Some seeds take longer to sprout than others. Raised on the Spirit Lake Sioux reservation in North Dakota, Lisa Georgeson had heard about Cook College and Seminary in Tempe, Arizona, as a child. “Well, you know my mother went there,” she says, “and when I was a couple of years from graduating high school, she’d bring it up. She never really pushed it, but I could tell she thought I ought to go there. But I wanted to stay with my friends, so I wasn’t too interested.”

Lisa’s mother, Sharon Red Fox-Georgeson, couldn’t help being a little evangelistic about Cook. As a missionary’s daughter, she’d always known that she was expected to go there and learn to be a leader. What she didn’t know was how much the different tribes with their different languages and foods would all feel like one family. “I felt loved when I was there,” she remembers. “My best friend was a beautiful Navajo girl, and when she sang in her language, I would hum along, and I could feel the Holy Spirit there without knowing the words.” She also remembers the commitment of her fellow students. “I guess I learned from them how to be committed.”

Indeed she did: Aside from her work as a teacher and a social worker, she turned the small Presbyterian church her family had always attended into a lighthouse for the community’s children. Even though Bdecan (Buh DAY Chahn) Presbyterian Church has only 26 official members, the Sunday school has 140 children. “Most of the 5,000 kids on the reservation are from one-parent families, often with an alcoholic parent—probably half have fetal alcohol syndrome. They all hunger so much for someone to pay attention to them.”

Lisa didn’t go to Cook when she graduated. She stayed on the reservation, got a job as a Head Start teacher, and gave birth to her daughter, Tia, in 1996. Then her perspective began to change. “I realized I wanted a better life for her, and I needed to be a better model for her. I was afraid to leave the reservation, but I knew our lives wouldn’t get better unless I left. I wanted to find peace in my heart, and I realized from watching my mother that the path to peace is through giving back.” She and Tia decided to uproot themselves and start over.

“So last January, Tia and I left the reservation for the first time and came to Cook. Of course it was a shock at first. The size of the city, the heat, all the different kinds of people . . . and I missed my friends and family.” But before long she was feeling at home. “In small classes with other Native Americans, I feel comfortable speaking up about what’s important to me. I can open up and ask questions. I feel complete here.”

It’s not easy being a college student, working twenty hours a week in the enrollment office, and trying to be the mother her daughter needs. But Lisa says, “I finally have a sense that my life is going somewhere.” That somewhere may be back to the reservation. “When I left, I said I never wanted to go back, but now I see it may be the best place to apply what I’ve learned and to give back. I like working with children and youth, and I want to help my mother, who’s worked so long at the church.”

The path that Lisa has chosen is not an easy one, nor is it one that will bring her great financial wealth. But she is content in the knowledge that it is the path that God is calling her to, and she believes she owes much of that clarity and peace to her time at Cook College. Half of our gifts to the Christmas Joy Offering support racial ethnic schools and colleges like Cook as they reach out to young men and women like Lisa Georgeson to help them find their path. The other half supports the Board of Pensions’ assistance programs as they minister to unexpected needs of those whose path has been serving the church. In both of these ministries, our gifts help to bring light and joy to other members of our family in Christ. Let us thank God for this opportunity to reach out in love and increase the joy of God’s people.

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