St. Michael Missions Trip Pt. 12 MARC

One of the great advantages we enjoyed on this missions trip was the services of MARC. Mission Aviation Repair Center in long form. This ministry operates to serve mission stations all over Alaska regardless of affiliation. If you know anything about Alaska, you know that only a very small percentage of our communities are served by road access. You simply cannot drive to most communities in Alaska. So, the aircraft is a vital link in transportation. This is where MARC comes in. Lets say, a team of people want to go to St. Michael to do some work on the facilities there and they need to take a lot of stuff with them. Since there are no commercial air carriers who fly into St. Michael, there would have to be a more complicated and expensive route to get there. MARC will fly such a team directly to any destination with their stuff. It is a huge advantage.

MARC was a fairly small operation for many years, begun in the earlier era of less regulations and red tape by an incredible man, Rold Amundsen. They used their personal aircraft to fly missionaries back and forth, supplies, groceries and the like with the meager funds that were available. But it worked and the ministry kept going. Eventually they added missionary pilots, mechanics and office personnel who were supported by outside churches and missions agencies. The real boost came fairly recently from the organization Samaritan's Purse, led by Franklin Graham.
Franklin has a great interest in Alaska and comes to our town often. Samaritan's Purse has done a lot of work in the Alaska Villages. Perhaps the most significant was Hooper Bay. A couple of years ago the village suffered a catastrophic fire that burned several houses and buildings in the village. You don't just go to Home Depot and get some lumber and start rebuilding. It is a huge effort. A village that suffers such a blow as that can simply cease to exist because the logistics of rebuilding are so great. Samaritan's Purse spearheaded the effort to get teams of people and materials out to Hooper Bay. It must have cost millions of dollars to do what they did. Much of it was run through MARC. Because of this relationship between MARC and Samaritan's Purse, MARC is able to use the aircraft of Samaritan's Purse for other missions efforts such as ours.
What you are able to load on these aircraft is pretty incredible. Essentially if you can fit it in the door, it goes. Weight of course is of great concern so other things get limited. For instance Dennis, our team leader limited us to a total of 25 pounds of personal gear per person. That 25 pounds included our sleeping bag, pillow and foam pad - if you wanted to bring such things. Yes, I did. I told Dennis that I have lost 30 pounds since the first of the year so I could then take 55 pounds? No dice. I didn't tell him but my stuff actually weighed 26 pounds altogether. I got away with it! Ha! Anyway, we were loaded pretty heavy.

Back to the great advantage MARC affords us is we are able to "piggy back" on trips they are already scheduled to take. In our case, the large aircraft we took was scheduled to deliver goods to White Mountain which is much further North than St. Michael. So, we piggy backed on the return route as the aircraft was empty. We only had to pay for the return leg, not a whole round trip to pick us up. The same with the smaller aircraft on the way out. It was already scheduled to fly into Hooper Bay which is not far from St. Michael (relatively speaking). So we only had to pay the
leg from Hooper Bay to St. Michael, only one hour instead of the whole round trip. Also, the flights are direct instead of having to change out planes to go from one place to another. It's really the only way to fly. My pilot, Brian was a great guy, we had great fellowship on the way stopping in Napakiak (Na pok iak), Bethel, Hooper Bay and St. Michael. What a great adventure!

St. Michael Missions Trip Pt. 11 Problem Solver

I have to introduce you to a man who is an incredible leader. Dennis Merkes. That's him in the middle of this picture. Dennis is an extraordinary problem solver. Really, he is amazing.
This trip happened at all because of the gift he has to tackle a problem and find a solution. 36 hours before departure for St. Michael we received a phone call from the missionary, Brian Staub who was in St. Michael a day ahead of us, telling us that the container with all the materials in it with which we were supposed to work with was not going to arrive in St. Michael as it was scheduled in time for us.

