The “About” Page

I finally got around to writing something to fill the void that was the “About” page. You can get there by clicking the link at the top of the page. I spent quite a while on it, so let me know what you think.

My next move will be the “Music” page, which is currently empty. It will have mp3s of songs I’ve written and their respective lyrics. I don’t have to work tomorrow, so maybe that’s what I’ll do.

Rosebud in Review, Part 3

Rosebud 2005
Rosebud in Review, Part 1
Rosebud in Review, Part 2
Rosebud in Review, Part 3
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“We think sometimes that poverty is only being hungry, naked and homeless. The poverty of being unwanted, unloved and uncared for is the greatest poverty. We must start in our own homes to remedy this kind of poverty.”
- Mother Teresa

“Real poverty is less a state of income than a state of mind.”
- George F. Gilder

Rosebud Indian Reservation did not feel like the United States of America. It was a foreign country. Neglected, Rosebud is the black sheep in the family of America. It is true that they are supported financially by the government, but - this just in - money does not equal care.

There is a popular theme in movies in which there is a child of wealthy and/or time consumed parents who is kept “happily” occupied by expensive toys and such (read: Richie Rich, First Kid). Throughout the course of these movies, there is a realization in the character and the viewer that it is not money and material things that foster happiness, but relationships. Love. They want their parents to spend time with them, they want to have a best friend. And so it is with Rosebud. Sure, Uncle Sam sends them a hefty check every month, but the check is just a way for Uncle Sam to say, “Of course I care! I support them financially, don’t I?” We are the distant, uninvolved parent making mandated child support payments to a people desperately in need of a real relationship.

The American Indian Releif Council (AIRC) website says this about life on the Rosebud reservation:

The Rosebud Reservation is economically depressed and ranks second (after the Pine Ridge Reservation) in per capita income on Plains Reservations. Unemployment sometimes reaches over 80%, and the lack of job opportunities leaves a devastating mark on Rosebud families. Many heads of the family are forced to leave the reservation to seek work. Extended families pool their meager resources together in order to try and provide their basic needs.

Indian Country Today has reported that one out of three residents of the Rosebud Reservation was homeless and that six out of ten live in substandard housing. Overcrowding is common as most families will not turn away even extended family members in need of a place to stay. Sadly, gangs and other social ills impact some of the youth struggling to come to terms living in an environment with an uncertain future.

For many Rosebud Sicangu, it is a day to day challenge to get access to even the most basic food and medical care. Families often live far from community centers in remote areas with little access to transportation. Many roads are often in poor repair and can only be navigated by four-wheel drive vehicles.

That is all very sad and interesting, but why are things that way and why do they not change? Myself and many students in the youth group struggled with this question as we encountered the reservation environment. We were able to address these questions late in the week, when we were blessed with the opportunity to have a Q&A session with a native of the reservation, Gabe.

I believe Gabe would disagree with the AIRC’s statement that it is “a day to day challenge to get access to even the most basic food.” The government, he said, helps families quite well in the area of food. I don’t want to misquote him, but I think he said that a family of four with both parents unemployed receieves $300 in food money per week. He also used the example of his massive belly to refute the statement.

Receiving money for food, however helpful and pleasant it may seem, actually only perpetuates the problem. Along with food, an unemployed person(s) may receive money for rent, utilities, and other expenses. This, Gabe said, creates a terrible cycle. Unlike urban poverty, where it is nearly impossible for the impoverished to escape from the lowest rung on the socioeconomic ladder, these people are being “paid to live the way they do,” as Gabe said. I will not forget when he said that phrase, because it made so much sense to me. Why would an Indian on the reservation attempt to get a job to claw his or her way out of the lifestyle to which they’ve become so accustomed when the government rewards them for not doing so?

Gabe told us that when he and his wife got jobs, the rent on his government-provided house skyrocketed so much that they were forced to move out and buy a mobile home. In my limited experience of seeing the inside of homes in Parmelee, I noticed that there was seldom no less than five people - sometimes up to ten - gathered in one room, sitting around a table or watching television. If it seemed like nobody was at work, it is because nobody was. There is no need. There is very much a sense of family, with very large extended families living within a 2 minute walk of one another and spending so much time together because they don’t have to work.

