A Letter to the Church

A Letter to the Congregation of First Presbyterian Church which will be on the front of the church newsletter:

For more than a year now, the youth of First Presbyterian Church have committed themselves to each other in a way that has lead them to begin to truly investigate what community is all about. We’ve laughed together, we’ve had “run-ins” with each other, we’ve cried together and now we are learning how to truly love each other. We are presented this summer with the good opportunity to engage in a conversation and extend this love to a people who are all too familiar with negligence, hatred and oppression.

Beginning June 20, 2009, nine of our senior high students and two chaperons, along with ten others from Henderson Presbyterian Church, will be making a 1,000 mile trip to Rosebud, South Dakota to be in community with the Rosebud Sioux Tribe who resides on the Rosebud Reservation. Here are some facts about this community:

• Approx. 20,700 people live on the Reservation
• 80% of the work force lives below the poverty level
• 82% unemployment rate
• 27% of people over 25 have no high school diploma
• 212 of homes (7.6%) are heated by wood only (no gas or electric heat)

With the help of YouthWorks (the organization we are working with), we will be placed within this community and participating in two different capacities to provide assistance. Our first opportunity to engage with the community will be leading a VBS type program entitled Kids Club. We will work with children, leading them in games, crafts, skits, songs and interactive lessons which are all designed to help kids learn about Jesus. Our second opportunity to assist this community will be offering helping hands in home renovations. We will be working with 3 other churches to refresh the exteriors of homes by painting, doing yard work and any other tasks our hands can help with.

Our main hope as a youth group is to go and take what we have learned and worked for (authentic community) and extend it to our brothers and sisters on the Rosebud Reservation. We want to love them and be Christ to them without removing any part of their culture, while learning more about them and looking past any stereotypes we may have. As the days roll off the calendar, we are preparing ourselves in many ways, so upon our arrival to South Dakota, we can be fully present and begin truly being of the discipline of compassionate listening.

We are aware of how we cannot do this alone and how we are in need of your support. There are many ways in which you can offer support for the youth of FPC as we prepare to embark on this journey which starts June 20th and ends June 28th. First, we are in need of financial support and there will be many opportunities for you to offer assistance/donations throughout the coming months. We are hoping to raise around $4000 and as of March 1st, we have $1300. I ask that you please look in PresbyNotes for fundraising events our youth will have to help raise money for this trip. These fundraising events include: a Saturday dedicated to picking up sticks and debris in your yards, a night planned for Kids for Christ and their friends, Sunrise Breakfast, a “Boot Sale” and a carwash.

Also we are in need of water bottles. Because we want to be good stewards of “Mother Earth” we do not want to take plastic bottles on our trip, thus we are in need of environmentally friendly water bottles.

Finally, the most helpful way you can support us is through prayer and praying for us. We are aware of the difficulty of this trip and know we will be stretched and challenged in ways perhaps we never have been before. We ask for your prayers as we prepare for the trip, for safe travel to and from South Dakota, for those whom we will be sharing life together for those few short days, and courage for our youth as they begin to demonstrate to the world around them, another way is possible. I will have a roster of those participating students made available if you are interested one to aid you in your prayers for us. Peace, unity, love and healing, this is our prayer.

My hope for our youth this trip and for our church is that we will begin to lift up in prayer, the people of the Rosebud Sioux tribe. It is my hope that we may be of the ministry of reconciliation and demonstrating God’s love to a people whose voices have been silenced for many years. May we as a congregation support and love our youth who have committed themselves to God’s love and preaching the Gospel with their lives, and using words when necessary. May God be with us as we prepare to send our youth out into a broken world bringing the Kingdom of Heaven even nearer.

Thank you and shalom!

To visit the website of the Rosebud Sioux Reservation, click here.