Bob Dykstra’s

Memoir by Micah Vander Beek

Last fall I went on a trip I want to take again. I went to a place not very far away but many things there were different, I was on the Lac Courte Oreilles Native American reservation. I was there as part of a small group of people from my church who went to Wisconsin to help a missionary named Bob Dykstra.

I had been waiting for two years to go on this mission trip, I heard a lot about it and wanted to go. Luke went on the trip two years before and has gone every year since. The only thing that I was not happy about was missing a soccer game.

We left school around one in the afternoon and went to Countertops Plus to meet with the others going with us. We left there at 1:45 and started our four and a half hour trip. It was Chad, Aaron, Dayton, and I in the Ford truck and Amy, Luke and Nick were in the Ford van behind us. Dayton and Chad were sitting in the front seats and were talking about Dayton’s training for becoming National Guard. Aaron and I sat in the back having brief conversations and listening to Dayton’s interesting stories of Boot Camp.

We got near the reservation and then stopped to eat at a restaurant called the Norske Nook and then went to the cabin we were staying in and then went to Bob’s house on the reservation. Bob had his house on the reservation and he also has a small building called the shack that he uses for as a place to teach and have fun. He also has homemade volleyball court and horseshoes right outside of the shack.

That night we went out by the volleyball court and had a bonfire where he told us about his career as a missionary, how he started, why he was where he is at, and why he never went farther away. After this we went back to our bunkhouse for the night.

The next morning we got up ate and went to Bob’s to start our first day of work. We all gathered in the shack for a devotion and went over the list of things to do in the three days we were going to be there. The first job I had was to move rocks from the back of a shed so the adults could install a lean-to for split wood. After moving rocks and dirt Aaron and I split wood for a couple hours. Bob had a huge pile of unsplit wood because he has a wood furnace and burns wood almost all winter long. After splitting wood with a machine, we moved the split wood over to small shelters to keep the wood dry. After we finished this we ate lunch and then we switched groups and Luke, Dayton and I went and did yard work for some people who just couldn’t do it by themselves.

The next day started with devotions again, then more wood splitting. After a while of wood splitting Luke, Nick, and I dug around a foundation and moved dirt so it wouldn’t spill inside of the incomplete shed. Next all of the young guys went with an older friend of Bob’s to a rock pile and collected rocks. As boring as this might sound it was actually my favorite part of the whole trip. Larry, Bob’s friend, is a really fun guy who loves to joke around while still doing work and we overloaded his truck and trailer in less than an hour.

Larry then took us out for ice cream for doing such a great job and then took us back to Bob’s. We used the rocks at Bob’s for the barrier around the volleyball court.

That afternoon Bob took us to the school where we pulled weeds from a volleyball court and hockey rink. While pulling weeds we played cops and robbers with the kids who were there and had a great time with them.

Bob then took us into the school where he showed us where he worked for the school and explained a giant painting in their lunch room. Each part of this giant painting was hand painted by a few people in each separate tribe in the reservation, showing some of their past and what they believe.

Back at the shack we ate and then went out and played volleyball with some of Bob’s friends and had a great time.

The next day we had a small church service to conclude the most impactful trip of my life.