Dakota North

pioneer /pī″ə-nîr′/

noun

• One who ventures into unknown or unclaimed territory to settle.

• One who opens up new areas of thought, research, or development. "a pioneer in aviation."

• A soldier who performs construction and demolition work in the field to facilitate troop movements.

We pull into Bismark, North Dakota after a long day of adventure and driving. As we find our hotel, we see a sign for a state park. “Fort Abraham”. Yep, another dot to connect. This fort was named after President Licoln.

We got up early to explore this “Fort Abraham”. This park is also a Native tribal site, for the Mandan tribe. These little explorations are great homeschool curriculum. We spent about 2 hours taking all the history, archeology finds, climbing the watchtowers and experiencing what mud huts were like for a North Dakota tribe.

It is hard to imagine living in mud huts in an area where the winters can be brutal. But if you want something bad enough, you find a way to make it work. I don’t blame the tribe for wanting to live there. Another beautiful landscape of rolling hills.

A short drive to the Capitol, the parking lot was pretty much empty. We look around to see where I would decree from and nothing stuck out. So we park right up front. A few others park in the same area and start site seeing. As I get our stuff out of the car, I look around trying to spot or feel where we needed to go. Nothing.

So we start our prayer walk, thinking I’ll find it as we pray. As I walked up to the front of the Capitol, I looked off down this green way that ended at a busy street. I could see a monument of some sort near the road. I got a slight hint of that might be it. I ignore it and continue walking and praying. We make it all the way around and I still haven’t found or felt where to go.

We walk over to a couple statues and monuments and I don’t feel the go ahead. I keep looking down the greenway at the monument. Kristi notices and ask if thats it. I’m not sure, I tell her. Let’s go over to this other building, I say, which was closer to that monument. I get over to the building and now feel like, it is all the way down the greenway at that monument.

I couldn’t tell what it was as we were on the back side of it. I tell Kristi, we need to walk down to that monument, thats the spot. As we walk upon it, from behind, the thought came to mind, it is a pioneer statue. I tell Kristi as we start to make our way to the front side walking on the sidewalk which was still a ways from it. We follow the path along the road and turn back towards it down the path for the monument. As we got close, we could now see, that it was indeed a monument for Pioneers.

When God have us the first campaign, we were given words, that we are pioneers and pioneering. It’s fun how HE puts all this together.

We setup, decree and commission. A few bystanders watch an “interesting” guy record a video in front of this monument. We get the pictures and move out of the way, as a few wanted to take pictures and read the monument.

We are in a new ear of YeHoVaH’s governing body, and there are those who have been tasked with pioneering new territory in the realms of the spirit. As one family thats walking this out, its both exciting and scary. Mostly exciting, but has its moments of rough terrain.

Thank You Father, for the opportunity. We Bless Your Holy name!

Shalom.