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!

"Blah blah blah"

South Dakota and Mitchell are in the news again this weekend. Mitchell, the home of George McGovern and his McGovern Library, hosted Bill Clinton and Barack Obama over the weekend.

Bill Clinton spoke at Dakota Wesleyan University on behalf of Hillary, and Obama spoke on Main Street in front of the Corn Palace on behalf of... himself.

The Clinton family and Obama have been criss-crossing the area trying to drum up support. Neither of these candidates will be getting my vote, though. Even if I had no other reasons (I do), their pro-abortion stance is enough to turn me off.

South Dakota and Montana have the last elections of the presidential primary season. It is interesting, that, for years, South Dakota has tried to have the earliest primary election to try to attract interest in our state. But now that it is last, it is getting all of the attention.





UPDATE: It's ironic that the battle for the Democratic presidential candidate comes down to George McGovern's home state. The whole Democratic superdelegate mechanism was put in place, according to Susan Estrich, to ensure that no more unelectable candidates like George McGovern end up on the Democratic ticket!

Don't Just Sit There... DO Something

OK well it's been several days since I've checked in... Life has a way of getting busy now and then.

In the earlier post I mentioned that our Ukrainian facilitator thought it would be a good idea to contact anyone that we thought would have any persuasion over the SDA to allow our dossier to be processed as soon as possible. Following the advice of Drs. David and Cindie, I composed a letter to our Senator Thune to see if he can provide any help to us. According to this, he's "strong, he's smart, and he knows how to get things done." Hehe. He's also a family man. Don't be surprised if he's Vice-President some day. Better rush this letter out before he gets too busy...

God guide that letter to anyone that can help.