Good morning Red Cloud.

Once again it was time to wake up and get ready for another beautiful work day.  Unfortunately, when we arrived at the work site the horses weren't waiting for us but no worries, we were still ready to work hard because we aren't leaving for Cincinnati until this job is done. O.K. that is a little drastic.  What we don't finish another school that comes to volunteer will finish it up for us. Forgetting that aspect we were there to work hard because all we had was today and half of a work day tomorrow. 

I am proud to say that today was the day that we did actually finish writing up the entire cemetery at St. Stephens Church.  We had a visitor come to the cemetery.  She asked us what were were doing and we told her.  She then asked if we knew where someone in her family was located.  We did know where she was located and  we were able to show her where her family was buried.  She was so grateful, she went straight to those graves and cleaned that area up.  She then spent some time with her loved ones then came back up to us and said, "thank you so much for what your doing".  That made everything we were doing so worth it.  She wasn't the only one, we had a few others stop by asking us the same thing.  We were all meant to be there to help the people out which made it worth the long hot days.  The only thing that needed to be finished up was the mapping of the cemetery and that was more than half way done.  We cleaned up all of our tools and headed home. 

Tonight we were going to go over to Melva's house who lives here on the res with her children.  She invited us over for dinner and was going to take us on a tour of the hospital.  A small background on Melva to show how amazing a woman she is.  Melva has seven children.  Her husband was an alcoholic and abusive a man who was living the true bad aspect of the res.  After taking that abuse for many years, Melva got the strength to take her children and start a new life.  Not only did she raise her seven children by herself but with some help from others, Melva decided to take on her own dream to go to college and graduate with a nursing degree.  I am proud to say that Melva has now been living the dream and is now a nurse for almost a year now at the main hospital on the reservation. 

Dinner was a great experience because we got to play with her 4 younger children.  It was a lot of fun.  It was also great to see how happy they were and also how happy Melva was at how far they have come.  After dinner was over we all went to where the hospital was located.  It is no different then our hospital but it only treats the Lakota.  It is run in the the same fashion as our hospital.  It was really neat to see what their hospital looks like.

We had another GREAT day and got to meet a lot of great people.  The sad thing is, is that our trip is almost over and I am not ready to go home because there is so much more I would like to see and do.  That just means I will need to come back. 

Good night Red Cloud.