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March 29th, 2024
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gary damronMY PERSPECTIVE, Gary Damron

 

In high school I ran cross country at Shawnee Mission North. At least once a week, our practice course took the team past a DAR marker on the site of an old Quaker mission to the Shawnees. When working on a graduate degree, I had classes from Dr. Bill Unrau, one of this area foremost historians on Native Americans. After completing course work for a master’s, I ended up pastoring a Friends Church in Kansas City, Missouri. It seemed a natural fit to combine religion, an interest in Native Americans, and the lack of written material on the Friends mission, to write my thesis on the Quaker Establishment for the Shawnee Indians in Johnson County, Kansas. 

There were three missions that worked with the Shawnee in the 1800s, one Baptist, one Quaker, and the more well-known Methodist mission. Later I became chairman of our denomination’s Home and Cross-Cultural Missions board, with responsibility for ministries to minority groups within this region of the U.S. There I met Brad and Christine Wood, whom we scheduled for weekend services this past Saturday and Sunday. 

Brad has lived 45 years in the same house, and the story of how he arrived there was inspiring. His wife is a member of the Kickapoo Tribe, and he introduced her by saying he always tries to bring along an official representative of the tribe wherever he travels. 

Back in the early ‘80s we became acquainted with Brad’s parents, Ron and Janis Wood. A farmer and nurse from Indiana, they’d been invited to volunteer at a camp in northeast Oklahoma. Children from various Indian tribes went each summer to Camp Quivering Arrow for a time of fun and spiritual teaching. Despite the fact the camp dates coincided with busy farm times, Brad says somehow his parents ended up making the trip and working the camp. A message during an evening service ignited a call in Ron and Janis’ hearts to serve among the Kickapoo people. By the next summer, 1974, the family of three moved to McLoud, Oklahoma. Eventually Ron, Janis and even Brad were given Kickapoo names which indicated inclusion and acceptance by the tribe. 

Their “mission” work consists of farming, teaching, music and woodworking and language translating, lots of transporting children and teens. It also involves preaching each week, and participation in funerals, weddings, and other traditional pastoral duties, all aimed at introducing people to Jesus. 

A key point in Brad’s message was that each life is important, and each has a service to which God calls those who listen. When a life ends, what a great testament if that person is found doing what he or she was called to do. The Great Commission, Matthew 28:18-20, begins, “‘All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me…’”. Basically, Jesus said, “I’m in charge – go therefore.” Also, “I will never leave you alone.” 

The Divine Plan that Jesus set forth just before ascending to heaven was for believers to share the Gospel, first in Jerusalem which was their home base. Brad shared his call to mission work, when he’d assumed he would be “moving off somewhere”. But when his father was diagnosed with stomach cancer and died months later, Brad and Christine became directors of the Kickapoo Friends Center where they were already living. 

In Esther we find the story of a queen whose uncle urged her to speak up for her people: “‘…who knows but that you have come to your royal position for such a time as this’” (Esther 4:14). Each of us is placed in a particular time and place for a purpose in life. 

The point that impressed us the most was when Brad told what a privilege it is to serve the Kickapoo. Though they’ve poured most of their lives into the center, he said if it were to close, he and Christine would “try to buy a house and do what we could to keep on doing what we’re doing. We were called to the Kickapoo people, not to the center.” 

Interesting how lives and stories intertwine. See www.kickapoofriendscenter.org for information on Brad and Christine’s work. And I’ll be sharing more about the 1800s Friends mission this month in a meeting of the Cimarron River Valley Chapter of Daughters of the American Revolution (leave a message for Barbara at 620-624-3104 for date and time). 

LETTER TO THE EDITOR, Reita Isaacs, Liberal

 

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