Photographed many years ago in downtown Faribault.(Minnesota Prairie Roots copyrighted file photo used here for illustration only)
MY SUNDAY BEGAN as most Sundays do with morning worship at my church. The sermon highlighted sections of Mark 12, which includes this verse: Love your neighbor as yourself. That would theme the rest of my day.
Hours later I found myself gathered with others for the annual Rice County Salvation Army Red Kettle Campaign Kickoff. Again, the focus was on neighbors, specifically helping our neighbors in need.
Shortly after that event, Randy and I were on the road to neighboring Northfield for a 5 pm candlelight prayer vigil at Bridge Square. That, too, was about loving our neighbors. This time the gathering focused on supporting the family of Adan Nunez Gonzalez, a 41-year-old father of four snatched by masked Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents at gunpoint on November 11 in a residential neighborhood of Northfield. That incident has sparked outrage in this southern Minnesota college town and beyond.
Several family members and others witnessed Nunez Gonzalez being pulled from the passenger side of a vehicle while he was arriving at a job site along Washington Street. He’s a painter, originally from Mexico, with reportedly no criminal record who has been living in the US for 11 years. The entire incident was captured on video by his teenage son, called to the scene, and has been widely-circulated on social media. Nunez Gonzalez is now being held in the Kandiyohi County Jail. That county is among eight in Minnesota assisting with various aspects of ICE enforcement efforts. My county of Rice is not among them.
Attendees gather at Bridge Square as the candlelight prayer vigil is about to begin. (Minnesota Prairie Roots copyrighted photo November 2025)
HEAVY, YET HOPEFUL, HEARTS
The mood at Sunday’s prayer vigil felt heavy, yet hopeful, as some 200 of us gathered in the town square for this event organized by the Northfield faith community. As the sun set, as the nearby Cannon River roared over the dam, candles were distributed, lit and the crowd pressed together around a monument honoring Civil War soldiers. In late September, football players from Carleton College, blocks away, met here to turn the eagle atop the monument toward their college after defeating across-town rival St. Olaf College. It’s an annual celebratory tradition for the winning team.
Bridge Square has long been a community gathering spot, a place to celebrate, to peacefully protest, to meet one another for local events.
On this mid-November evening, it felt right and necessary to be here. To pray. To sing. To hear scripture quoted. To contemplate the gravity of ICE actions that have traumatized, torn families apart, instilled fear in communities across the country, raised the ire and concerns of many Americans like me who care about our neighbors and how they are being unjustly treated. Taken by armed, masked ICE agents and Border Patrol. Confined. Deported. Without due process of law.
Clergy gather before the start of the prayer vigil. (Minnesota Prairie Roots copyrighted photo November 2025)
A COMMUNITY RESPONDS
I felt the unity of a community determined to raise their voices and to take action. Northfielders have fed the family of their detained neighbor, organized activities for his children, started a GoFundMe to cover legal and other expenses, emailed support, expressed outrage and much more.
Love your neighbor as yourself was emphasized by clergy leading the vigil. One after another they stepped up to the mic, the first pastor leading us in The Lord’s Prayer. One referenced the biblical parable of the mustard seed and how we are to plant seeds of hope, faith, advocacy that will grow sturdy and strong among us. Another spoke of Jesus and his family fleeing to Egypt after his birth following threats from King Herod to find and kill all first-born males. It was fitting.
Another view of the crowd, not all of it, but a section of the attendees. (Minnesota Prairie Roots copyrighted photo November 2025)
A BIBLICAL DIRECTIVE
And then there was the well-known scripture from Matthew 25 in which Jesus asks us to care for one another—when hungry or thirsty, in need of clothing, when sick and in prison. It is as strong a directive as any in the bible to love our neighbors and to show that love in kind, caring and compassionate action.
The 25-minute Sunday evening prayer vigil closed with singing of “This Little Light of Mine.” Voices rose clear and strong in the darkness, arms stretched high, each hand grasping a single candle. A light. Many candles shining lights of support, hope, protest, resistance, outrage and more in a community that cares deeply about its neighbors.
