Passion
builds for prairie school
By Diana Bricker
Regional Reporter
Dakota Baptist
EAGLE BUTTE, S.D. – Christ-
centered curriculum plus Lakota language equals Windswept Academy. In July 2001, God blew a gentle breeze into
the heart of Anne Konur. He softly told her a Christian school was needed in
Eagle Butte. This was in the days that followed her first mission trip to
Cheyenne River Indian Reservation.
Konur’s
response to the Lord was that He couldn’t possibly mean she was to start
it! She didn’t have a teaching degree. She hadn’t ever before started a school.
She didn’t have any credentials in mission work. She and her husband, Ilhami Konur, a
Turkish-born retired businessman, have six children and 21 grandchildren. They
had been active in ministry in their home church, but how could that kind of a
background build a school?
The Konurs,
whose home is in Leesburg, Va.,
first came to Eagle Butte as part of a mission team from Hamilton (Va.) Baptist
Church, to help with a
vacation Bible school in 2001. They saw
one-parent homes, drug-addicted mothers, grandparents raising grandchildren,
and extreme poverty exacerbated by the lack of education on the reservation. Once back in Virginia, Konur kept doing everything she
could except what God had told her to do. She led nutritional cooking classes
with diabetic meal planning. She taught quilting classes and financial planning
classes with a banker from Virginia.
And, as a leader in women’s ministries in Virginia, she made several trips to Eagle
Butte. Soon, instead of just
participating in one-week trips, the Konurs were organizing trips – for
basketballs camps, day-long VBS, and in other ways ministering to the people in
the community of Eagle Butte.
Then
Konur met Darla Shupick of Noah’s Ark
Early Learning
Center in Eagle Butte,
and told her of God’s call on Konur’s life to start a Christian school in
Eagle Butte. “Can it start this year?”
Shupick asked. It seemed that God had blown a full-force gust of wind behind
His plan for the school. The Konurs
bought a second home in Faith, S.D., a small town just outside the res. While
in Virginia, they gather prayer and financial
support, meet with Windswept
Academy board of
directors members on the East Coast, and develop plans.
Windswept Academy last year purchased 25
acres four miles west of Eagle Butte, and has received approval to become a 501
C-3 non- profit organization with a curriculum that is to blend the Abeka
program with Lakota language studies. It’s a plan of great interest to Tribal
Chairman Joe Brings Plenty, reservation leaders say. Plans for the building are being drawn and Windswept Academy
hopes to use only local South Dakota
contractors in the construction.
The eight members
of Windswept Academy board are prayerfully seeking
Christian staff. The first school term is slated for 2009; at capacity it would
have 60 full-time students. Windswept Academy plus Christ equals transformed
Lakota lives. For more information,
contact www.windsweptacademy.org or the Konurs at 605-200-1857 or 703-777-8239.