I am always happy to find a good prayer. I know I can just talk to God. The Holy Spirit will help me. Even sitting in silence with Him is powerful. Or, using the Lord’s Prayer is always an option! And there are lots of prayers created over time to “fall back on.”…
Spiritual Life
Dakota Boys and Girls Ranch will receive $81,680 from the Lutheran Women’s Missionary League to support the Deaconess Ministry portion of its Spiritual Life programming. Recognizing the need to minister directly to the hearts of the young girls and boys in their care, in 2018 the Ranch called LCMS Deaconess Kelly Bristow to complement the work of the Spiritual Life staff.…
Chapel Services are at 4:30 p.m. on Thursdays on all the campuses of Dakota Boys and Girls Ranch. We do not require children or staff to attend. But, many do. Last week, I was on campus in Minot for Chapel. Minot is our largest campus, our seminal campus. Chaplain Rick Jones and Deaconess Kelly Bristow do a beautiful job of bringing His word to the kids in a way that relates to them. Yesterday the message was from Romans 13, where Paul talks about how to think about “authorities.” Chaplain Rick was able to make sense of God’s delegation to “authorities” in his name, while acknowledging that many in authority had been the very people who had victimized these children. He explained how the authority was from God, but how the person in that position may be in the clutches of sin.…
Deaconess Kelly Bristow is the Spiritual Life Coordinator on the Minot Campus of Dakota Boys and Girls Ranch. She is a woman of deep faith in Christ, unbounded love, commitment to mercy care, and she's smart.…
The Lutheran Women’s Missionary League Wyoming District Grants $3,000 to Dakota Boys and Girls Ranch
Dakota Boys and Girls Ranch will receive $3,000 from the Lutheran Women’s Missionary League, Wyoming District during the 2020-2022 biennium to support its Spiritual Life programming. Funds will be used specifically to purchase new chapel furnishing on our Bismarck campus.…
Dakota Boys and Girls Ranch will receive $5,000 from the Lutheran Women’s Missionary League, Oklahoma District during the 2020-2022 biennium to support its Spiritual Life programming. Funds will be used specifically to renovate the bathrooms in the Chapel on our Minot, ND campus, which is part of an overall chapel renovation.…
Dakota Boys and Girls Ranch received $3,000 from the Lutheran Women’s Missionary League, South Dakota District to support its Spiritual Life programming. Funds will be used specifically to purchase audio equipment for the Chapel on our Minot, ND campus, which is part of an overall chapel renovation.…
Dakota Boys and Girls Ranch will receive $15,000 in matching funds from the Rupert Dunklau Foundation to support the Spiritual Life Program on our campuses in Minot, Bismarck, and Fargo, ND…
Dakota Boys and Girls Ranch, Minot, ND, was the recipient of a $3,000 grant from Faith Community Lutheran Church in Longmont, CO. The funds received will be used as part of an overall transformation and update of the Kruse Memorial Chapel on our Minot, ND campus. Specifically, funds will be used to purchase new audio equipment for the chapel.…
I've mentioned it before that every day, 365 days a year, the Chaplain at the Ranch, Rev. Rick Jones, sends a devotion and prayer by email to all Ranch staff. It is always the first thing in my mailbox every morning. The devotionals are always insightful and the prayers often make me catch my breath.…
Last week, Jonathan Swenson (traveling actor, speaker, vocalist, and ordained minister) performed the show "Witnesses," by Curt Cloninger, for kids and staff at all three Ranch campuses in Minot, Bismarck, and Fargo.…
Recently, the reading in church was from Luke’s gospel where Jesus shared the parable of the Good Samaritan. When I reflect on this lesson, I think about how I can be a better neighbor to those around me. I think about times I could have let someone go ahead of me in line, stopped to listen, offered encouragement to someone, or engaged in conversation with the grocery store clerk or the person bagging my purchases. This time, I stopped to think about the definition of the neighbor referenced as "the one" in the phrase, “The one who had mercy on him."…
One young man at the Ranch is celebrating Easter with a very creative and symbolic haircut!…
Easter is a great time — maybe the best time — to focus on faith. We use this special season to help get the children thinking about Jesus, His triumph over sin and death, and what that means to them.…
Christian music group DPB came to the Ranch to put on a concert for our kids recently. But one of our girls, Alicia, didn't want to go to the concert.…
Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here! -2 Corinthians 5:17…
It wasn't until she came to the Ranch that 15-year-old Tara really realized how badly her life got sidetracked. "There was a lot of stress," she says. "I wanted to get out of the house. I did drugs and tried running away. And I had friends who were bad influences. They weren't good friends."…
Pastor Rick shows Christ’s love to the children at Dakota Boys and Girls Ranch through his compassion, gentleness, and listening.…
As I write this I am starting my fifth month at the Ranch! I’ve been here for a quarter of a year! Wow! The time has been filled with a whole range of experiences—from hearing heartbreaking and tough stories, to seeing our kids wrestle with trauma and the effects it has on them, to seeing our kids behave with kindness and resilience.…
When Steven*, a former resident at the Ranch, was planning his wedding, he contacted Pastor Rick Jones to see if he could be married in the Chapel on the Minot Dakota Boys and Girls Ranch campus.…
As I’ve been settling into my new role as the Deaconess/Spiritual Life Coordinator at the Dakota Boys and Girls Ranch in Minot, I’ve had the blessing of coordinating the Hope Notes Pen Pal Program—and I love it! Hope Notes pairs our amazing youth with kind and supportive people from all over the United States. They send cards and letters to their Ranch pen pal once a month.…
The Rev. Dr. Matthew Harrison, President of the Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod will be a featured speaker at the upcoming Faith in Action Mercy Conference on October 27 in Fargo. This one-day event, held at Dakota Boys and Girls Ranch, 7151 15th St. S., Fargo, will bring Lutherans together to re-imagine the work of the mercy in the church.…
“Minot?? How do you pronounce that? Wait, where is Minot? North Dakota?!?! That’s like right up by Canada, right? You know it gets cold up there? Like super/don’t want to go outside for half the year/your eyelashes freeze together/plug your car in cold?!?!”…
Deaconess Kelly Jacob recently joined Dakota Boys and Girls Ranch as Spiritual Life Coordinator. In her new position, Jacob cares for the spiritual needs of the residents of Dakota Boys and Girls Ranch in Minot, ND, through the presentation of the Gospel, scriptural mentoring, moral guidance, and community involvement.…
Rev. Rick Jones, Chaplain, Dakota Boys and Girls Ranch, not only ministers to our children, but to all 500 Ranch staff. He emails a daily staff devotion with the purpose of lifting us up, acknowledging the difficulty of our work, and reminding us of the Ranch's Gospel-focused care philosophy. Today's devotion seemed appropriate to share, as we all celebrate the National Day of Prayer.…