#
NOTE: Please check back for a second “Love your neighbor” post, this one on the Salvation Army Red Kettle Campaign Kickoff.Also, note that the vigil images in this post were taken with my smartphone, thus the quality is not great compared with pix I would have taken with my 35 mm Canon. I left that at home, opting to be in the moment.
FOR ST. JOHN’S UNITED CHURCH of Christ, Wheeling Township, a weekend Cruise-In Car Show offers an opportunity to bring the community together.
There’s no ulterior motive. This isn’t a fundraiser. The church isn’t trying to get folks to join.
Rather, says Steve Wille of the St. John’s Revitalization Group, the Car Show is strictly a social event aimed at bringing folks together in a neighborly sort of way. I like that. Visiting with your neighbors, he says, seems to be a lost art.
St. John’s United Church of Christ, Wheeling Township. Minnesota Prairie Roots file photo.
St. John’s, a country church located east of Faribault near Nerstrand Big Woods State Park, is good at reaching out to the community. The congregation hosts annual events like the Big Woods Run, The Last Supper Drama,German Fest, an ice cream social and more. I’ve been there many times, often enough that congregants know me. These folks are country friendly and welcoming. And they’re fantastic cooks and bakers.
No St. John’s event is complete without food. Pork sandwiches and snacks will be available at the 10 a.m. – 1 p.m. Saturday, July 30, Cruise-In Car Show.
Car Show is a bit of a misnomer, though. Trucks and tractors are also welcome with first place trophies awarded to each of the top three.
If you enjoy cruise-ins, country churches, a rural setting and visiting, consider attending (or participating in) St. John’s first-ever Cruise-In Car Show.
FYI: St. John’s is located 10 miles northeast of Faribault. Take Minnesota State Highway 60 east for eight miles and then turn north onto Rice County 24. Drive two miles to 19086 Jacobs Avenue.
“HOW MUCH SNOW did we get?” I asked my husband upon arising Friday morning. I had no desire to bundle up and head outdoors to shovel the sidewalk and driveway. Again.
He guessed about five inches.
“I don’t feel like shoveling.”
“You don’t have to. I’ll blow it out when I get home.”
And so I felt a tinge of guilt, making the mail carrier and the few pedestrians in my neighborhood plow through the snow. But at least school wasn’t in session and kids wouldn’t be trudging through the snow, too, packing it down.
The first scoop of snow.
But then, around 2 p.m., the next door neighbor barreled down the sidewalk with his snowblower blazing a trail past our house and then back a second time to clear an even wider path. That Ken did this simply out of the goodness of his heart pleases me.
Up the street, a kindly soul opened the driveway and sidewalks of another neighbor whose property my husband typically clears of snow.
Moving right along…
Across the street, the neighbor boy attempted to clear the driveway, a seemingly insurmountable job for the little guy. He was giving it his all, for awhile, clearing only a small section before abandoning the task.
Perhaps someday he’ll blaze a trail through the snow with a snowblower.
NO ONE EVER expects to need help. But then an accident happens or sickness befalls us or tragedy strikes. And we suddenly realize how much we need each other.
Back in October of 1967, neighbors rallied after a corn chopper sliced off the fingers on my father-in-law’s left hand. Not just the tips, but so much that amputation was required between the wrist and the elbow.
An Allis Chalmers corn chopper like this one exhibited at the 2010 Rice County Steam & Gas Engines Show, claimed my father-in-law's left hand and much of his arm in a 1967 accident. That's my husband, Randy, who saved his dad's life by running for help.
In the week after the accident, neighboring farmers came with plows to work the fields of my father-in-law’s Morrison County farm. Others arrived with tractors and manure spreaders to haul away a manure pile. A week or two later, the neighbors were back to pour a slab of cement at the end of the barn.
Several farmers and a high school student continued to assist the family with twice daily milkings and other farm chores while Tom recovered and adapted to farming with his prosthetic hook hand.
Neighbors helping neighbors in need.
This fall, farmers gathered south of Lucan in Redwood County to harvest corn and soybeans on the farm of their friend and neighbor, Steve, my sister-in-law’s father who was found dead at the scene of a single-vehicle accident on September 20.
Neighbors helping a grieving family in their time of need.
