For the fifth year, St. Barnabas Church collected Christmas gifts for the children at the Sun Star Anglican Church in Kyle, South Dakota, on the Pine Ridge Oglala Sioux (Lakota) Reservation. This year we were given the names of 57 children to play Santa Claus for. Church members and friends signed up to buy and wrap gifts for each child. Gifts were also bought for 4 extra children who might turn up for Christmas Eve at the Church, so well over 60 children were remembered in this year's project.

Nick Behrens and his Yorkie, Linus, delivered the gifts to Kyle on Friday, December 9, 2011. An SUV was rented and filled to the ceiling with gifts. Linus and Nick left Omaha about 6 AM on a snowy morning. By the time they reached O'Neill the roads were snow free the rest of the way to the Reservation. Arriving in Kyle about 1:30 PM (Mountain Time) Nick and Linus met Fr. Francis Apple and his grand-daughter Christie Locke at the Sun Star Church. They then followed them to the Apple home to unload the gifts for safe-keeping until Christmas Eve. The Apple home is about five miles north and west of Kyle by gravel road, sitting on a low ridge with the southern tip of the Badlands visible off in the distance.

Father Apple was presented with a thanksgiving gift of $400 from a St. Barnabas member to help with their Christmas feast and other needs. Fr. Apple looked remarkably well for having recently been hospitalized in Rapid City. He was jovial, warm, and very touched by the kindness of the gifts. Father Apple and Christie expressed much gratitude for the generosity of people at St. Barnabas Church.

Before leaving Fr. Apple prayed over and laid hands on the travelers. In the experience of the writer - a most powerful and mysterious feeling which can only be likened to a bolt of electricity. Truly Fr. Apple is a powerful Lakota-Christian Holy Man -- dare one say Medicine Man.

After stopping to pay respects at the Wounded Knee cemetery, under a full and haunting moon lighting up the vast plains, Linus and Nick drove back to Valentine to spend the night. After finishing their own Christmas shopping Saturday morning on Main Street in Valentine they returned safely home in bright sunshine.

Thank you to all who adopted a child, and particularly to Aimee Forbes and Wanda Marsh who "drafted" so many of their co-workers to help! Also thanks to Matthew Burbach, Paul Scofield, Loren Raybourn, and Jim and Kathryn Drake who helped load the SUV the night before departure during a snow storm!

MESSAGE FROM FR. APPLE
From a letter to Nick Behrens dated January 3, Fr. Apple writes: "I hope you got home Okay and all is well with your family and also with your congregation . . . I also on behalf of our Kids at Sun Star Anglican Church want to thank you and the kind folks at Saint Barnabas for the presents and also for you delivering them all by yourself over many miles to our third world church. . . . thank you kindly and please let your congregation know we appreciated the Christmas gifts. Once again we had a Christmas party and a midnight Mass". Later, Rev. Francis C. Apple