Game over. That was my thought. There just isn't enough time to find a work around solution, or so was my thinking. Not Dennis. I dropped the bomb on Dennis about an hour after the phone call which was about 6 pm. Without going into a very detailed and lengthy description of someone who is determined to make a plan work, suffice it to say, Dennis had us back on track to go to St. Michael with materials. A few phone calls and a lot of manic effort to purchase and gather replacement materials literally hours before our scheduled take off brought us all back online. The other 13 team members were none the wiser as everything to them went just as we planned.

This next picture looks like everything is going just fine. It is actually, but you don't know why it is. When you land in St. Michael, the airport or we should just say the landing strip is at least three miles out of the village. No shelters, no place to make a call, nothing. You are dropped off, the plane flies away and you are there all by yourself. Where is the missionary? He was supposed to be here to pick us up. Nothing. So, Dennis sees this pickup truck coming up the road. He meets the driver. No, he is not there to pick up a group of people. So, Dennis asks, "could we load our stuff in your truck and you take us into town?" With a little monetary persuasion a deal is made and 14 people, all the stuff we brought with us pile onto and into this Nissan pickup truck.
Now I am not mixing up my numbers, we took 16 people total to St. Michael, I had not yet arrived (another blog post to come) and Dennis Doss (we had two Dennis', two Larry's on this trip) hitched a ride with the same Yupik Eskimo man with the 4-wheeler/trailer that was to help us out in a couple days (I think he is actually an angel God sent to help us out on this trip). The way it all worked out you would have thought it was planned.

Now the reason the missionary did not meet our group at the airport was because the truck he had would not start. So on arrival in town, Dennis goes to work fixing this truck because it is very clear we are going to need this truck while we are there. As they determined the battery wass dead, a little Yupik lady walks by on the boardwalk. "Do you know someone with a battery charger?" Dennis asks. She nods. In a few minutes she returns with a battery charger.

This next photo is a great example of Dennis' gift. See that large, heavy, hard to move piece of iron we are hauling away? It has set behind the house in St. Michael for who knows how long. How did it get there? Why is it there? Who moved it? Questions that will never be answered. In my mind it was there when God created the heavens and the earth. It was destined to be there until the end of time. Then Dennis walks around the back of the house where I was working and questions why this thing is there. He says, "hey, I think we should move this thing out of here." I think but do not say, "Right! Not on my back!" So Dennis pushes on this thing as it is standing upright and tips it over. "See?, he says. Now we can roll it." So I am automatically drafted into this new endeavor. As God saw this going on, He sent a wonderful little Yupik man by on his 4-wheeler pulling a little trailer. Dennis says, "could you haul this thing to up dump for us?" The man nodded and we roll this thing onto this trailer that looks like it could tow about three little kids. I thought we were going to bust the axles out from under this little trailer. Since God thinks of everything, He also sent angels to keep us from breaking this man's little trailer. It was amazing. Mission accomplished and Dennis went off to solve another problem somewhere. I was left standing there shaking my head how this whole thing worked out in about a minute and a half. What a lesson learned.

The whole trip was pretty much that way. I think Dennis was pretty exhausted by the end of the four days, but after getting home and resting for a day, he was ready to go again. I have learned that the best thing I can do around Dennis is to stay out of his way and let him work out whatever he is after, because he will find a way to get what he feels is important. God bless him.

St. Michael Missions Trip Pt. 10 Boardwalk

You might think I am talking about a space in the game of Monopoly. Not. Nothing close. Navigating around St. Michael is done mostly on foot. If you don't have a 4-wheeler or a truck, you get to walk. Since everything is easily within walking distance it's not too inconvenient. Who built these boardwalks is an unknown. When they were built is also unknown. I saw a picture in the local government building where we were given free showers by the generosity of the local people in charge there, of young native men putting up "new" board walks by salvaging material from "old" board walks back in the 1930's as part of the Civilian Conservation Corps (in case President Obama is reading this, it is pronounced "core" not "corpse" as in Marine Corps). So board walks have a lengthy history in St. Michael. It is a necessity not just a niceity. The board walks keep you from disappearing into the mud of the landscape. Yes, the landscape looks like a green carpet but do not be fooled, that is only a creative covering for bottomless mud. It's not like quicksand but more like "slowsand". Everything does sink that sits on the ground very long. If a person were to walk in the same place day after day, say like on the way to up dump, it would quickly become a muddy trench where water collected and never dried up. The ground here is at the water table pretty much, even on the sides of the hills around the village. Even on top of the hills it is in the water table. There will never be a forest fire in St. Michael as first, there are no trees anywhere, but more to the point, there is way too much water for anything to burn.