One of the students asked me this week (as if I would know the answer) why the Indians don’t move out of the reservation to live the “American Dream.” Besides being paid to live in poverty and the stereotypical attachment to the land, there is a lot at stake in family. Although it seems well-intentioned, a move away from one’s home town - let alone the reservation - is seen as an abandoning of the family.

So what does all this mean? The Rosebud Sioux are desperately in need of help. Our money is not helping them, in fact, it actually binds them. They need the news of the Gospel. Amos 8:11 says,

“Behold, the days are coming,” declares the Lord GOD,
when I will send a famine on the land–
not a famine of bread, nor a thirst for water,
but of hearing the words of the LORD.”

The land of southern South Dakota is dry - physically, emotionally, and spiritually. They need to know the love of Christ. And they need real relationships that go beyond habitually mailing a check.

I believe God and the students of Valley Church Student Ministries made a dent in this problem last week, and began heal the famine that has these people in a stranglehold. I hope to return soon to the reservation to further the relationships that I began while I was there, and I will constantly be searching and praying for opportunities to give myself and my resources to the beautiful people of Rosebud.

And yes, I did use a Richie Rich reference.

Rosebud in Review, Part 2

Rosebud 2005
Rosebud in Review, Part 1
Rosebud in Review, Part 2
Rosebud in Review, Part 3
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The following are inside jokes, highlights, and random things that made the trip to Rosebud awesome. The list:

Paul-Mart

“Did You Just Call Me BLEEP-er?”

Hackey sack

Gang of Four

Raising money for future trips to Rosebud by schooling 14 Omaha boys in poker

Wearing huge, girly sunglasses - and making them look good

“I love SonicILOVEPIZZAHUT!”

The “Dad look”

Being the only guy in the first Valley Church STOMP team

Lights out (and by “lights out,” I mean lights on)

“V-B-S day two…”

Terribly impersonating Greg’s dad

The baby leg antenna

Ham for lunch every day

“You’re not gonna get in trouble…”

Kelly Clarkson’s entire musical repetoire

Backstreet Boys’ “Incomplete”

My headband tan/burn line

“Can I ride on your back/shoulders?” - any given child at any given moment

Na na na na, hey hey hey, praise God

Trying to run on half-buried tires

Chasing the Woman Lake and Burnt Thigh County, among others

“PSSSSSH… kick line!”

Ni Who Si

Walkie-Talkies

Overly-excited worship-piano-player-guy

Pulling a “Vicky”

Have You Really Ever Loved A Woman/near-makeout sessions

MUSTARD and ham sandiches/roll-ups

Defective sparklers

The mesmerizing power of fart noises and “magic” tricks on kids

Ace Ventura, Pet Detective

The hour-long mime story session

Mohawks and rat tails

The poorly welded pipe tomahawk

Reuniting with my favorite co-counselor from last summer, T.J.

Sweating through my t-shirt by 11am

Speed bumps

Breaking into Julie’s van on the first day

Sarah Gutgsell, a.k.a. Barfy McGee

The fact that I predicted someone would barf, and Sarah said it would be her

The “Tacos 4 Sale” sign

Hand made orange peel orange juice bowls

Playing Adam in a dance about creation with a 40 year old mother-of-two as my Eve

EM7add9 to end every song in the key of E

Rabid dogs and their intense fighting skills

Gagging every time while walking past dumpsters

Offering Elijah $5 if he could throw a rock farther than me and then realizing that he almost could. Elijah is 8 years old.

Coke, with lime?

That’s all I can think of right now. If anyone who went on the trip sees that something is not on the list, leave a comment and I’ll add it.

Rosebud in Review, Part 1

Rosebud 2005
Rosebud in Review, Part 1
Rosebud in Review, Part 2
Rosebud in Review, Part 3
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Is it possible to use the phrase “life-changing experience” without being incredibly cliché? Because life-changing is exactly what this trip was - and there was nothing cliché about it.

I returned several hours ago from a seven-day mission trip to Rosebud Indian Reservation, home of the Lakota Sioux, in South Dakota. Thirty-two people total, including myself, my “boss” Brandon, the other two interns Molly and Megan, a hilarious mother (”hilarious” as in whoops-I-locked-my-keys-in-the-van hilarious), and 28 high school kids from our Student Ministry began the trip early on Saturday the 18th. Of the four sixteen-passenger vans, I had the privelege of driving the luggage/equipment van, which only seated two because all of the back seats were removed. It was named the iVan very early on, in honor of the three interns who rode in it except on a few occasions. The trip to the reservation was about seven or eight hours, and it went surprisingly fast, thanks to Megan’s never-ending road trip games.

