CANNONBALL- One Sunday on the outskirts of Cannon Ball, Boots Marsh was waiting in Tipi Wakan's kitchen around midday for adults who might show up for church. Over coffee, he talked about the challenges of running a ministry on Standing Rock.

One story: A couple of girls, about age 10 or so, came in recently, he said, to ask him if they could just hang out in the church. He said yes.

Marsh came back a while later to find the girls had used a blanket to make a tent over the altar and were asleep under it.

Marsh said it was a pretty good guess that there had been a long, chaotic weekend at their house and the girls had come to Tipi Wakan on the chance of finding a quiet place where they could sleep.

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Toni Plante of Cannon Ball started coming to Tipi Wakan at the invitation of her niece, Bernetta Thunder Hawk.

Both came to like the ministry enough to make the decision to be baptized by immersion.

Boots Marsh and his wife, Jackie, have become their close friends, they said. In fact, Plante adopted Jackie Marsh as a sister in a hunka ceremony, "where you adopt someone into your family in the Indian way," she said.

"They do real good things here," Plante said of the Tipi Wakan ministry. "Boots and Jackie help everyone in the community."

"He's so kind; I don't think he knows how to say no," Thunder Hawk said.

On Sundays, Tipi Wakan has an open door. By midafternoon, the church is hopping with children - on this Sunday, 25-plus. Boots Marsh has made a circuit west of Cannon Ball, picking up kids in a white van that's seen more than 110,000 miles. Most are elementary school age, some with preschoolers in tow. Meanwhile, a group from First Baptist Church in Bismarck are marking their twice-monthly visit, in the kitchen unwrapping frozen corn dogs and other food to prepare for the kids.

Plante, who is the postmaster at Cannon Ball, said she initially didn't want to get involved at Tipi Wakan.

"Some (ministries) are here for a year and leave. They come and go," she said.

But after coming to church with her niece, she said she got a warm feeling, a comfortable feeling, about the place. On Easter a couple of years ago, right in the kitchen, she asked if she could join.

Cannon Ball has quite a few churches, Congregational, Catholic, Episcopal, Mormon, and a number of Pentecostals who worship as families, Plante and Thunder Hawk said.

"We pray to one creator, whether we're traditional or not," Plante said. "God … we don't know if he's white, or black, or Indian, or Japanese," she said. "He's the creator of all people."

Tipi Wakan feels special, said Thunder Hawk, who is an assistant cook at Solen High School. "It felt so warm and welcoming. If you feel comfortable in a church, you should go there."

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It was 24 below zero in March of 2003 when Buford "Boots" and Jackie Marsh came up to Standing Rock from Texas to help out with a winter Vacation Bible School.

But on the way back to Houston, they kept seeing the faces of those children and began to wonder if this was a call from God.

"I had a calling but didn't want to come," Jackie Marsh said. "I kicked and screamed all the way, but I learned you don't have to be in agreement to be obedient."

God tells you, Boots Marsh says, "come to a place and stay until it changes, and it changes you."

Within three months, Boots Marsh finished up his job in the oil patch, the couple retired, sold their house and belongings and in July 2003, came back to Cannon Ball with a mobile home, which they parked next to the building they call Tipi Wakan, which means "sacred tent."

They started by working with the children, providing Sunday School and a meal. Then they added adult services, a 12-step program, Bible studies, a limited food pantry and clothes closet. They serve a special meal for elders regularly and put together a Christmas gift ministry.

Cannon Ball ministry is "kind of" Baptist but mostly independent, Boots Marsh said.

They live on their retirement and take no salary, Jackie Marsh said. "You can't fire somebody you don't pay."

Tipi Wakan is a bare-root beginning, the Marshes say.

"We're about as grassroots as you get, independent and self-financed," Boots Marsh said.

Their financial support comes from groups around the country, including lots of Bible Belt churches, Jackie Marsh said. In the summer, half a dozen teams from other states do construction and maintenance and hold Bible school. Groups from Mandan and Bismarck also come and help, she said.

"Churches spend thousands to go overseas when their neighbors are dying without knowing the Lord," Jackie Marsh said.

Most people are totally unaware of the situation here; people think the casinos took care of everything, Boots Marsh said. Money thrown at something doesn't help the problem, he said.

People, both white and Native, have told the Marshes how dangerous the community is and advised them to commute from Bismarck.

Nevertheless, there's been no ill will toward them, no graffiti on their building, Boots Marsh said. They did have one burglary, but say they never felt safer in Houston than in Cannon Ball.

Their philosophy: Do your job, stay out of other's people's business.

"We don't inform on drug dealers, gossip, or get involved in Native politics," Boots Marsh said. "We can't mix in. It's not our calling to change their society."

Old feuds and hatred from as far back as frontier days still affect who comes to church today, Boots Marsh said. People tell them, "if so-and-so comes to church, we won't."

They were advised that it takes about four years for people to accept you, maybe seven years to make an impact and 10 years to begin to see change.

"You need a calling for sure," he said, "an inner spiritual calling to come anywhere. It gets you through the hard times."

Boots Marsh has already come to like the cold, the challenge, the invigoration of it. And Jackie Marsh remembers how beautiful it seemed to her the first day she saw hoarfrost. Their "vacation" is scenic Highway 6, their beauty, the northern lights, they say.

"It's harsh nature here, but it has its rewards," Boots Marsh said. He's already feeding pheasants - he counted 53 by their lone boulder one day.

So when they are asked, "are you ever going to leave us?" they reply, "we don't plan to. We love it here."

"Don't come if you can't stay," they were told. "We have enough of those. Everybody's always leaving."

(Reach reporter Karen Herzog at 250-8267 or karen.herzog@bismarcktribune.com.)