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BY VICTORIA REBECK
UNITED METHODIST NEWS SERVICE

?JEFF HAYNES/GETTY IMAGES

A car passes a sign of support on State Highway 89 on the way to Red Lake Indian Reservation March 23 in Red Lake, Minnesota, two days after 16-year-old Jeff Weise carried out the worst US school shooting in six years. It left 10m dead, icluding the young gunman.

In the wake of shootings on a Minnesota Indian reservation that left 10 people dead, United Methodist Bishop Sally Dyck has promised the prayers of the church to the Red Lake tribe.

'I have written to the Red Lake tribal chairman, promising him the prayers of United Methodists,' Dyck, bishop of the Minnesota Area, told United Methodists in an e-mailed pastoral letter on March 22. She asked Minnesota United Methodists, in their church worship services held Maundy Thursday through Easter Sunday, to pray for the people of Red Lake.

Bishop Dyck

'Remember the parents, the relatives, the teachers, the school employees, the neighbors, the friends, the law enforcement agents, and those who will provide care for this grieving community,' she said.

On March 21, a 16-year-old boy opened fire on his high school on the Red Lake Indian Reservation in northern Minnesota, killing five students, a security guard and a teacher and wounding seven other students. He is believed to be the gunman who also shot to death his grandfather and his grandfather's friend. The boy then took his own life at the school.

'We think about the pain that the victims' families and friends must be enduring. We fear the violence that may break into our towns, homes, and schools ? places where we would like to feel safe. Though this story will eventually leave the front pages, the people of Red Lake will live with the horror and loss for many years,' Dyck said.

Church disaster relief organizations have not been invited to offer direct response to this crisis, which is under state and federal jurisdiction, but United Methodists are providing physical assistance through the Red Cross.

Several members of Bemidji United Methodist Church, 35 miles south of Red Lake, volunteer with the North Star Chapter of the Red Cross. The church's pastor, the Rev. Eric Hucke, is the chapter's board chairman, and layperson George Stowe is chapter manager of the Beltrami County chapter of the Red Cross.

On March 22, Hucke and other Red Cross workers were busy preparing sandwiches and stew for their neighbors in Red Lake. Many church members work in Red Lake ? in various aspects of law enforcement, the Indian Public Health Service, the tribal college, and at Red Lake Elementary School. A number of church members are employed by the North Country Regional Hospital in Bemdiji, where several of the shooting victims were sent.

Through their work, the Bemidji United Methodists will be reaching out to Red Lake residents. Hucke expected to make a pastoral call to a church member who is a teacher at Red Lake High School and who had taught the suspected shooter in her classroom last year. 'She is traumatized,' Hucke said.

Violence in schools makes most people feel vulnerable, observed the Rev. Heather Klason, the denomination's Minnesota Annual Conference (regional) disaster relief coordinator. 'Many people are feeling fearful right now, wondering if this could also happen in their own communities,' she said. 'The problem is deeper than just one individual shooter.'

Klason affirmed the need to support people in prayer.

'Lamentations is an often-avoided book of the Bible,' she said. 'Yet through prayers of lamentation, we bear witness to others' pain.

'Witnessing to the pain ? allowing others to tell of their experience, without our trying to 'fix' it ? helps people begin the process of recovery,' she noted.