Rehoboth Christian School Buys Bus
– High school choir members from Rehoboth Christian School in New Mexico normally have to pile into four vans when they take their music on the road. Every year, they travel to Native American reservations, rural Christian Reformed Church congregations and elsewhere across the United States to perform.
But they won’t need four vans when they go on tour next year. Instead, they will all be able to ride in a maroon-and-gold-painted activities bus that the school near Gallup, N.M., recently purchased from Hope College in Holland, Mich.
“The bus is quite used, but in great shape, and we were able to buy it at a reasonable price,” says Gary Nederveld, director of donations for the more than 100-year-old, ethnically-mixed school. “We’ve never really had a standard school bus.”
The bus will be driven to Rehoboth on Dec. 26 by former Holland resident Jeff Banaszak, who is the newly appointed Director of Finance and Operations at Rehoboth Christian School.
Now a resident of the Rehoboth area, Banaszak is in Michigan for the holidays. His time at Rehoboth has been satisfying and edifying. “I’m surprised how much harmony there is between the native people and the school,” Banaszak told the Holland Sentinel newspaper. “I was pleasantly surprised how high, academically, students were.” More than 90 percent of Rehoboth’s students go on to college.
Nederveld says the bus story dates back a few months to when Dan Aukeman, formerly of Holland, moved to Rehoboth, N.M. “The friends he left behind include Bill Marcus, who is the director of transportation at Hope College. When Dan learned that Hope was looking to upgrade to a new bus, he wondered if Rehoboth may be a good home for the old one, given Rehoboth’s need for an activities bus.”
About $5,000 as been raised so far to pay for the bus, which Hope sold for $13,000. The vehicle is currently parked outside of a Russ’ Restaurant in Holland. It is there so that people can see its new paint job and stop by and drop off donations. Nederveld says the school continues to seek donations, hoping that it won’t have to use any of the school’s budget to finish the purchase.
Rehoboth Christian School was founded by the CRC in 1903 to serve Native American students. Today, about 70 percent of its 445 students are Native American. Along with 10 percent other minorities, they help make Rehoboth one of the most diverse Christian schools in the country, says Nederveld.
“The mission now has become a Christian school and it’s controlled by the local community, many of whom are Native Americans, but many of the people who work at the school are from West Michigan,” says Nederveld.
Besides transporting the choir, the bus will be used to shuttle student groups to various events, some of which are up to three hours away.
Gifts toward the project can be mailed to Rehoboth at PO Box 41, Rehoboth, NM 87322-0041.
