The idea was to make family camp look like the church in South Dakota, which is both multilingual and racially diverse, he said.
"We just jumped into this,” he said. “[There was] no model. We [thought], ‘We know God is in the mix, so somehow it will work out.’”
a congregation in Sioux Falls invited Spanish-speaking families to join with English- speaking families for the camp’s weeklong Connecting Cultures program.
Outlaw Ranch is a member of Lutherans Outdoors in South Dakota, which receives funding from the ELCA South Dakota Synod made available because of Mission Support.
Hike
Ride Horses
Travel to Mt. Rushmore
Watch Fireworks
Maria Cabello, pastor of Pueblo de Dios, said, “[Our] people feel very happy and very joyful with Outlaw Ranch ... and [they] feel very happy with God. Hispanic people don’t have a week vacation [often].”
“It [was] very exciting to renew our spirit and renew our souls at Outlaw Ranch.”
Instead of being embarrassed to try to use the Spanish they learned in high school years earlier, English-speaking adults utilized bilingual counselors to converse freely with Latino families. And Spanish-speaking adults who had never gone camping learned the ropes from English-speaking veterans who’d been camping for decades.