Walthill and Darius

I just returned last night from Walthill where we have a small team of Grace Chapel people serving on the Omaha reservation for the week. Normally I spend the week with the team, but because of my recent travels away from Lincoln and away from my family, I decided to cut the week in half and came back to Lincoln last night. My dear wife Tanya brought up our three kids (Mia, Isaac and Calvin) for the day yesterday (Walthill is only about 2 hours to the north of Lincoln; however, it is always good to remember that you are traveling to another sovereign nation whenever you go to the rez).

In the first picture is my 6-year-old son Calvin in the orange, 7-year-old Isaac in the black and a 9-year-old native boy named Sonny (with the baseball cap). Tanya is in the background. In the second picture, the three boys as well as our 9-year-old daughter Mia, in preparation for painting, are helping to scrape old paint off of the home of a native named Mike Wolfe.

The highlight of the week for me was spending three days on the rez with our 13-year-old foster son Darius Geiser (not pictured). We've been in Darius' life since he was one. Darius helped with the little kids at Vacation Bible School, played basketball for three days with some of the older Omaha boys, helped with painting and even went to Pender with me (12 miles to the west of Walthill) to help Tanya's Great Uncle Leroy and Aunt Joyce (both in their 80s) with computer problems. On Tuesday night, Darius fixed the computer problems at Leroy and Joyce's, got filled with some deer stroganoff and then was able to watch his much loved Miami Heat in the NBA finals (despite their having lost game 4); we had fun together in Pender. I was so proud of Darius at every point during our time together.