Emmonak 2011

On that theme of "it's been a busy summer", we just returned from our missions trip to Emmonak, Alaska. "We" and "our" refer to our church's missions team of course. If you have followed this blog for about a year, you will recall that I did a series of blogs on our missions trip to St. Michael, Alaska last summer. I will hopefully be able to do some of the same for this trip.
I want to thank all the great people of New Life Assembly of God who have supported these ventures. Without so many who don't actually go on the trip, but support in prayer and finances and making meals, it just couldn't happen.
One of the ministry partners we are fortunate enough to be able to work with is MARC - Mission Aviation Repair Center in Soldotna. They in turn are partners with Samaritan's Purse, the organization led by Franklin Graham. Samaritan's Purse loans their aircraft to MARC when they are not using them. Ministry teams such as ours can then charter the aircraft and MARC pilots fly us to our destinations. It's not inexpensive, our round trip to Emmonak and back will cost us in the neighborhood of $10,000 and that is just for fuel. In a way, it is a bargain as to fly commercially to the same destination per person would be right at $1,000 each and we would be limited to the 50 pounds per person. We took 14 people and about 4500 pounds of food and tools, so if you did the math, we are way ahead of the game cost-wise.
The aircraft is a wonderful thing. A Spanish made "Casa" which essentially is a miniature C-130, military, drop tail style aircraft. It sports twin turbofan engines and has a tremendous lifting capacity and short take off and landing features. All of these are essential in bush Alaska. We used this same aircraft last summer in our trip to St. Michael. Other than being a bit noisy and the passenger seats made for midgets, it is a great airplane. We flew 2 hours each way to Emmonak and back. We wouldn't have wanted to do it in a lesser aircraft. To get the entire 14 member team and all our things in one trip to Emmonak was a real blessing. We appreciate MARC and Samaritan's Purse for their partnership in Alaska missions.


We went for 5 days and accomplished a lot of work on the church/parsonage facility. The challenges to getting things done are great. First, you deal with the weather every day. Emmonak is literal built on water. The elevation of the entire village is 4 ft. above sea level. You don't have to go or dig very far to find water. Most of the time, water is standing on what little earth there is. It rains there hard, almost every day. Second, getting all of your tools, materials and "stuff" on site never happens. 20 boxes of materials were shipped 5 weeks before this trip and 6 boxes are still unaccounted for. Of course you find out which 6 boxes didn't arrive when you need something that was in one of them and you can't find it. Third, the cost of things you either forget to bring or that don't show up or that you didn't know you needed until you got there and must purchase locally is substantial. I purchased three small toothpaste sized tubes of silicone caulk, you know the kind you use to caulk your tub. Normally, I think they would cost about $2-3 dollars each in Kenai. In Emmonak, they are $10 each. We purchased 4, 12-paks of Coke for a special youth outing we sponsored. I saw them today advertised "2 for $7.88" at a local store. In Emmonak, I paid $60 for the 4 12-paks. We also needed 4, 12' 2x4's for some bracing. Again, in Kenai, probably about $6-7 dollars each. In Emmonak, $40 each.


So you get the idea. There are a lot of challenges to doing work in bush Alaska. However, we had a great team. Despite the challenges of 14+ people getting by on 2 toilets,1 shower and little internet/cell phone connections, less than ideal working conditions, I heard not one complaint. There was humor, prayer, worship, sharing, support and ministry taking place all the time either to other team members or children or adults that would come to see what we all were doing. I am really proud to have been part of this team. It was amazing.

I hopefully will be able to post more stories and adventures in the days to come. Stay tuned!