Kyle Mission Trip 2008 Report

Kyle Mission Trip 2008

The Kyle Mission effort started with a seed planted by Chuck Baker during the fall of 2007. This effort’s primary goal was to establish a “beachhead” for future work among the Oglala Lakota Sioux Indians of Kyle, SD. The method used to achieve the goal was to be a combination of service projects, seminars and community gatherings.
Our initial contact at the Reservation was made with Steve Hernandez with Pejuta Haka College Center. PHCC is the Kyle facility for Oglala Lakota College and serves as point of communication for the local community. Steve is involved in building this community in a variety of different ways and was very instrumental in the success of our trip. Steve helped us make contact with the Headstart Program and with the Emergency Youth Services personnel.
The projects that we chose to tackle during the mission trip were as follows; a renovation project for the Youth Services Shelter; a deck project for the Early Headstart Program; a collection of tennis balls for the Headstart program and a series of family oriented seminars and gatherings. The projects chosen challenged us by virtue of the short amount of time we were to spend working on them. The variety of tasks and the limited number of personnel that we had on the trip made for long days and short nights while we were working in Kyle.
In addition to the tasks mentioned above we were responsible for our meals and hydration during the trip. Members of the team devoted time and energy to cooking, cleaning and general maintenance of our living area. We also planned to feed a large crowd of people during one of the nights as well as showing a family/Christ oriented film. We also made meals available for anyone from the local community during each of our regularly scheduled meals. No one was turned away hungry from our camp.

Early Headstart Deck
The deck project turned out more daunting than we expected. The scope of the project was larger than we anticipated. We thought we were going to do cosmetic and appearance enhancements to the deck and ended up doing a demo and rebuild project. The project took longer than we anticipated but the outcome was that we have a left a serviceable, accessible ramp that will last for years to come.


Youth Shelter Renovation
The Emergency Youth Facility needed and still needs today a lot of work. The facility experienced water damage this past winter when the pipes broke during a freeze. The break was not noticed for several days and water sat on the floors for quite some time. We were able to take out the carpet in the facility, take up the tiled flooring material and take out all the damaged sheet rock in the ceilings and the walls. Additional, all the cabinets were removed from the kitchen area because of their poor condition. This shelter served as our command center and campsite during the trip. Several children from the Pineridge shelter came down and painted a few of the room in the facility . This project was very successful but leaving the place unpainted and bare to the studs in many places reminded us of the work in many other places that needs to be completed.

Seminars and Community Gatherings

The seminars were designed to provide information in two of the most critical areas of poverty stricken communities throughout the United States. Meth Awareness and Gang Information are relevant for communities all over North American and especially in low income areas with high incidence of addiction. Chuck Baker embraced these topics well and was welcomed by the locals and local law enforcement for the quality presentations that were given. These community events showed increasing attendance each night and increased friendliness by the local population to the team members each night. Our numbers were 31 for the first night, 55 for the second night and 126 for the final night. Chuck made major in-roads, being invited to speak to the local JDC in mates while we were in Kyle and being invited to speak at a Gang Awareness event that is to occur next year sometime.
Tennis Ball Collection
Our efforts in Modesto to collect tennis balls for the Headstart program chairs exceeded the goal of 1000 balls by 300 balls. These balls will give the children in the program a better chance to learn and keep the cost of floor maintenance down at the same time. A cool way to recycle and have multiple positive results.

Summary

The 2008 Kyle Mission Trip has positioned the Davis Park Church of Christ to reach out to the Oglala Lakota people of South Dakota. We met or exceeded the goals associated with this year’s mission trip in every way. I would recommend that we continue our relationship with the people we have encountered during this trip and seek new ways to serve this population and bring Jesus Christ into their lives.