kid you, it was a tough trip, starting about 3 days before we left. Trying to get everything packed into that trailer and my truck is always a challenge, not just because we take a lot of camping gear, but because of the enormous amount of stuff, both clothing and food, that people donate for us to take out there.

The amount of donations is both awesome and terrible. Awesome because people are so generous and eager to help. Many who have never gone on the trip have been our most consistent supporters, and many, I know, have truly given until it hurts, and God bless ’em for it.

It is terrible because we have so much to give, and so many of the Lakota have so little. None of us back here in Indiana think of ourselves as rich, at least nobody I know of. Most of us consider ourselves middle- or at worst, lower-middle-class (although late at night, when we’re lying sleepless in bed worrying about bills, or our kids’ college, or is our car going to make it another year, it’s awfully easy to secretly suspect we don’t even qualify for upper-lower-class).

Until we get out there, that is. Nothing makes you feel rich like going to the Rez. It’s a real eye-opener, especially the 1st time. We pull up to do our VBS at the playgrounds, and see the grass and weeds anywhere from ankle- to knee-high, and full of ticks, trash, snakes, and who knows what else. We see the basketball court covered with glass from so many broken liquor bottles that it looks like the court is paved with diamonds sparkling in the sun, and the shattered, and frequently shotgunned backboards. All surrounded by shabby, graffiti-scarred government-built houses with yards, some weed-strewn and unkempt, some as neatly maintained as any back home, some surrounded by field fence, some fortified with barbed-wire.

Someone once asked me why some of them will mow their own yard, but not just go on and mow the playground. I asked them, if you lived there, and are lucky enough to have a mower that works, and lucky enough to have a job so you can afford gas for the mower, and are motivated enough to give your own kids a decent, relatively safe place to play, would you take a chance on destroying your equipment and not be able to take care of your own kids’ needs, just to be a nice guy?

How many of us when we’re home go mow or maintain rundown public lands, or even our neighbors’ yards, or do we just bitch about why doesn’t the city or our neighbor do something about that damn dump? Why should we expect more from them than we do from ourselves?

And then the kids show up, and you kind of forget what a nasty place it must be to live. They are so excited to see us, and especially those of us who’ve made this trip before. They are so grateful and hungry for the attention that it breaks your heart and uplifts it all at the same time. They just can’t seem to get enough. A kid will often pick out one of us and stick like glue. In many ways, it’s like they’re starved for human contact. Although some of them (especially the older ones) want to run and play games, it seems like most just want piggy-back rides, or to sit and talk with us while they draw with sidewalk chalk or do crafts, or they just want to be held, to be touched in a wholesome, loving way.

Of course, it’s not all beauty and light and Mr. Rodger’s Neighborhood with the kids either. Just like our kids, some of them will test you. They want to see if you’re willing to put your money where your mouth is. They know that it’s easy for us to come out there and fling Jesus at them, and make ourselves feel good about ourselves for playing with the “poor little indian kids”. They want (and need) to be loved, not patronized. So they push you to see if you’re the real deal. There’s nothing like the look on the face of a white middle-class, middle-aged housewife and mother after being told to “go F%&@ yourself” by a 6-year-old. They’ll swipe your stuff and taunt you with it. A favorite trick is to get you to let them take a picture of you with your phone. Then, you’ve got to spend maybe 15 minutes, maybe an hour trying to get them to give it back. They want to see if you’ll get mad. They want to see what’s really more important to you, your rich white-guy stuff or your words about Jesus.

Their teenagers like to challenge ours, especially the boys. They love sports, like most kids, and take great pleasure in schooling our guys. They will often try intimidation, to see what our boys will do. It’s a tough position for a teenage boy. If you back down, you’re a pussy, but if you don’t, are you being a christian? Does being a Christian equate to being a pussy? It’s a complicated theological question for a teenage boy in the middle of a pick-up basketball game. There’s also the possibility that if you come back too strong that you’re going to be Custer (although given the pitiful state of history instruction in our schools, there’s very little chance of any of our kids even knowing who Custer was. You can bet the Lakota kids do though.)

Usually, the testing dies off after the 1st day or two. Often the kids who tested you the most are the ones who are most upset at the end of the week when you have to leave.

Speaking of our piss-poor education in our own history, it always kinda cracks me up when I’m telling someone about the trip, and they ask me, “Do they still live in Teepee’s?” and stuff like that. It’s not just kids either. It’s educated adults who often ask this. It’s not just a question of education, it’s a matter of complete and utter disregard and neglect of these people by the entire nation. Nobody ever asks do Hawaiians live in grass huts or if Eskimo’s still live in igloos. I’ve actually stood on the Reservation, talking to whites passing through, and been asked, “Are there Indians around here?”

