SD Trip Day Five * Meet my Friend, Robert Looks Twice

Tuesday, 1 July

This was the second day of VBS, and we were thrilled when more kids showed up than on Monday. With these kids, we never know how many to expect. And there are so many outside factors that could affect their attendance. . . one day they could have not slept well the night before because they were out shooting fireworks until the wee hours of the morning, or they may have had to take care of all their brothers/sisters/cousins before VBS that morning.

This day I was introduced to a young man named Robert Looks Twice. Robert is ten years old, pictured on the left in this picture. I think he is one of the cutest Lakota boys I met this week. When I first met Robert, I could tell that there was something different about him. He had a spark in his eyes that most of the other kids were lacking. He looked us in the eyes and spoke with confidence from the start. something that the other kids were, for the most part, unable to do.

As the VBS director, I had the privilege of walking around during VBS and making sure everything was running smoothly. This gave me the unique opportunity to see an overview of what was going on with all the kids. This day, Robert began asking very deep, pretty intense questions about God. I noticed that as Robert moved with his group through each station, he became more and more serious. During Bible story time, he piped up in the middle of the story and asked Russ (the awesome Bible storyteller!), "Where did God come from? When was God born? How do I know what the Bible says is true?" WOW! Russ did a great job giving Robert clear, concise answers. Robert continued to ask questions throughout the rest of the day. By the end of our time together, I could tell that Robert had some very heavy issues weighing on his heart. Truthfully, God was tugging at his heart, and I don't think Robert knew what to do with that. You can see in this picture, which included me & Micah as well as Robert & his cousin D.J., that he is kind of retreating into himself and working through the questions he has.

After VBS and then lunch, we went visiting "up on the hill", which is the housing projects of Manderson. We just wanted to speak with the locals and let them know we were there. We also wanted to invite everyone to dinner that evening. We ended up spending most of our time reassuring people that dinner would not be late like it had been the night before. Thankfully, we had about 275 people show up for our sloppy joe dinner, which was about 25 more than the previous night.

We rounded out the evening by having an impromptu worship service on the lawn in front of the ladies' house. One of the locals, Mrs. Gertie Swain, joined us. Although she didn't sing along, she stayed with us until it got so dark that we had to call it a night.