Michigan Youth serve with Solar Oven Partners and Storm Mountain Center
You can watch the mission video and hear from the young people here.
Our youth mission trip to South Dakota combined service, learning, and growing our faith. Throughout the week, our guiding question was “Where is God?” We challenged ourselves to look for God’s love not only in beautiful or easy places, but also in difficult truths and unexpected circumstances.
Service with Solar Oven Partners
Our primary service project was with Solar Oven Partners, where we worked in the reflector workshop housed at Open Hearts United Methodist Church Rapid City, SD. During the week, our youth and chaperones:
Built approximately 400 solar oven reflectors
Used more than 700 pounds of aluminum
Packed the panel kits into six large shipping crates
Painted the workshop and a long hallway
Completed yard work, including mowing, trimming and removing trees, and weeding
We also served at Storm Mountain Center, the United Methodist camp, where we stayed in the Black Hills. Our group painted the inside of a house being prepared for a new staff member.
Learning from the Lakota People
A significant part of our week was a day spent on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, current homeland of the Oglala Lakota Oyate Tribe, with Tatanka Rez Tourz. This tour company is committed to providing an in-depth, first-person experience of the reservation and sharing the history, culture, values, and stories of the Oglala Lakota people.
The experience challenged many of our assumptions. We learned about the history of the Lakota people, the loss of sacred lands, the devastating impact of boarding schools, including the role churches played in attempting to erase Lakota language and culture and in perpetuating generations of abuse and trauma, and living on the reservation today.
Learning of the genocide perpetuated against the Lakota people was difficult to hear, particularly since we identify deeply with the church. But the experience also introduced us to the resilience, hospitality, creativity, and determination of the Oglala Lakota Oyate Tribe. As part of our experience, we toured Oglala Lakota College, which works to strengthen the Lakota Nation through accessible education.
Our youth recognized a few lessons from this experience.
The importance of acknowledging historical harm.
The importance of recognizing the people who are rebuilding and strengthening their own communities today.
The importance of listening for ways to support these leaders in ways the leaders identify as helpful, rather than assuming we know what they need.
Growing our Faith
One of the passages that shaped our week came from John 13:34 in the First Nations Version. Rather than translating Jesus’ words as “I give you a new commandment, that you love one another,” the First Nations Version reads, “I am giving you a new road to walk.”
Loving others is not simply a one-time decision. It is a road we choose to walk, step by step, every day. Some parts of that road are smooth and joyful; others are difficult, winding, and uncomfortable.
Our young people experienced both.
They saw God’s love in the welcome and kindness of strangers, in the friendships within our group, and in people working hard to serve their communities. They also encountered difficult truths about our country's history and the church's role in causing harm.
Rather than turning away from those truths, they learned that faith invites us to acknowledge harm and trauma honestly while continuing to look for—and participate in—love, healing, justice, and reconciliation.
The week reminded us that God is not absent from difficult places. God is present wherever people choose love, resilience, compassion, truth, and hope. Our task is to recognize that love, nurture it, and become part of it. Love refuses to believe that harm gets the final word. That is faith.