Pine Ridge, SD: building a Baha’i gathering place.

Beloved friends,   I just had to share our happy news. Over the years we were able to have our Jr. Youth classes, children classes at my home. But for almost over a year my husbands lack of health and a few other things has made that very hard. You know that my husband is one of the founders of Oceti Wakan, who’s mission is the preservation of Lakota culture and language. He and his father have had a vision of a cultural/education/healing center for the past forty years. We were able to develop the design for the dream but the cost would have been close to 1.5 million. When a doctor from National Institutes of Health got involved with our dream, he was able to talk us into doing a double wide trailer to start a wellness center which brought the cost down to a few hundred thousand. He and a young man in Poland loved the idea so much both gave us the funds to start to develop the funds, with all that we are doing developing our life skills curriculum have had no success. The tribes’s addiction program contacted us to start a prevention program based on our prevention curriculum with our successful Jr.Youth group and more. They had us make a budget and wanted us to start in May.

But even though we have been studying Ruhi and getting a small group of Lakota’s ready to teach our Jr.Youth group and I would be able to pay them to do our prevention group, we still had no place that we could count on to do this in.

We decided after looking for used trailers for months, any kind of a building to build what we could afford with the idea that we would just add on as we got more funds. Below is the picture of, our crew is calling it the ‘little school room’, the first step of our Wellness Center. The focus will be our prevention classes and our Jr. Youth group classes to begin with. It’s only 16’ x 20’ but I think we will be able to add on a deck. And the good news is that we will be able to begin sometime in May. 

February Inter-institutional Meeting in Pensacola, Fla 2016

Famous Singers, including Karen Pulkrabek, Barbara Mark, Riaz Castillo, Jenn Doney, Wyatt Morgano, Alan Schulte, Dru Hanich , Ferris Paisano, Greg and Bahi Hansen, and two other famous young ladies in front! Smiles all around!

Sioux Falls meeting with NPRBC April 9, 2016Meeing

Meeting in Sioux Falls at lovely home of Mary Hiller, including Counselor Serrano, Auxiliary Board Members Riaz, Bahi , Jill, Ferris, Northern Plains Regional Baha'i Council  and members of the community. An historic meeting!

10 April 2016 Friends who, "serve the Cause the way the Cause must be served," Shoghi Effendi

Jill Hennes, Farris Paisano, Bahi Hansen, and Counselor Navid

Marian Kadrie, Fargo's 86-year-old Foster GrandmaWednesday, April 13, 2016 2:32 p.m. by Amy Iler

We were happy to meet Fargo's 86-year-old foster grandmother last October... and, as it turns out, we weren't the only ones. Our stories about Marian Kadrie won us not 1 Eric Sevareid Award, but 2!

We got chance to catch-up with Marian again today to show her the awards and as always, the pleasure was all ours. 

Original story from KFGO News: 

FARGO (KFGO-AM) - Retirement doesn't seem to be an option for 86-year-old foster mother Marian Kadrie. Kadrie shares her modest, south Fargo home with four foster children, between the ages of 9 and 17.

Despite her age, Kadrie does the cooking, housecleaning and laundry, drives the kids to doctor appointments and makes sure that all four of them are ready when the school bus arrives.

Kadrie realizes that most people her age want to take it easy, but she says the kids give her “a reason to get up in the morning.” “I thank God every day that I am well. My husband passed away in 2006. I don’t need to be in this house alone” Kadrie said. “They all call me ‘grandma.’”

“It’s just like a family,” according to Kadrie. “They do not go anywhere that I don’t know where they are. I know where (the children) are at, all the time. They give me energy.”

Kadrie is licensed by Cass County Social Services. She says after more than 30 years as a foster mother, she has no plans to retire, or slow down any time soon. “I hope that I can continue. I don’t feel like I’m any more than 45.”

(Jack Sunday & Amy Iler are talk-show hosts at 790 AM KFGO in Fargo-Moorhead. "It Takes 2 with Jack & Amy" can be heard weekdays 11am-2pm. Follow Amy on Twitter @AmyKFGO. Follow Jack on Twitter @nodakjack.)