Ashley Fink, a 2018 Freeman Academy graduate, is pictured on the left alongside actors from Sioux Falls Christian involved with her original one-act play, “Butterfly Wings.” Also pictured are Lindsey Mesman (Sunny), Jocelyn Kooistra (Darla) and Blake Todd (Keith), as well as Alecia Juelfs, who is the director of the play and also the one-act coach at SFC; she’s the one who asked Ashley if the school could perform her show. Ashley wrote the play as part of her theater major at the University of Sioux Falls and is featured in this week's 5-Minute Interview.

This “In God We Trust” sign was placed in the Menno gym last week Wednesday, Jan. 20, a project led by the FCA (Fellowship of Christian Athletes) at Menno High School. Many students who are part of FCA are pictured here. What inspired the sign? In July 2019 a new South Dakota state law took effect that requires all public schools in the state’s 149 districts to paint, stencil or otherwise prominently display this national motto. Lawmakers who proposed the law said the requirement was meant to inspire patriotism in the state’s public schools.

This photo from last fall shows the area south of the Freeman Community Center, which for decades served as the playground for elementary students attending Freeman Public. The tree-lined green space will enter a new era later this year; watch for the announcement in this week's Courier, online Wednesday afternoon and in print Thursday.

The sun peeks through the trees at the Freeman Swimming Pool Park; this was taking at daybreak on Sunday morning, Jan. 25 following Saturday's snow.

Heavy fog clung to the air Sunday morning following an on-again, off-again snow on Saturday. While it only amounted to a few inches, it successfully gave the landscape a fresh coat of white, reminding us that we remain in the doldrums of winter.

Music Hall at Freeman Academy — which opened as South Dakota Mennonite College in 1903 and is Freeman's most historic structure — is pictured on a snowy Jan. 23 morning. The white stuff was expected to fall throughout the day on Saturday, although not a lot of accumulation was expected.

A crew from South Dakota Public Broadcasting was in Freeman Thursday, Jan. 21 exploring and photographing some of the historical displays and artifacts at Heritage Hall Museum & Archives for an upcoming segment of Dakota Life. This is Nate Wek, content producer, shooting the J.J. Mendel display in the Kauffman Wing of the museum after shooting some of the outdoor displays. Freeman will be featured as the “host city” in the program slated to air Thursday night, Feb. 4 at 8 p.m. CST.  

Here is another look at the Freeman Prairie Arboretum on a recent last-winter afternoon.

Flags fly at the Freeman Area Veteran's Memorial on a sunny Wednesday morning, Jan. 20.

This photo taken at the Freeman Prairie Arboretum serves as a reminder that there is beauty, even in the dead of winter.