A New Home

Week one is done here in Browning, Montana. It has been a very active week with long bike rides through winding dirt roads next to rivers, hikes in Glacier National Park, around the parish land of 1000 acres, and on the buffalo jumps and canyon. With beautiful lakes and rivers, nights in the tipi's, lots of great pictures (some were put on my flicker site), nights with the bonfire, talks with friends and family, star and moon gazing, sunsets behind the mountains, and beginnings of new books. Also finding new friends in my fellow LV's, getting to know the Brothers better, and meeting Jeb and Charlene and the kids (Kaia 5 and Tate 3), as well as the other DLSB staff. We have began preparing the school and classrooms and this week started teacher/staff meetings. As I said, busy! But great as I now feel quite at home; comfortable, happy, challenged, motivated, and inspired. I can take a break by looking to the postcard mountains, take a hike down to the river in our back yard (which lies past a golden barley field), talk to one of the girls or Brothers, or just chill in the silent solitude which the great open skies of Montana brings.

I noticed the silence especially tonight during a call with a friend. On this call I heard a siren in the background. I realized I had not heard a car go by for the last 2 hours, nor heard a plane, or shout. I may have heard one cow moo or a dog bark, as Jack and Gunner continually challenge each other for dominance.

Mike has finally returned from building his home which he has been working on from dusk to dawn all summer. The retired philosophy professor struck up conversation right away about fly fishing in the park, wondering about my summer at the worker, and talking about his home. It will be sad when he leaves at the end of September, I will miss the conversation and insight he brings, having grown up here, finding the wisdom of an aged thinker, and being a bridge between the Blackfeet and Westerners world.

There are many new experiences to my life. I find it incredibly interesting to try and track how my thinking is changing as I work on the skills that are needed in a teacher of adolescents. As I try to model a character that is both respected and at the same time becomes one of your best friends, so that I may be a teacher, yet inspire the hearts and minds of the kids as they come to mature in the knowledge of themselves and their world. All this through the guise of a PE teacher.

I am a volunteer now. I have given up my will to one that is greater than my own, I am trusting this mission, the need of these students, and the ability of those around me, as I find the collective will of this community, and discern the will of God, in these new days.

Next week shall be the real test...