It must have been some time since the board walks were built as some of them, in particular, the ones in from of the church are in pretty rough shape. If you were not watching your step, you could easily twist an ankle or break a leg or at least take a nasty fall. It gave rise to an idea that on a return trip to St. Michael we would make repair of the board walks on the block that the church is on a priority.
As you can see, the boardwalks are not just for walking, but really a hard somewhat level surface where people can meet and the children play. It would be nice for the church to have boardwalks that people could do these things without the dangers of falling through the holes.


I made an interesting discovery one day when wandering through the weeds. The board walks have evolved over time. I found in the tall grass older, smaller board walks of two side by side planks that were apparently no longer used and overgrown. These meandered all over, most likely places previous residents often went. Now, they are slowly becoming part of the earth again. These older board walks seemed a little more pragmatic, not really laid out in an organized fashion but purpose built to go to specific places as directly as possible. For the most part these board walks stayed closer to the little bluff above the beach and offered a scenic walking tour of the beautiful vistas that surround St. Michael.

St. Michael Missions Trip Pt. 9 - Things to Do

Fortunately it was not just work in St. Michael. We did have the evenings to look around the village and see whatever there was to see there. I really enjoyed walking around the village and seeing how the people there live their lives. Especially on the fist two days, there was such beautiful sun and relatively warm temps, it made walking around very pleasant.

For newbies like us, there was a lot to see as we were first timers and it was all an adventure. For those who live there, well, not a lot to do except what you make for yourself to do. It becomes very real to a person when you are standing in St. Michael to realize that if you are not connected to the land in a very strong way, fishing, gathering, hunting, etc. it would be a very bleak existence indeed. I suspect this has much to do with the high suicide rate in these villages. When you get cable TV and the perception is that the life "out there" is like what they see on cable programming, it becomes very dissatisfying to go outside to hunt and fish. So much of ministry in a village like St. Michael is giving the people hope and encouragement.

There are basically three things to do in St. Michael. The first is walk the beach. Now this is very interesting to do. There is the huge remnants of a previous civilization left on the beaches of St. Michael. 100 years ago, St. Michael was the last stop the stern wheeler boats made before they landed on the gold rush beaches of Nome, just across Norton Sound. St. Michael offered a protected bay from the numerous fierce storms that develop on the Bering Sea. At one time, there were 10,00 people in St. Michael. It is difficult to imagine. Sometime in the 1920's the whole gold rush came to an abrupt end and the sternwheeled boats were left on the beaches. I saw historic pictures in the local government offices showing these huge boats hauled out on the beaches. Almost all of the wood is very long gone as the elements make quick work of that. However the immense iron members of these boats remain.

The second thing to do is to visit "Up Dump". What? Simply it is the village dump and it is located over the hill from the main village. So, you have to go "up" to the dump. Everyone calls it "up dump". To be honest, it is a jolt to the system to come over the rise to up dump. One gets to taking for granted that everything is beautiful and pristine and wild. Seeing up dump reminds one that the realities of modern existence and the things we throw away are an issue, and especially so in a place like St. Michael. Living in a city our trash gets hauled away from our sight and we assume it doesn't exist anymore.

Apart from the shocking reality of up dump, it is a little entertaining and interesting and sometimes a place of resource as most dumps are. A perfectly good purse is laying on the ground, and you wonder, "why did they throw this away?" With all the dead 4-wheelers laying around the houses (dozens of them) in town, why don't they haul those to up dump instead of cluttering up their yards?" It goes on an on like it would if you visited your local dump. Going personally to the dump is just a part of life in Alaska for most people. Going to up dump reminded me of the many times I went with dad to toss out some perfectly good trash. He would sometimes remind me that if I didn't do well in school, I could always get a job at the dump because they paid you and it was all you can eat as a side benefit. I didn't know if he was joking for a long time. I think it was a subtle hint to do well in school or a life of up dump was something I could look forward to.

