INTRO
My name is Michael Prate, and I am about to embark on an incredible journey. Over the course of the next year, I will serve as a Jesuit Volunteer in the community of St. Francis, South Dakota, located on the Rosebud Indian Reservation. I will be working with the St. Francis Mission, a Catholic, Jesuit run mission who minister to the local Lokota community. In my time there, I will be engaged in meeting a wide variety of needs, including but not limited to - teaching religious education, helping with music ministry in various parishes, working for KINI (the mission radio station), holding the phone for a crisis/suicide hotline, and youth ministry in a youth prison. In other words, everything and anything asked of me, I will do my best to show up willingly and lovingly offer whatever I can.
WHY JVC??
As I entered my senior year at Fordham University, the reality of graduating and moving on out into the world began to sink in - rapidly. I played with many ideas in my head (for those of you who don't know me, understand that "many" means every single possible alternative), including grad school, service work, and roaming the world a penniless vagabond in search of glory and adventure. In JVC, I found a way to bring all of these aspects together - continuing my education (though in a much more hands-in-the-dirt kind of way), using my talents to try and meet some of the vast needs of our world, and continuing to grow out my dreads and experience a culture and people entirely different from the ones whom I have met thus far.
On a more serious note, I have a deep love for life. I am often left speechless, shocked, amazed, and with the wind knocked out of me at the tremendous range of experiences life has to offer us. Unrivalled beauty, unshakeable love, crippling tragedy, unspeakable sadness - the spectrum of life is the spectrum of the possible, which as far as I can tell - is infinite. It is this tremendous love and desire for life and everything that is has to offer that has drawn me to JVC. Throughout my time at Fordham, I have come to appreciate the Jesuit tradition that has so successfully engaged my imagination and heart, pushing me unceasingly towards the magis, "the more." It is this same tradition that has awakened a deep compassion in me for the most marginalized and oppressed peoples of our world. It is those who suffer the most who have a hold on my heart, and I feel drawn to use my talents in service of meeting these people's needs. Jesus himself says that we will encounter him in our service to the neediest of this world. It is in these forgotten and abandoned places and people that I believe I will ultimately encounter God, supreme Life, in ways that I could never imagine. In this way, though I will certainly add much help to a community in need, is the people of the Rosebud who will be doing me a favor, allowing me to imagine a new life and a new world in a vision shaped by that Life.
LINKS
1) St. Francis Mission (check out my future place of employment!)
2) KINI FM (check out the radio station website... maybe you can listen next year... ya might even hear DJ Mikey Mike spinnin some sweet tunage)
3) MY BLOG!!! (stay tuned in for posts from now through the next year, which will include thoughts and reflection that come up through my time on the Rez. This will be a great way to keep up with all that I am experiencing and doing, as well as to walk with me in my process, reflecting and dialoguing on what I experience)
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