FOUNDATIONS

For the last several years, participants of the Mission Trip have been asked to read two books: Moon of Popping Trees by Rex Allen Smith (1980) University of Nebraska Press and Neither Wolf nor Dog: On Forgotten Roads with an Indian Elder by Kent Nerbern (1994, 2002) New World Library.

Both are extraordinary works and provide a historical, as well as a spiritual/contemporary context in which to frame our experiences. They are the foundation for our common understanding of the culture into which we travel and live temporarily.

One of the privileges of returning to a community over time is that it mitigates the common tendency in short term Mission work to romanticize or see as merely one dimensional either a locale or its inhabitants.

We have come to know, and to be known by, many people on the reservation - in all our humanness. We have laughed and worked and played and cried alongside 'partner families', acknowledging cultural differences while seeing each other as brothers and sisters in Christ; all of us broken, in different ways, but united in our attempts to break down barriers and to build together, literally and figuratively, a more just society.