I mentioned the dump as a place of resource. This was true of our trip. The picture of the missionary, Brian Staub shows him extracting some lengths of PVC pipe that came in handy for burying an electrical line that they ran to the quonset hut. There was lots of it in the dump for some reason. It's kind of like a free hardware store.



The last "something to do" option in St. Michael is the AC. I think I might have mentioned that AC stands for "Alaska Commercial Store". It was formerly "Northern Commercial" which had served the needs of Alaskans for many decades all over the state, but now under a new owner, it mainly provides staples for bush residents. Interesting enough, in St. Michael, the AC is the going concern. In Stebbins, it is the Native Store that is the main provider of goods. The native store in St. Michael went out of business and the AC in Stebbins is pretty small. Regardless each carries lots of things we crave enough to consider paying the price they charge. Doritos are $9 a bag, Sunny Delight breakfast drink is $16 a gallon. Milk is $10 a gallon. Soda is 2.50 a can. A Wii you can buy at the local department store for $200 is $400 in St. Michael. You get the idea.

St. Michael Missions Trip Pt. 8 Stebbins

The second day we were in St. Michael we had a small break in the afternoon to go 11 miles away to Stebbins, another Yupik village on the same peninsula as St. Michael. Stebbins is the larger of the two villages. St. Michael is about 400 in population, Stebbins 800 or so. Stebbins is a neat little village, a couple things stand out about it. First, you notice someone must have planned for all the houses and building to be laid out in a neat grid. The streets are for the most part pretty straight and the houses all spaced evenly apart from one another. St. Michael looks less planned in comparison. I still never got the logic of the street system in St. Michael. Most likely because

their logic developed their streets from the foot paths that followed the path of least resistance or went wherever due to need to go there. Interesting enough, Stebbins being bigger and having a few more amenities like the Native Store (much bigger than the AC) and a real Post Office, two amenities are not present here. A sewage system and a water system. Don't know how they missed out on those two things when St. Michael enjoys both.

So, the honey bucket is still a reality in this village. All the honey buckets are brought from the houses to little collection containers around town for someone to haul the contents away. In fact we saw the man who takes the collection containers to be emptied by towing them behind his 4-wheeler. We noted that he drove very slowly. We also noticed he was very lonely, probably because he didn't have much of a sense of humor.

While we were in Stebbins we checked out the Assembly of God church there. This is where missionary legends lived and ministered. Harriet Brown spent many winters here. John Covlasky also ministered in Stebbins and helped B.P. Wilson and Ken Andrus construct the original building in 1961. John Covlasky would travel by boat when weather permitted from St. Michael to Stebbins to minister in the days before there was a road and snowmobiles were very reliable.

While we were there a young Yupik lady showed up and asked if we wanted to get inside the building as we were showing it lots of interest. She had a key! So, we went in to inspect it. Small. The living quarters were pretty small. There was a little kitchen with a "vintage' electric range and a refrigerator. Winters might be pretty long in such a small place. By the way, click on the picture of our group standing in front of the church and see the address. I don't know if that is the real address or not!

A ways off from arriving in Stebbins we were met with a rather distinct pungent odor. We surmised this was a honey bucket village, but something told me this was a smell of a different kind. It was different. Herring. LOTS of herring drying everywhere. This last picture is me standing (up wind) in front of racks and racks and racks of drying herring. Two weeks it takes to dry herring due to their tremendous oil content, at that in a pretty constant stiff breeze right off the Bering Sea. If I thought St. Michael had a lot of king salmon on racks, Stebbins had those beat ten to one on herring. Didn't see much salmon drying in Stebbins.

The herring are just split open whole and left whole. They are then woven very skillfully into braids of dry beach grass. It is fascinating to see. I couldn't do it that way to save my life. They acted like it was no big deal. So there are hundreds of little herring sticking out from these braids of grass by their heads. The residents really like their herring.

