This June marked the fourth time I’ve spent a week on the Omaha Indian Reservation with Mission to the World, the missions agency of the PCA.  This time was different from the past three for a number of reasons, however.

Over the past year, as followers of this blog last summer may have picked up on, I have been involved with my church’s increased involvement on the Reservation. Since the last week-long trip with MTW, we have had multiple single-day events on the Reservation, including a day of kids’ ministry and activities in the park in Walthill, NE prior to school starting last fall. This year’s week-long trip was different from past years in that we had that much more local contact from being there multiple times over the last year rather than having just come once a year.

Another thing different this year is that I was the team leader for the Omaha group – not a huge difference from the past year, when at least for part of the week I had some partial leadership duties – but still not the same as being “officially” just a participant.   We also had our largest group yet, both in number of people from Omaha as well as largest number of people overall. Last year there had been some question as to whether it would be financially viable for MTW to continue to work in Walthill due to relatively low participation; that never came up this year.

Having more people on the MTW team (in addition to a couple from Georgia that organizes the MTW work, 4 Nebraska PCA churches were represented) meant more hands to get work projects done – but this year we had fewer projects to do than in the past. From a perspective of getting things done, I think a few people were disappointed that the teams weren’t constantly busy every morning with work to do. On the other hand, it allowed a lot more time to just “be” – spending time with people and hanging out with the neighborhood kids.

Our work projects included some exterior work at the former Picotte Hospital, interior work at a private residence, painting the enclosed porch of a downtown building, and painting over graffiti at the American Legion building in the park.

As a team we intended to focus on two primary areas as far as personal and team preparation for time spent on the Reservation.  We went through a devotional entitled “Supper’s Ready”, focusing on the love of God (and discussing how we could in turn show love to others).  Before going on the trip we also talked about some of the points from the book “When Helping Hurts,” a recently-published book on poverty alleviation. These points were mainly in the area of how simple “put a Band-Aid on it” solutions do nothing to help and in the long run actually cause hurt – effective solutions must address issues holistically, and empower people to take responsibility.  Giving a handout, or doing things for someone else that they can do themselves, actually causes harm by not giving people room to be themselves and take ownership of their own lives and communities.

Youth ministry was the other – and as far as total time spent – actually the primary activity of the week.  In addition to the scheduled and organized VBS time each of the weekdays, team members also spent hours just hanging out with the kids in the community, building on existing relationships and making new ones.

Also, as with last year, we plan to return in a little over a month to spend a Saturday afternoon just “being” – spending time with kids and families and anyone else who comes over to the park. We’ll be serving a picnic lunch and then playing games and just hanging out.  We’ll also be thinking about other opportunities throughout the fall and winter as they come up, so as to keep an ongoing presence in the community and continue to develop the connections that have been made.