Old Habits
10 years ago I jumped in a plane and headed to bush Alaska for the first time! For 7 summers I would write blog posts on Sunday nights to have them published before we left on the plane on Monday and went without internet for the week. God has impressed on my heart to start the blog up again! To my faithful readers I hope you haven't lost all your mind by reading this blog! I also have to do a shout out to Kevin Lee! Why? One year was late to getting the blog out and he was like where is it? Just kidding! I wasn't going to write a blog that summer but I found Kevin read the blog posts so now he's obligated to read them again this summer!
It's summer which means we have 2 additional ministries operating! We go from a village of around 800 to 10,000 in a matter of weeks! Think of canneries like a condensed college campus but instead of Math they're chopping up fish. They have dorms for the workers. For the people with boats you can think of it of lake life in MN. Some people have cabins while others might just live in their camper or in this case their boat. It can be busy. The increase means sirens are heard pretty much every day. If you sit still enough you can sense that most people coming in are not bringing the Holy Spirit with them. Drunkenness, drugs and is brought in more than prayer and Bibles. We're fishing and fighting battles this summer! Can we just take a moment to acknowledge the POWER of the God we get to serve? He's going being worker longer than the 16 hour shifts the cannery workers will have.
We'll have around 50 people come up this summer to help with the additional ministries. I make sure the rooms are ready to go, evening meals are made, schedule VBS, answer questions, teach Sunday School, still be intentional to have my young adults meet and more! The Lord has impressed on my heart Mary and Martha. It's so often in the business we can forget to slow down and just listen to the Lord. If you've like me you can also so easily forget all that the Lord has done! Which might be why the Lord has impressed to write the blog. To be to look and know that I have the goodness and faithfulness of God. What a blessing that is.
The summer started off with deaths of four elders in the community. One couple in their 80's have buried all but one of their kids now. They're not the only ones who have had to buried multiple adult children. We've also have a man who overdosed on drugs had CPR performed on him for 18 minutes and came back with full cognitive ability. Pray that he knows the Lord because he was close to spending an eternity in hell. We've had a Christian man have a crew member who has fished with him before start to take interest. When your working long days on the boat and your captain and another crew member negate sleep to read Proverbs might just bring questions up about who is this God? Pray for Steve as he wondering about the faith. His captain will give him his own Bible from the Net.
This past week was Net opening week! Lacey and Amber from Arlington, WA came up to help get it ready! The building up sits there the rest of the year so it needed some cleaning and freshening up. Lacey also helps with getting all the food here. She'll add it the registry and get food orders in for Costco! I appreciate her strength in being able to do that. It'd be too many options for me where I'd be like ummmm guess its just chicken nuggets for the summer.
Ruth and Jim were also able to come up. Jim covered for Maggie while was away at annual conference. I guess I should Jimmy Scott as you would have heard on KAKN. Now streaming on KAKN.org shameless plug! Ruth and Amber held down the Net the first week! Which is was pretty slow at the beginning but people started finding their way in. Which was perfect timing as we got 6 people from Fountain Hills, AZ to come up!
Hosting people for 2 months a summer can be rough! Absolutely worth it! Getting people to come up to see the mission for the first time is like seeing kid on Christmas morning. There's always such a excitement and amazement even if Maggies beats them at Five Crowns. For the ones that have been up here before it's having a friend come visit. Both are equally nice anytime of year not just in the summer! Shameless plug!
It's been encouraging to see how God has used people's pain to strengthen and encourage each other. To see volunteers become best friends but also get to pour into the locals with shared experiences. Kindergarteners might be able to make friends with people in five minutes but people up here are in a close second! Just like Jesus. One had a conversation today with someone who didn't even know what prayer was? Yet, could have such a meaningful conversation that there were tears.
Vacation Bible School started too! I watched them fly away today. I always thought whenever I left a village a piece of my heart was being left behind. Turns out when the VBS teams flys out a piece of my heart goes with them too. Now I have reached the point in the blog that I have tears. Would probably help if I didn't write this 2 hours after the sun set. I'm hoping to have it finished before the sun rises which is coming up fast! The team made it to Ekwok today! I'll update you more next week on them! Suspense!!!!!!
Now that I've successfully left you in suspense to come back to continue my blog! Whahahahahaha!!!! It's 2 am. I'm not going to proofread but I'll pray the spirit gives you the gift of interpratation. (Yes, it's spelt wrong. One because it's funny! Two because I should be sleeping!)
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