On this trip half the team went to Stebbins. The next day the other half of the team went the 11 miles into Stebbins. I wish I had gone the second day as sometime early that day the villagers of Stebbins spotted a pod of beluga whales near shore in the Bearing Sea and were able to harpoon one and bring it ashore. Our team were able to watch them butcher it up. I haven't seen pictures of this yet, but will attempt to include them if I do.

St. Michael Missions Trip Pt. 7 Yupik Culture

One of the really great things about being in St. Michael this trip was being able to see the residents putting up fish for the winter. The primary fish they were processing was king salmon. One of the testimonies given at the Sunday service was thanksgiving for the strong fish harvest. Apparently it stronger than in recent years and their drying racks were filling up.

Speaking of drying racks, they were lots of places. I passed by one home and the entire porch was a lined with drying fish, little huts made of driftwood and what might be considered a "clothesline" in our neighborhood sufficed for drying fish. The blue tarp is also employed quite often for the occasional rain shower. What would we do without our blue tarps?

Apparently the men do the catching and bring it home, the women do all the processing. Did I mention I like some aspects of Yupik culture? Actually the women really seem to love it. I really mean that, they seem to very much enjoy working with the fish. They visit and work away. Each one seems to do a certain part of the work. The oolu knife is very much a work tool there. They have several of them, different sizes and with different shaped blades. No tourist item here, they are very sharp and not for show.

In a matter of maybe two or three minutes the fish is gutted, headed and filleted. It is then placed in a brine for a time and "washed", then hung over a pole in the drying hut or porch or clothesline. The winds blow and keep the bugs off and gently dry the moisture out of the meat. The heads of the fish are collected for "dog food". The rest is taken out to the bay to feed the King Crabs which they also catch for free. It is fascinating to watch them go about their work. They were quite patient with us asking questions and looking over their shoulders.

Oh, just a little moral to the story, don't get caught stealing salmon out of the net. That little harbor seal learned that lesson the hard way. Actually, they were very happy to get the seal. They render the seal fat for oil, into which they dip most all their food, especially the dry salmon. In the harsh environment the Yupik people live in this provides long lasting energy and body heat to stay warm in spite of the cold and wet. You don't stay warm long eating twinkies in the cold of St. Michael. One friend who tried some described it "like turning on a heater inside your belly". I'll take his word for it until I need to try it for myself. Not that I am afraid mind you. I'm just not cold at the moment.

From the looks of things the ones out there working will eat well this winter. Less business for the AC perhaps but lots of prime king salmon to enjoy.

A Note To Readers

I am no computer geek. I recently discovered that if you "click" on any picture, you will get a full size picture instead of these tiny ones. The details emerge that are lost on the small pictures. Give it a try! When you are done looking at the picture, just hit your "back" button on your browser and you will be returned to the blog.

St. Michael Missions Trip Pt. 6 Heavy Lifting

One of the more significant tasks we undertook on this trip to St. Michael was fixing and leveling the floors in the house and the quonset hut. We were totally unprepared for this but it became very obvious this is something that needed to happen.

Right off, walking into the house it was very obvious that the floor was not level. A check from the front of the house to the back proved that the back of the house was 9" lower than the front end. Putting any work into fixing cracks in the walls or trim would be an exercise in frustration if the house itself wasn't level.

This is where our leader, Dennis really shines. One of his greatest strengths is that he is an amazing problem solver. If it had been left up to me, my assessment of the situation would have been, "hmmm....that's too bad." Not Dennis. No matter we did not have 10 ton jacks with us on this trip. No matter we didn't even have a real level - ever hear the expression, "that level is half a bubble off of plumb"? That was our level. No matter this project wasn't even on the radar screen when we took off to St. Michael. Dennis plunged right in and set about finding a way to make it happen.