Stories like this are not uncommon in rural Minnesota.
Harvesting corn this fall in southern Minnesota.
But it wasn’t until this past week that I learned about Farm Rescue, “a nonprofit organization that plants and harvests crops free of charge for family farmers who have suffered a major illness, injury or natural disaster.”
Founded in 2005 by a former North Dakota farm boy, this Jamestown, North Dakota-based nonprofit has assisted 155 farm families, mostly in the Dakotas, but also in western Minnesota and eastern Montana, the states within the organization’s coverage area.
All of this I learned from Paul Oster, a Farm Rescue videographer. Oster read my July blog posts about the tornadic and strong wind storms that swept through southwestern Minnesota and contacted me last week about using several photos in a video he was preparing about Kramin.
Before agreeing to his request, I first checked out Farm Rescue. I wanted to assure that the storm photos my brother, uncle and I had taken would be shared with a respected organization.
My photo of the July 1 storm damage at Meadowland Farmers Co-op in Vesta which Paul Oster included in his video of Kurt Kramin. Renville, where Kramin lives, is north of Vesta.
No problem there. Farm Rescue accepts applicants from farmers in need, reviews the applications and then, if approved, coordinates volunteers to plant or harvest crops. It’s like neighbors helping neighbors.
TED FROM OWATONNA, you are our Willow Street neighborhood hero. This afternoon you saved my neighbor’s house from what could have been a devastating fire. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
You were in a hurry to leave after you put out the fire on Kristin and Kevin’s deck with a garden hose around 4 p.m. today. You didn’t give me your last name—I was the one with the camera, the across-the-street-neighbor.
I am forever grateful to you for noticing the flames (as you drove by with your family), stopping, grabbing a garden hose, banging on the house and yelling for my neighbors to “Get out!”
This is a view from my yard looking directly across the street at Kevin and Kristin's house on the corner of Tower Place and Willow Street. The fire was extinguished before firefighters arrived.
I did not get many actual fire photos as I was more focused on making sure my neighbors were out of the house than in photographing the scene. But here you see wood chips burning under the deck.
Ted from Owatonna uses water from a garden hose to put out the deck fire.
That's my neighbor Kristin on the right, with Ted still working to assure the fire is out.
You deserve an award, Ted. Faribault firefighter Joel Hansen says the fire department gives awards for efforts like yours. I expect you wouldn’t want one. But you need to be recognized and publicly thanked.
If not for your quick action, I am convinced the fire would have caused severe damage to Kristin and Kevin’s home.
By the time my 17-year-old son noticed the flames (which was almost immediately) and hollered, “The neighbor’s house is on fire!” you were already there grabbing the hose.
Flames were shooting from under and around the deck in the mere seconds it took for my husband and me to race across Tower Place. I didn’t even slip on shoes, just grabbed my camera and ran.
All I could think of was that my neighbors were in their house; their car was in the driveway. I screamed, “Kevin, Kristin, get out of the house!” Several times.
My eyes focused on those flames blocking the front door. The flames that kept shooting up until Ted extinguished them with water from that garden hose.
Then Kristin and her daughter, Kaylee, rounded the corner from the garage, having safely exited through a back door.
Kristin told me she heard the banging, but, because some neighborhood kids have been banging on her house recently, didn’t think much of it. But then she got up to check, saw the fire and got out. Her husband and son were not home.
I am relieved, thankful, grateful that the fire was contained to the deck area, that it did not happen at night, that my neighbors got safely out. The deck and siding are damaged. That is minor compared to what could have been.
The fire damaged the deck and siding.
Faribault firefighter Joel Hansen continued spraying down the area after Ted left.
It could have been worse, much worse, if not for the quick actions of Ted from Owatonna.
If anyone knows the identity of Ted, please submit a comment and I will pass this information along to the Faribault Fire Department. My husband also got Ted’s license plate number, so we are confident that officials can track him down that way. We want Ted to get the public recognition he deserves.
Today, Ted, let me give you your first public, “Thank you!”
Readers, if you would also like to comment on Ted’s actions, I welcome you to do so.
