By james art 
SIOUX FALLS, SD (Dakota News Now) – The mayor of Sioux Falls is a strong advocate for mental and physical health.
Every year he challenges the residents and himself to get out more.
His latest personal challenge has taken him halfway around the world, at the foot of one of the greatest mountains on the planet.
“Every year I try to set a physical goal,” he said. “I want to run a marathon or whatever, and Kilimanjaro for some reason came up on my Instagram feed. And I thought, “Huh, I’ll spin it.” At 19,341 feet, Mount Kilimanjaro is the highest free-standing mountain in the world above sea level. Mayor TenHaken set out to climb to the very top.
“There’s no other feeling like being on top of a mountain. Looking down at the clouds and if you’re religious, like me, you don’t feel any closer to God and Heaven than you do on top of a mountain,” he said. It took five days of climbing this mountain to reach the top.
One might wonder why anyone would want to subject their body and mind to such a journey.
TenHaken says that removing yourself from your comfort zone and setting new challenges for yourself can do a lot for your mental health.
“Real change really happens when you stretch your canvas and do things you’re not comfortable doing,” he said. “You get a perspective of how small we are. So the things we are worried about, politics or our work, we are so small, so insignificant in this world. So in the middle of the world a completely different country, a mountain I’ve never seen, there’s just so much to see in this world and God’s creation is just amazing.”
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