Over and over again it was so obvious that the Lord provided things we required to do work that we would just be astounded. So it was with the jacks. A "chance" meeting with one of the residents of St. Michael resulted in him supplying two heavy lifting jacks for us to use. Once our electrician, Jim was working a rewiring project and couldn't go any further because he needed two romex clamps. They couldn't be found on site, at the AC or in the next village, Stebbins. So, Jim went to look again, through the bits and pieces of salvage material we had saved to see if he could make something work. Just as he exited the church building and was crossing the "street" (not really a street) he intersected with one of the village residents and greeted him. He mentioned to him what he was looking for. The man said, "I think I have two of those at home." He was gone for about 10 minutes and came back with three. That sort of thing happened so often we realized how involved the Lord was in this trip.

So, Dennis assigned Ray and Mark to crawl under that dank, dark space under the house to begin the process of jacking up the house. The house has been there for about 30 years. There are no true foundations under houses in St. Michael. Because the ground is so saturated in water, there is no practical way to pour a conventional foundation, neither is there any way you could get enough affordable concrete to St. Michael to make it possible. So, all the house are built on pilings. Over time these pilings sink into the soft soils during the short summers. As I mentioned the back of the house was sinking faster than the front of the house, most likely because it receives far more of the sun. So, Ray and Mark worked most of one day jacking and stacking more piling material under the floor support beams until the house was pretty much level. Inside the house this made an amazing difference. Walls that were separating came back together, cracks disappeared and you could walk across the room without feeling as if one of your legs was shorter than the other.

The next similar but different project was the quonset hut floor. This being the original building from the early '60's we assumed wrongly that the floor was rotted out. Not the case. What a testament to US Army engineering. It was quite solid and sound despite being inches above the watery ground for decades. What had happened, was on a previous construction project, the building materials were stacked in the quonset hut to be stored until they could be used. It obviously exceeded the weight limit of the floor and broke the main beam, collapsing the floor. So, once again, Dennis decided this had to be fixed.

They opened up the floor, quickly seeing the problem and went to work. They put treated blocking under the broken beam to use as a base to first jack up the floor. Once they started jacking it was obvious that the floor was not going up as expected, but the jack and the blocking were being pushed down into the watery ground. Another layer of treated blocking (all this blocking was found laying outside the church building, obviously there for some time) was required before the upward force was greater than the downward force. Once the floor was leveled it was supported and repaired and the floor sealed back up. It now will become a youth and children's ministry center instead of an unusable building.

St. Michael Missions Trip Pt. 5 Church!

Spiritual encouragement was a great part of each day. We began the day with devotions and ended the day with devotions. Several members of the team shared some thought or scripture as assigned, sometimes minutes before it was to be delivered (Dennis, not me!). Usually before the devotional thought or scripture we would sing. You can see how hard pressed we were for musicians as I was the main one. I haven't played guitar for years. You can tell by the fact the ONLY songs I can play are "vintage", you know, "This Is The Day", "Come Bless The Lord", "Just A Closer Walk", that sort of thing. What a great team, they all said how much they appreciated the music. It was enhanced greatly with an acoustic bass played by Bill and another guitar player Tommy. The occasional percussion instrument joined in as well. The percussion thing got a little out of hand for me as I was leading the Sunday service. There happens to be a cardboard box FULL of noise making instruments on the platform of the Assembly of God church in St. Michael. These were liberally handed out to any child willing to "play" them by well meaning team members. The resulting cacophony was too much for this rhythmically challenged worship leader. I not only could not hear myself play my own guitar or the other players I think I could have replaced the words to "Give Thanks" with the Pledge of Allegiance and no one would have known.

We had a great service on Sunday. Each day we were in St. Mike we would invite the residents we met to our "potluck" we would sponsor on Sunday. We had no idea how many would come which is a concern as that being our last day we only had so much food left and running to the AC was not only pricey but maybe inadequate for what we might need. However, it was all very manageable in the end. The ladies prepared all the remaining food and put on a nice spread. The reason I put "potluck" in quotes is that we were the only ones who brought food. We ended up feeding about 24 adults and 25 children. We had a great time. Lots of visiting and sharing with the residents and enough food to go around.

