Saturday, July 19, 1997

Mission deepens understanding of our role as God's faithful servants

By LAUREN R. STANLEY

Knight-Ridder/Tribune News Service

PINE RIDGE, S.D. - The excitement began with the sound of a door slamming open and loud voices calling:

"Rainbows! Rainbows outside!"

All of us inside began a mad scramble up the stairs. We had seen some magnificent rainbows during our 11-day stay in South Dakota; one last chance to view them before we packed up and headed home to Northern Virginia was not to be missed.

Spreading across the sky, in startlingly bright colors and of immense size, was a huge half-rainbow, framed against the dark, threatening sky of the storm that had just blown through. Next to the giant rainbow, barely discernable at first, was a second rainbow, in the midst of forming itself.

A double rainbow, gracing the evening sky and, it seemed to us standing on the Northern Plains, our work as a church mission team helping the Lakota Sioux on Pine Ridge Indian Reservation.

There were 60 of us in the group who had traveled from the fairly well-to-do Virginia suburbs to the often poverty-stricken areas of the Sioux reservation for our mission: rehabilitating houses for those in need.

We spent 11 days camping on the Northern Plains, working from dawn to dusk not only on rehabilitation but also on cultural understanding. The idea behind the mission was to be faithful servants of God, helping where we could, and learning what we could about a group of people who historically have been treated poorly in this country.

A mission like this, under the auspices of Good Shepherd Methodist Church in Vienna, Va., meant that we spent our time not only hammering nails and putting up siding, but also talking to local Lakota people, from the women who beaded jewelry to the man who sang the Lakota songs and taught the Lakota language in the local schools. It meant going to powwows and accepting an invitation to dance; visiting local schools and learning the difficulties of education on a reservation; listening to the granddaughter of Lakota Chief Red Cloud, a woman who is now 88 and who tells marvelous stories about growing up Lakota in a nation that didn't like Indians in general.

A mission like this also meant sitting in the local 24-hour diner/gas station, talking to anyone else who happened by about their lives, and answering questions about why we were camped on the local Episcopal Church grounds for nearly two weeks. It meant visiting local shrines, especially that of Wounded Knee, and hearing about the massacre that took place there in the 1880s, as well as the stand-off and shoot-out with the FBI in the 1970s.

A mission like this meant stretching ourselves physically, mentally and emotionally as we tried to live into the commandments stressed by Jesus: Love God and love your neighbors.

We weren't a particularly skilled group of people who went to South Dakota for this work. Some of us knew a bit about how to hammer a nail, or saw a board, yes. But few of us knew how to build a garage, or put up sheetrock; or install plumbing; or shingle a roof; or put up siding. But our skill levels weren't at issue. What was important was our willingness to be good and faithful servants of God.

Few of us ever had encountered such abject poverty, either. The combination of hard work, a hot sun and abject poverty left many on the mission team stunned, almost reeling, at the end of the day.

All of which was an important part of going to Pine Ridge. In Northern Virginia, most of the team members live in relative wealth. In South Dakota, many of the Lakota live at the other end of the poverty scale. Learning about this radically different way of life - opening our eyes to the way much of the world is forced to live - was just as important, if not more important, than fixing up houses and trailers.

By engaging in mission for God's sake, and for the sake of God's people, we on the mission team were able to broaden our understanding of what it means to live in this world, and what it means to care for one another.

Was much accomplished? That depends on how accomplishment is measured. Granted, in the 11 days of our mission trip, we only helped eight families improve their living conditions. We only raised one garage, for use by the joint Lutheran-Episcopal outreach program. We only built one playground on the church grounds for the local children to enjoy. In the greater scheme of life, our work was but a drop in the bucket.

But in the eyes of God, I'm sure it was much more than that drop. Because in all of our work and play and travel, we met more of God's children, broadened the community into which we are called to live, deepened our understanding of the divide between the rich and the poor, and learned about being faithful servants of God's commandments.

And now, on our last night on the Great Northern Plains, rainbows graced the sky.

God gave the rainbow to Noah as a sign of God,s promise to never again destroy the earth by floods. "When the bow is in the clouds," God said, "I will look upon it and remember the everlasting covenant between God and every living creature of all flesh that is upon the earth." (Gen. 9:16)

We stood and watched in awe for a while, then began cheering when we realized that the rainbows, which began as half-arches reaching from the ground to the heavens, slowly were extending themselves. Within minutes, the main rainbow was fully stretched from ground to sky to ground. From the south, the first double rainbow began to stretch itself, too. And from the north, another double rainbow began its display.

We watched to see whether the two doubles would meet in the middle, as if to say, "See? God remembers God's covenant with every living creature of all flesh that is upon the earth."

And when they did meet, we all felt a sense of accomplishment, as though God were saying to us, "Well done, good and faithful servants."

(The Rev. Lauren R. Stanley, a former assistant news editor for the Knight-Ridder/Tribune News Service, is a deacon at the Church of the Good Shepherd in Burke, Va. Readers may write to Stanley care of Knight-Ridder/Tribune News Service, 790 National Press Building, Washington, D.C., 20045.)