I mentioned in the previous post that I believed the week wouldn’t go how we thought it would, and I couldn’t have been more right. It was nothing like I imagined it would be. We rolled into the town of St. Francis, and stopped at the St. Francis Indian High School, which is where we slept. We did most of our eating and sleeping at the high school and then traveled in the afternoons about 15 miles to a tiny town called Parmelee. Our group and about five other church groups all slept on the high school gym floor and ate our meals out in the commons/cafeteria area. I’m pretty sure it was the most uncomfortable week of sleep of my life for a couple of reasons:

I didn’t bring padding for my sleeping bag… only a quarter-inch of crappy filling between me and the gym floor.

The school was not air conditioned, which leads to my next point:

There were over 130 hot, sweaty, dirty bodies in this gymnasium.

Some people thought it would be funny to stay up and be really loud after “lights out”, which leads to my next point:

“Lights out” on the boy’s side of the gym wasn’t even “lights out” at all. Four huge and bright irradescent bulbs stayed on the whole night, every night. I never even figured out why. I slept with a headband over my eyes every night.

I guess it wasn’t that bad. Okay, it was. I got over it though. The first night we all drove to another town called Mission, where we met up with another big group of churches to eat and worship and talk about logistics, etc. This was the night we discovered the abundant joys of sleeping in a crowded, hot, bright high school gymnasium. Sunday would be our first day of Kid’s Club at Parmelee. We spent much time in prayer to prepare ourselves as best as possible for the day ahead.

During the morning and early afternoon on Sunday we prepared some more, including music rehearsals, dance rehearsals, skit rehearsals, logistics, and so on. We then headed out towards Parmelee, and Sunday is the only day that we took the ’scenic route’ to the town, which was driving through a beautiful tree-sprinkled valley with a winding river running its length. The rest of the reservation reminded me of the topography in Dancing with Wolves. When we arrived at Parmelee, we arrived at a town that had sixty houses at most, a convenience store, and a couple of all-purpose buildings, one of which was the Youth Center where we staked our claim for the week (see picture below).

At the youth center, we all met George, the town’s pastor and owner of the Youth Center (YC), which he got for $1/year for 25 years. He told us the alot of the boys in the town were a little ornery, but that it was really just their cries for attention and love, encouraged and thanked us, and left us to do our thing. A bunch of our group went out into the town to get kids (one could walk the circumference of the town in thirty minutes) and we got some balls out to play with and set up the sound system inside the YC for the service later in the evening. I think the first day we had 30 or so kids, and from them was a complete sampling of what we would encounter the rest of the week.

The kids that came ranged in age from 3 to 15 years old. There were kids who had a smile on their face the whole time no matter what we were doing (I am thinking of Caleb), and there were kids who came, it seemed, only to cause problems (I am thinking of Jeremy, Raven, and Elijah, among others), and there were also inbetweeners.

While people went out into the town to pick up the children, I was inside the YC setting up for worship and rehearsing, so I didn’t immediately bond with any kids. On the third day, though, I really became attached to these three siblings named William, Katie, and Vicky. Although they all had the same mother, each of them had a different father. William is below:

I could dedicate an entire post to this kid. I think he made a more profound impact on me in three days than all of my campers combined from last summer. This doesn’t mean I am devaluing my campers, I am simply hypervaluing William. He is a kid who is joyful, funny, and completely filled with Christ’s love. On one of the afternoons he and I went inside to the basement to take a break from the heat, and I was asking him questions about Jesus - if he knew who He was and what He did for us. William’s answers were so profound that it blew my mind. It wasn’t like he has memorized some silly kid’s song and regurgitated it to me, he told me all about Jesus’ death and resurrection and His atonement for our sins. I mean, the whole nine yards.