Well meaning team members started handing out balloons sometime after the kids were pretty much done eating. This was a great hit and made these people very popular with the kids. They loved squealing the balloons and batting them around the room. I was brought by one of the children a balloon that had obviously been inflated and deflated, inflated and deflated a number of times. It looked "moist". I was asked if I would blow it up and tie it for them. I hesitated. I thought I might change my sermon text to Mark 16:18. I tried best I could to blow up this balloon without putting my lips on it. I am still alive. Fun pandemonium. Great for a potluck, not so good for church. When church started the kids hardly noticed. I was trying my best between the aforementioned cacophony and the balloons.

Anita, bless her heart, had a sudden thought that she and another volunteer, Larry would take the kids to the next door quonset hut with the newly fixed floor (more on that later) for children's church. This enabled us to have a more subtle time of church for the adults and we had a very nice service in which there were testimonies, thanks giving for the abundant fish run and my message which everyone participated in from Hebrews 13:8. Two people responded for salvation!

The pictures of Anita and the kids in the quonset hut are awesome. Anita said she had to think of every Sunday School song she ever knew with motions and all the Bible stories she could think of and some she made up to hold their attention. The picture of the little guy on the steps is cute. He is not praying, he is peeking through the hole in the bottom of the door. Too shy to go in, he still wanted to see what was going on inside. He was coaxed, he was encouraged to join in with the fun (for the kids). Nothing could persuade him to enter the quonset hut. Until the one magic word was spoken. Candy.

St. Michael Missions Trip Pt. 5 Kids!

The children of St. Michael are precious. For not having a lot of the conventional distractions that city kids take for granted, they seem to be pretty content. Of course in a place like St. Mike, they have run of the entire place and they keep their own hours. Typically They stay up late with the summer sun and sleep in until about noon. This was evidenced by the fact that when we began our work which was about 8 in the morning, nary a child was to be seen until lunch. From then on, they were ever present.

They all seemed to have bikes, all in various states of hammered condition. One little boy had a bike with a pedal that was hardly there. I tried my best to think of how to improve it to no avail. However, his chain kept falling off as well. I scrounged a couple of wrenches and tightened it up some. The lack of lubrication made it difficult and I could not find a can of WD-40. I resorted to using a piece of drift wood that was shaped somewhat like a hammer to pound the axle back far enough to give sufficient tension to the chain. He rode off quite happy that his chain would stay in place a little better.

Some of the more experienced and thoughtful people on our team had the forethought to bring treats for the kids. This was a stroke of genius. The first time the children appeared they were offered candy which is like gold. It probably was not good for their dental hygiene but since that was not a likely concept it most likely didn't do any additional harm. It did buy us favor. Through the next couple of days bouncy balls appeared which could only be bounced on the only available hard even surface which was the church floor. Scratch bouncy balls for the next trip. Jump ropes were especially popular with the girls. Some had never jumped rope before. Jumping rope was possible on the boardwalks which are all over town (more about that later). The little balsa wood gliders were especially popular with the boys. Anyway, it was very thoughtful for the team members to think of the kids beforehand and bring them some unexpected treats.

One of my favorite quotes of the trip came from one of the three boys that were helping me take a load of trash to the dump (more on that later). To make conversation I was asking them questions about life in St. Michael. Their favorite thing to do in St. Mike was "go to the AC". Why? I asked. "Candy." I asked them if they had ever been to Stebbins, the next village 11 miles away by road. Two had, one had not. I asked if they had ever been to Anchorage. One little boy replied, "I sometimes always never go there." I am still figuring that one out.

St. Michael Missions Trip Pt. 4 Food!

You may think this not fully serious, but food is an enormous consideration on a trip like this. Now, you can buy food in St. Michael. However at the "AC" (Alaska Commercial Store) you might want to be careful how much you pile into your grocery cart. For instance, one bag of your favorite flavor of Doritos corn chips (as long as your favorite is what is on the shelf) will set you back $9. Yep. That's one bag, not a case. That makes buying a gallon of gas in St. Michael seem a bargain at $8 a gallon. Since they all drive 4-wheelers and buy it a gallon at a time, it doesn't seem so bad. But I digress...

