Red Raider-in-Chief

This past weekend we had a whirlwind trip to Orange City, IA and Minneapolis. I'll blog about the Minneapolis trip in another post.

Our friends, the Christy family, moved from Mitchell to Orange City last December, where Greg became the new president of Northwestern College. Though he had been the acting president since January, it was just this last Friday that he was formally inaugurated.

Their oldest son, Ryan, is one of Mark's best friends. They attended school together since kindergarten. Though we hated to see the Christy's go, it was harder on Mark. They remain buds today and we try to get them together when we can.



Greg's wife, Michelle, and Nancy are very close bud-ettes.



Former US Senator and 1972 presidential candidate George McGovern is a Mitchell native and he makes it his home. One of Greg's big projects at Dakota Wesleyan University was overseeing the fundraising of the McGovern Library on campus. He and George traveled and spent a lot of time together during those years. Sen. McGovern was on campus at Northwestern during the week to lend his support to Greg.



While there were many festivities going on, we were only there for the president's luncheon, the inauguration ceremony, and the concert. I'll blog about the concert in a separate post.



One of Greg's gifts is he's so personable. He already has a fan club among the students called PGC (President Greg Christy). Here's a few of them.



It was funny, there were some of the PGC's sitting behind us in the chapel, and they had hand-drawn portraits of Greg on their T-shirts (like in the picture).

Northwestern College has found a fine man in President Christy. Blessings to you, Christy's, in this new ministry from your friends, the Pretre's. Deus est lux!