I’m Fr. Stephen Huffstetter, SCJ, and since November 2001 I’ve been part of the Pastoral Team serving 6 parishes on the Lower Brule & Crow Creek Reservations and surrounding area. This is my second assignment in South Dakota, as I enjoyed ten years of pastoral experience on the Cheyenne River Reservation. In between these assignments I spent five years as a formation director, working with SCJ college seminarians in San Antonio Texas. 

A challenge of working on the Rez is the poverty and social problems that we see around us. Yet in my years here, what inspires me is people’s strength to keep trying and struggling to make life better in spite of the odds. The people I serve encourage me to have greater hope and trust in God. They show me what it means to pick up your cross and to embrace suffering rather than trying to run away from difficulties. As pastor of the 6 parishes and moderator of the pastoral team, my duties include a little of everything - liturgy, ministry training, funerals, visiting the sick,  finances, planning meetings etc. What I enjoy best is the chance to visit with people, get to know them personally, and feel like I’m part of the local community. 

 I grew up in Walkerton, a small town in Northern Indiana, the oldest of 6 kids (three boys and three girls). My folks were both teachers, which made us study hard, but we also had a lot of fun with sports, especially Hoosier Hysteria (basketball).  

The Priests of the Sacred Heart used to run a high school seminary, Divine Heart,  just ten miles from home, and my dad knew some of the SCJs from their involvement with the local Knights of Columbus. My parents asked me to give the school a try because they believed the quality of a Catholic education would not only be better than I could get in my home town’s public school, but that it would also help my faith. So I was 14 years old when I first became acquainted with the SCJs. 

Students came to Divine Heart from all over the country, and from a variety of different cultures and backgrounds. Most of the students at the school boarded, and were thinking about being a priest or brother.  I lived at home and commuted, for the school had a day student program for local students like me. As time went on, and I got to know the SCJs in the classroom and as coaches and mentors, the idea of a vocation gradually grew on me. Because I admired and liked the SCJs and their work, I decided to continue in the Seminary, and graduated from Loyola University in Chicago with a degree in sociology. I went on to study Theology at Catholic Theological Union in Chicago.