The generous people of our church provided the bulk of our meals. They were asked to pre-cook a meal, Lasagna, stew, stroganof or some other delicious meal to feed 25. Now we took 16 people to St. Michael. We did eat like kings, it was all very good, especially after working so hard each day. However, like magic, several of the village children would suddenly appear at meal times, it was amazing. There was no dinner bell, they just seemed to know. They were pretty hungry kids and you got the feeling they didn't eat as well as this most of the time. They really loved the apples and oranges too. Probably not something they get frequently. So, we usually had 6-8 kids show up to eat and often 3-4 adults that would also appear and be invited to join in. Sometimes they came in and ate and left without a single word, sometimes they would join in the conversation. It was all interesting to be part of the culture there.

Now the kids were really well behaved. They would wait patiently to be served - that is an important distinction to make as we served the meals to them. Some were so very grimy that for the sake of the possibility of ingesting something noxious we insisted on delivering the food to them. But they were polite and patient to get their food. They certainly would get squirrelly at times but a single instruction and they would comply, no back talk, no arguing no pouting. Great kids. Very curious and wanting to "help" you with whatever project you were working on.

I also wanted to draw your attention to the kitchen facility or the lack of such. We hauled the stove from the house over to the church so we could cook and serve food in a large enough area, which necessitated special wiring to make it work. The size of this little stove is important too. I think we could have put it in a phone booth (what is that?) with room left over to cook too. It was small which necessitated that all the meals be prepared in a careful sequence of heating and combining. The ladies did an amazing job with that. Notice their smiles, that wasn't just for the camera, they were always that way. Of course they were cooking for a captive audience. They could have served sawdust with cheese sauce and it would have tasted awesome. As it was we didn't have to eat sawdust because the food was soooooo good and there was enough for everyone. Hard to believe you could gain weight working in St. Michael.

St. Michael Missions Trip Pt. 3 Paint!

The team was in St. Michael for only 4 days total, the fourth being Sunday and we were planning for an open invitation potluck and church service and leaving that afternoon, so there was no real time for work on Sunday. So what had to be done had to be done in three days. So, with not a moment to lose, work started right away on the painting of the church. If you look close, you can see how dry the wood is. Who knows when if ever the church ever has received new paint in it's 30+ year life.

The team sprang right into action and before very many minutes had passed paint was going on the walls. Some of the building, like the front absorbed the paint like a sponge. Because we had a minimum of paint with us and Home Depot was about 400 miles back in Kenai, extra coats of paint were hard to come by. The front in particular got about three coats and from the rate that paint was being absorbed it could easily have used three more. As it was, we literally ended up with about a cup of paint left over, which was used to paint the toe-kick in the parsonage when the new floor was installed. Nothing went to waste.

One thing that is difficult to appreciate is that all the exterior trim (except the facia) had to be replaced. Since there is no Lowes (where there is more of everything) in St. Michael, and we had no trim material with us, it had to be created from what was at hand. Each piece of trim had to be ripped with a skill saw from lumber. No luxury of a table saw, actually there was no luxury of a table on which to set up. A couple of saw horses (where those came from I have no idea) and a scrap or two of lumber and plywood became the sturdy (or not) bench from which everything had to be hand produced. All the corner trim, all the window trim and even the crosses had dry rotted to crumbling powder when you pressed on them. It all had to be replaced. This took immense patience and skill to produce each individual piece from scratch. Well, if we had to mill our own logs for lumber then cut them into trim it could have been harder so we had the luxury of having lumber to cut our trim from. The lone skill saw which was the lightest duty unit I have ever seen and left-handed to boot eventually broke and had to be repaired with duct tape (what else!?) but now did not all any angle adjustment to be made. That too had to be done by eye and patience and skill. Obviously I was not in charge of making trim. All of this was often interrupted by those other hard workers who were working on other jobs and needing the use of the single skill saw that was available. That one saw blade cut lumber, plexiglass, and aluminum which soon did the obvious in making the blade dull as a cob.

What an adventure! We'd all do again in a heartbeat. Seeing that the Lord provided everything we did need or made available material that could be improvised with was amazing. I'll share more as I add more pictures.