South Dakota church offers forgiveness to youths who started fire in building
The temperature was below zero the night three stranded youths broke into the church hall and burned hymnals and furniture.
On an early February night when the temperature was below zero, stranded youths seeking warmth and shelter built a fire in the middle of the floor of an Episcopal mission church building in On the Tree, South Dakota.
Margaret Watson, a priest who serves 11 congregations on and near the Cheyenne River Reservation of the Lakota Sioux people, has not learned the identities or ages of the three youths, who were discovered by a rancher who was driving by St. Thomas Episcopal Church and stopped at the sight of the fire.
The youths ran out of the church hall to ask the rancher for help, saying they had been abandoned at the side of the road by a friend.
