What a difference a week makes! You may recall how I was saying it was still nice weather-wise here at St. Joseph’s. However, the bottom fell out this past week.
We got over 5 inches of snow and the temperature went down, down, down…
The Daily Republic, a daily newspaper in Mitchell, South Dakota (about 70 miles from Chamberlain), leads off the news the other day with an article on how the area has set low temperatures that broke a 105-year-old record.
Chamberlain was even mentioned on the radio when we hit 14 degrees below zero. The cold has had an effect on some of our water lines and has brought about a drip in the rec center ceiling. Our Lakota students do not seem to mind, however, and love to be out sledding as long as they can.
A big thank you goes out to our maintenance crew on campus! They are quick to clear paths so our students can get to school and staff can get to work when we have snow.
We moved our regular Sunday Mass to Saturday evening so the Dancing Dolls & Dudes had Sunday morning to get ready for their recital in the early afternoon. There was a great turnout for the dance presentations, which includes kids from the Chamberlain and surrounding communities; dancers as young as 3 and 4 year olds up through sixth graders took part.
When I drove up to the National Guard Armory, where the performance was held, I felt like St. Joseph’s Indian School was a visiting basketball team. So many of our Native American students were participating and watching, we had our large yellow bus and one or two of our smaller buses parked in from of the Armory!
Seems hard to believe, but our girls’ basketball season is drawing to a close. Our last home games for our younger grades are this week. Last Saturday, the 8th grade girls hosted their annual basketball tournament. The snow prevented some of the teams from coming, but the rec center hosted a round robin tournament and we came in third.
Hope you all have a great week and that you are able to take advantage of the Advent Season and prepare the way of the Lord.
Fr. Anthony Kluckman, SCJ
Chaplain
Father Anthony is not as comfortable in his position as his predessor was ! Fr Anthony prefers a little more distance. That’s okay, but he needs to tell the kids. They won’t mind.
We feel your cold… Snowing as I write this note and temperature is dropping..well..it is winter, well almost. So wonderful that you have such devoted people working with you. Here in the east, basketball season is just starting. Keep up the good work and keep dancing… Peace, love and joy you all.