A Light Update: Doing Cool and Crazy Things In SoDak

So while I'm composing a more serious post, I realized I've done a ton of cool and crazy stuff in the past week and I should probably post about it. I can't let everyone think that all we do in SoDak is super serious and never any fun! So I'll take you through a couple of crazy things I've experienced here in SoDak.

First, Rosebud Fair. The Rosebud Fair was a really cool experience. I may have mentioned it before but it's worth mentioning again. Considering it was an entire weekend I'll try to keep my explanation within reason. First, I was able to work at the radio station booth (KINI 96.1 FM) with my community for a number of days. We set up the tents, served food, met tons of great people including family members of our boss at the radio station. We also hung out with some really awesome people from the A.A. Recovery program in White River and who help out with the St. Francis Mission Family Recovery program. They were setting up a tipi for A.A. meetings at the fair and my community was able to help set that up as well. While that was a cool experience in itself, getting to know these guys better was an amazing, fruitful, and very life-giving experience. I have to say I've really connected with a couple of these guys and they've already had a huge impact on me 3 weeks in. We also were able to see some dancing at the Pow-Wow. One word: incredible. The dancers were incredible and the costumes amazing. We even got to see on of our friends from the recovery program dance which was really cool. Unfortunately we missed the rodeo and mud-races, but with so much to do it was hard to do it all!

Second, our first Community Night. Community Night is a time (usually in the evening) set aside to intentionally spend time with one's JV community in order to grow, get to know each other, etc. Well being in SoDak, we go crazy and hard. So our first Community Night was ear-piercing. Jessica, being an expert ear-piercer compared to the Mikes was designated the one to pierce ears (granted she also totally offered so that might have played a bit of a role too). So Mike had two more holes pierced in his ears so that he now has two on the left and one on the right. Then, shattering my own image, shell, box, or whatever you want to call it, had my left ear pierced. So now I have a turquoise/teal stud in my left ear. Never thought I'd ever do that, but after being in SoDak for a couple of weeks, you change pretty quick and you begin to do things with a kind of, "screw it, lets see what happens attitude."

Finally, picking choke cherries and plums. As a community, we got up at O'Dark Thirty so we could leave our house at about 6:30 AM. We drove some 30ish minutes to a town called Spring Creek in order to catch a gorgeous sunrise. It was chilly but the flannel shirt I picked up made cheap while thrift-shopping in Rapid City proved very effective in staying warm. Same with the cowboy hat when it came to keeping the sun off my neck and face, which I received from one of the Jesuits. We picked tons of choke cherries, plums, and even a little bit of sage. It was some of the most fun I've had since being here in SoDak. It was excellent community time. What really struck me was at first how unnatural the activity was, but by the end it felt very much like who I was: getting up early, experiencing the start of the day, harvesting what God's earth had to offer and with people who matter to you. It was a very revealing experience in conjuncture with other revealing experiences I've had about myself in prayer. It draws into question a lot about what I want for myself and what I want in my future. It's pretty cool.

So stay tuned for another blog post coming soonish. As always prayers for Jessica, Mike, and myself are always appreciated as we try to survive this crazy year in SoDak! Thanks for reading and God bless!