Alaska Mission Trip #3

It's Monday, we must be in Unalakleet, AK.

The tour was designed to focus on small villages in western Alaska. Unalakleet was first on the list. These villages have all been here for years...count centuries...2000 years and more. Why here? River and Norton Sound converge for great food supply from the water and lots of food - meat and berries - from the land. And everything you see in these villages got there by plane or boat/barge...everything.

The people were very warm and welcoming. The temparature was very cold (10 degrees) and the wind fast (60 mph plus gusts). We were behind a bit because of Bob's delayed travel from the lower 48. The plan was to always do the school assembly first and then the evening program at the church. We had to reverse that for Unalakleet becuase we just got there in time for supper and then the evening performance at the local church. We do it that way to help get more people out in the evenings to hear the Good News of Jesus. Hopefully the students are intrigued by what they have seen and heard during the day and they bring others with them at night.

The church was still full in large part because of some great work by the local members and youth ministry volunteers. Unalakleet is blessed to have some very solid local Christians (we found those in every place we went) but also some young people focused on youth ministry in the community. It definitely pays off! (looking for a place to volunteer some time and help make a difference in the lives of young people?)

Supper was amazing. We were hosted by Jeff and Donna Erickson. Jeff is the son of a former Covenant Church Pastor to Unalakleet who served there long and died there as well - no outsider who came to endure a short stay and leave. His children are there now too and call it home and contribute strongly. Donna is a native from Barrow, AK (67, count'em, 67 days of darkness in winter). She works for Bering Air and makes GREAT berry pies. She has a personal quota each year to pick and freeze over 200 gallons of berries (blue berries, salmon berries, a local northern cranberry...) We had salmon, great home made bread and pies.

She is also the gal that let Jenica use one of her hand made parkas. (polar bear fur on the inside, then wolverine and then wolf at the edge of the hood.)



Various local folks hosted us for the evening. Jenica, Bob and I stayed with the local Pastor of the Covenant Church, Joel Oyoumick and his wife Olga. Great hosts!

The local High School (part of the Bering Strait School District) hosted the assembly the next morning and the response was strong. Bob always gave his VCR (Value, Courage, Respect) talk in the schools. Our job was to bring some joy through entertainment, model strong family relationships and entice them back for the evening performance when we would share the gospel.

The challenges these people face are many: a radical shift in lifestyle with introduction of "white" ways; alcohol and drugs; and abuse are high on the list. Suicide rates are high. Only a small portion of the native population is Christian. More on all this as I share with you about the other villages we visited.

Alaska Mission Trip #2

Flight. Weather. Delays. Sometimes without the periods!

We had flight delays the whole trip - but only missed one school because we couldn't fly there. Praise the Lord for that blessing.

Started with getting to Alaska. Jenica had heavy snow in Appleton and a snow plow that ignored their street so they literally had to dig their way out to the airport. They were late but the flight was delayed so she made it on board. But Bob was not so fortunate. He was just getting back from a family break and missed his connection so was delayed into Anchorage which put us behind schedule on Monday.

I had three legs of travel and got messed up by the second one out of Salt Lake City...a bird had hit the plane I was on so they switched us to a new one and then that plane had trouble with the pilot's oxygen mask - twice. That meant I missed my Seattle/Anchorage flight and had to go stand-by at midnight or wait till 7 pm the next day! The standby list was long. They called names off that list until they got to me and then stopped...just missed it! But then one of those people was not there so they finally called me! Praise the Lord again!

Monday flying from Anchorage to Unalakleet was perfectly clear (but very windy) so we got some awesome views of Alaska's rugged terrain.


And all week the weather threatened us with delays or no flight at all which meant we'd miss the next school. Our pilots were very careful and conservative. They watched the weather carefully on the web - and came across a rare crazed weather front that had wrapped around itself three times! They had never seen that before. And they said that in the lower 48 states, each State was one weather forecast area. Alaska has 27 separate forecast areas. And one of the nights we had to tie the plane down due to high winds.


Friday was the only day we couldn't get into our next village, White Mountain. Thanks for good pilots and flyable weather!

We left Nome in a heavy snow storm and came into O'hare in an ice storm!

Alaska Mission Trip #1

So here are some blogs on my recent Fitz Family Mission trip with my daughter, Jenica Halula (Miss Fitz), and Bob Lenz of Life Promotions to western Alaska from Dec 2 - 11/07.

First some words about the scale of Alaska. It is BIG! click on the pictures for a larger view. Here is Alaska superimposed on the lower 48. Cut Alaska in half and Texas is still third biggest...


We started in Anchorage and then flew with MARC and Arctic Barnabas to remote villages in western Alaska. In order, we visited:
Unalakleet, Shaktoolik, Koyuk, Elim, White Mountain (missed this one due to bad weather) and Nome. Check out these maps for locations in relation to Anchorage.




The pilots, Bob and Greg, were excellent. And Craig, our host from Arctic Barnabas was great too. They took very good care of us.


Here are some facts and figures for Alaska:
670,000 total population
663,000 sq miles
(TX is 262,000 sq mi/21,000,000 population)
White 70%
Native 16%
Other 14%

Anchorage - 315,000
Fairbanks - 85,000
Juneau - 35,000
Palmer, 5000
Soldotna, 5000
Homer, 6000
Kenia, 7000
Nome, 3000
TOTAL - 460,000 of the 670,000 people live in those 8 cities. The rest are a little spread out...

Anchorage to Unalkleet - 400 miles (think Chicago, IL to Lexington, KY)
Unalakleet to Shaktoolik - 45 miles
Shaktoolik to Koyuk - 40 miles
Koyuk to Elim - 80 miles
Elim to White Mountain - 80 miles
White Mountain to Nome - 137 miles

More to come about the people and the experience.