You’ll notice in the picture that he has a mohawk haircut. Well, it doesn’t go all the way to the back of his head. There is a gap between his mohawk and a rat tail, or what he called a “dragon tail”. I thought it would be a cool idea if I got my hair cut the same way his was, as a way for us to remember each other. He told me that his uncle cut his hair, and when I asked him where his uncle lived, he pointed down the street. The quest for a haircut had begun. However, his uncle didn’t have his clippers handy, so William and I turned around and headed back to the YC. Halfway back to the building, while riding on my back, William squeezed his arms around my neck harder and said “I love you so much.” I believe my heart melted right there on that street in Parmelee, and I was barely able to choke out “I love you too, William.”

His sisters, Katie (the older one) and Vicky became very attached as well. They were constantly wanting back/shoulder rides. One night while Erin and I were walking the three of them home (read Erin’s descriptive, verbose, and insightful post about the trip), Vicky asked for a piggy-back ride, and I obliged, only to grab hold of her butt for support, which was soaked. I’m pretty sure I had noticed it earlier, but had written it off as some spilled water or something. As soon as I set her down at the house, I took a whiff of my hand which led immediately to a dry heave induced by the smell of toddler urine. Peeing one’s pants was thenceforth called “Pulling a Vicky.”

God is incredible. He worked in so many ways, through so many people this week - I can’t even begin to name them all. The leadership behind the mission trip was awesome, and for the most part everything went very smoothly. Nearly eighty kids total attended our Kids Club, and I think each and every one of them received love from our group both verbally (encouragments, “I love you’s”, compliments) and physically (back and shoulder rides, hugs). Most, if not all, of them know who Jesus is and what He did. My heart has been seriousy transformed after all of this.

I want to write so much more about this that it’s driving me crazy. As you’ll notice, I started giving a play-by-play of the week, but I figured that would be a little silly. Who needs chronology? I want to write my thoughts about the socioeconomic status of the Indians - why they live the way they do and how it affects their lives and our ministry. I have already begun drafting a huge list of inside jokes/things I want to remember about the trip which I will post soon. I’d like to write more about where/when/how I saw God this week. This particular post will probably be edited, so keep on the lookout for changes.

The rest of my cameraphone pictures from the trip can be found here.

Soon to Depart

I still can not believe that I deleted all of the old website. It might not sound like that big of a deal, but I spent many a late night working on it. I am a bonehead.

I leave tomorrow for Rosebud, South Dakota for a mission trip with my youth group. It is a week long, and we are running a Vacation Bible School (”VBS” in church jargon) for the Native American youth. We aren’t quite sure how anything will go because we are the first group to do anything like this in the town that we are going to. Many other groups have been to Rosebud, but none to this particular town. I am looking forward to it… I told the members of my youth group that I am positive the week will go nothing like we expect it to, but that’s okay - and it is to be expected. God will work through us despite our shortcomings.

It is now nearly a month into the summer. I can’t express how much I love my internship. I love the people I work for and with, I love getting to know and hanging out with the students, I love being home for an extended period of time, I love being with my family, I love this church, I love everything about it. I was telling my mom last night that as a bonus to all of the things that I love about the job, it is excellent for my career. I am establishing contacts and relationships that will undoubtedly help me in finding a job when I graduate. W00t.

I’ll be sure to post pictures and write about my trip to Rosebud sometime after I return, which is on the 25th.

Page Update/Test Post #1

Hello all. I am sure that I am the only one who is completely devastated by the loss of the original jakebouma.com, but that’s alright. This post is only so I can tweak some things with the new visual style of the site. Feel free to leave comments about how you think it looks.

This would be the first item in a bulleted list.

And this would be the second.

This is a link to a different website. I like Google, so I linked to it.

I would like to see the movie Crash. Here is a summary (from IMDb):

Several stories interweave during two days in Los Angeles involving a collection of inter-related characters: a black police detective with a drugged out mother and a thieving younger brother, two car thieves who are constantly theorizing on society and race, the distracted district attorney and his irritated and pampered wife, a racist veteran cop (caring for a sick father at home) who disgusts his more idealistic younger partner, a successful black Hollywood director and his wife who must deal with racist cop, a Iranian-immigrant father who buys a gun to protect his shop, an Hispanic locksmith and his young daughter who is afraid of bullets, and more.

This site looks best with the Firefox web broswer (Really, all sites look best with Firefox, so go ahead and treat yourself with a download).

This concludes the testing of the new website.

Do you like the green?

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