Minnesota Prairie Roots 
“Love your neighbor,” Part I from Northfield November 17, 2025
Tags: Adan Nunez Gonzalez, Bridge Square, candlelight prayer vigil, commentary, faith, ICE detainee, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, injustice, Minnesota, neighbors, news, Northfield, prayer, Scripture, the bible
MY SUNDAY BEGAN as most Sundays do with morning worship at my church. The sermon highlighted sections of Mark 12, which includes this verse: Love your neighbor as yourself. That would theme the rest of my day.
Hours later I found myself gathered with others for the annual Rice County Salvation Army Red Kettle Campaign Kickoff. Again, the focus was on neighbors, specifically helping our neighbors in need.
Shortly after that event, Randy and I were on the road to neighboring Northfield for a 5 pm candlelight prayer vigil at Bridge Square. That, too, was about loving our neighbors. This time the gathering focused on supporting the family of Adan Nunez Gonzalez, a 41-year-old father of four snatched by masked Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents at gunpoint on November 11 in a residential neighborhood of Northfield. That incident has sparked outrage in this southern Minnesota college town and beyond.
Several family members and others witnessed Nunez Gonzalez being pulled from the passenger side of a vehicle while he was arriving at a job site along Washington Street. He’s a painter, originally from Mexico, with reportedly no criminal record who has been living in the US for 11 years. The entire incident was captured on video by his teenage son, called to the scene, and has been widely-circulated on social media. Nunez Gonzalez is now being held in the Kandiyohi County Jail. That county is among eight in Minnesota assisting with various aspects of ICE enforcement efforts. My county of Rice is not among them.
HEAVY, YET HOPEFUL, HEARTS
The mood at Sunday’s prayer vigil felt heavy, yet hopeful, as some 200 of us gathered in the town square for this event organized by the Northfield faith community. As the sun set, as the nearby Cannon River roared over the dam, candles were distributed, lit and the crowd pressed together around a monument honoring Civil War soldiers. In late September, football players from Carleton College, blocks away, met here to turn the eagle atop the monument toward their college after defeating across-town rival St. Olaf College. It’s an annual celebratory tradition for the winning team.
Bridge Square has long been a community gathering spot, a place to celebrate, to peacefully protest, to meet one another for local events.
On this mid-November evening, it felt right and necessary to be here. To pray. To sing. To hear scripture quoted. To contemplate the gravity of ICE actions that have traumatized, torn families apart, instilled fear in communities across the country, raised the ire and concerns of many Americans like me who care about our neighbors and how they are being unjustly treated. Taken by armed, masked ICE agents and Border Patrol. Confined. Deported. Without due process of law.
A COMMUNITY RESPONDS
I felt the unity of a community determined to raise their voices and to take action. Northfielders have fed the family of their detained neighbor, organized activities for his children, started a GoFundMe to cover legal and other expenses, emailed support, expressed outrage and much more.
Love your neighbor as yourself was emphasized by clergy leading the vigil. One after another they stepped up to the mic, the first pastor leading us in The Lord’s Prayer. One referenced the biblical parable of the mustard seed and how we are to plant seeds of hope, faith, advocacy that will grow sturdy and strong among us. Another spoke of Jesus and his family fleeing to Egypt after his birth following threats from King Herod to find and kill all first-born males. It was fitting.
A BIBLICAL DIRECTIVE
And then there was the well-known scripture from Matthew 25 in which Jesus asks us to care for one another—when hungry or thirsty, in need of clothing, when sick and in prison. It is as strong a directive as any in the bible to love our neighbors and to show that love in kind, caring and compassionate action.
The 25-minute Sunday evening prayer vigil closed with singing of “This Little Light of Mine.” Voices rose clear and strong in the darkness, arms stretched high, each hand grasping a single candle. A light. Many candles shining lights of support, hope, protest, resistance, outrage and more in a community that cares deeply about its neighbors.
#
NOTE: Please check back for a second “Love your neighbor” post, this one on the Salvation Army Red Kettle Campaign Kickoff. Also, note that the vigil images in this post were taken with my smartphone, thus the quality is not great compared with pix I would have taken with my 35 mm Canon. I left that at home, opting to be in the moment.
© Copyright 2025 Audrey Kletscher Helbling