Our Ministry
A Good Friend Retires
by Rev. Dr. Don Johnson (Makah)
Executive Director
I first met Reverend Clark Gies and his lovely wife, Judy, nearly twenty years or more ago. It was a brief meeting at best and I cannot remember if we discussed much. However, in later years I met Clark at what was termed a CLAIM meeting. Clark at the time was on the board of the organization known as, The Council for Lutheran American Indian Ministries.
A few years later we met again to discuss merging 
Lutheran Association of Missionaries and Pilots U.S. with CLAIM since we had similar goals, and working together to achieve them would be so much more efficient and effective. Clark at the time was the Executive Director of CLAIM. Stepping down to enable our organization to assume his organization was critical to the merger. Clark was willing to do so. He then took on the position as “Director of Ministry and Discipleship Training” as our two ministries, now one, continued the goal of recruiting and training native people for ministry through the Lutheran Church. Clark provided great leadership and counsel to me in the early days of the merger and I will forever be grateful to him. I was pleased to have him help individual ministry staff develop goals and objectives for their areas of service.
Through the years he served with me, I learned of his passion for the Gospel and his love for Native American ministry. It had always been his goal and I still remember how he described his first call in 1966 to the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota. In later years, he began serving a dual parish on the Yankton Sioux and the Rosebud Reservations, both in South Dakota. His passion was for ministry with Native Americans.
I knew the day would come when he would casually pull me aside to tell me, “Don, I have decided it is finally time for me to ‘re-retire’ from the ministry.” Even with that announcement he offered to do whatever speaking or facilitating I might need; I just need to let him know when I need him.
In the meanwhile, he and Judy are free to visit with their son, two daughters and their spouses and grandchildren. None, fortunately, are that far from their home in Fairfax, South Dakota.
Clark will be our guest speaker at our Annual Banquet and Luncheon in Milwaukee on March 19, 2011. Who more appropriate or better to serve in that role than one who has served so patiently and passionately for this many years?
I will always have fond memories of the many times Clark and I served together in ministry. On behalf of all of the staff at Lutheran Association of Missionaries and Pilots U.S., I wish Clark and Judy God’s abundant blessings in their “re-retirement."