The ignorance of whites about conditions on Indian Reservations, and about Indians in general, is really shocking to me, even though I know I shouldn’t be surprised. Isolation is exactly why we put the reservations where they are. We looked around after taking everything worth taking from them, and, not having the heart to just exterminate them outright, benevolently “gave” them the most worthless bits of land we could find. At least until we found out there was something underneath that worthless ground that we did want, like uranium. Even then, we didn’t make them move, we just went in, took what we wanted, and left them poisoned water sources by way of thanks.

We cheated them, killed them, poisoned them, crushed them and penned up those who were left, to be further cheated, poisoned, and exploited. We did everything we could to make them helpless and dependent on us so we could do what we wanted without resistance, and now many of us have the nerve to talk about those lucky Indians with their government checks and casinos, and shame on them for being drunk, stoned, lazy, and unemployed. I mean what’s wrong with those people? You’d think they’d be eager to learn our ways now that we’ve shown them how awesome we are. Didn’t we even carve our presidents heads into their holy land, just as a constant reminder?

Sorry, I get a little carried away. It’s been said of the Lakota that they were a stone-age people who were unable to even discover the wheel, but that is simply not true. They knew about the wheel centuries ago. Their whole world was a wheel. The sky was a circle, the earth was a ball, even their homes were circular. The plains Indians even made wheels, like the Medicine Wheel in Wyoming. The difference is, that, while we use the wheel to move our stuff around, have to have the wheel, because we have so much stuff, to the Lakota, the wheel anchored their world. The entire earth was their wheel and wagon, and provided everything they needed. They didn’t need the wooden wheel. They lived in their wagon and it provided everything they needed. They didn’t need to take so much stuff with them because they never left the source of their stuff, and didn’t need anything it didn’t provide.

We took that away from them. We took away their wheel and gave them little squares and boxes, with lots of nice sharp corners. Boxes to live in, squares to live on. Imaginary boundaries on a boundless plain. It took the Catholic Church roughly 300 years to accept that the world was round (1492-1822), yet we expected the Lakota (among others) to accept that it was square in roughly 50. Once again, I digress.

Back to the mission trip. This year, we were a bit more disorganized than usual. The last few years, we’ve adopted the philosophy that we’ll go out there with a very loose plan, and be ready to do whatever work God sent our way. This year, we really had no plan at all. The Tennessee group who usually goes out the week following us had to go the same week as us. They are a lot more numerous, and better organized than we are, so it was decided that we’d just follow their lead, and help them out where needed. It turned out, they didn’t really need us. Those guys really have it going on. We expected to help them build a playground set and shelter at Potato Creek. We got there on Monday, saw what they were doing and realized we’d literally just be in their way. Those guys were good.

I think that our VBS/Street Ministry teams were more useful, just because it meant more attention to each kid. The only part of our trip that was unaffected was the Adult Ministry. Still, God sent us plenty of opportunities.

Dave McCoy, Caleb Carithers, and I were driving back to camp one afternoon when we passed a young woman walking along the road with a bunch of little kids, out in the middle of nowhere. We stopped and asked if they needed a ride, and she said they were going to Kyle. That’s about 20 miles from where we met her. Since we camp just outside of Kyle, we offered her a lift. We figured she was going to stay with someone there, but she said she was just going to Kyle to get diapers for her babies. She had 5 little kids with her, the oldest being about 4 or 5, and it was obvious that she’d set out for Kyle a little too late for at least one of the littlest ones

When we got to Kyle, we stopped at the grocery, and Caleb went into the store with her and got them all something to drink. Then we took her over to the police station to get the diapers, which seemed odd to us, but hey, it’s the Rez. There was no one there, so we invited her to dinner at the camp. We took her out there, and had dinner with her and her kids. After dinner we invited her to stay for devotions with us, but she wanted to get her kids home, so we loaded her down with diapers, wipes, leftovers, etc. and Troy Beckner gave them and another Native family a ride home.

Well, this is really getting long, so I’ll wrap it up with this. I get asked frequently if we’re doing any good, if we’re making any kind of difference out there, and I never really know what to say. I think we do. I know that helping people is good. Putting a smile on a sad little kid’s face is good. Putting a warm meal in a hungry kid’s belly is good. Giving desperately poor people the basics for survival, even if it’s only enough for a day or two is good. Giving people a safe place for their kids to play, or for them to camp while they worship is good. Making friends with the isolated and neglected is good. These good things are good not only for the Lakota, but for us as well.

As far as making a difference, I hope we do, but I know that if we do, it’s only because God takes our pitiful, inefficient, flailing efforts and uses them for his purposes.

Well, I guess that’s about it. Don’t worry, I’ll be back to writing stupid stuff about embarrassing bodily functions soon.

For those of you interested in learning more about any of this, just google Pine Ridge Indian Reservation.

Here are a few links to help you get started.

www.redcloudschool.org/reservation

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pine_Ridge_Indian_Reservation

www.4aihf.org/id40.html