St. Michael Missions Trip

After living in Alaska for nearly 40 years of my life, I had a "first" experience. I recently had the opportunity to travel to "bush" Alaska, St. Michael, specifically. Our church, Kenai New Life Assembly of God sent a team of 16 people there to do some work on the buildings the Alaska Ministry Network has there. Last winter, the boiler in the house quit working and the house froze up which is really tough on plumbing. The house flooded inside as pipes cracked and spilled water. Then, because it is very cold there, the water froze leaving a layer of ice 3" deep on the floor throughout the house. Needless to say, it wrecked a lot of stuff. So, our team came to help put things back together and make other improvements.

The video isn't the greatest but gives you some idea of the terrain and uniqueness of western Alaska. It is mostly flat, tundra and lots of water. The area around St. Michael is also very volcanic which was very unexpected to me. Typically, most of this part of Alaska is very silty and muddy of a bottomless sort. There is LOTS of mud here, but many, many outcroppings of volcanic rock. The beaches are all black sand and lava type rocks.

There are so many things to share about this trip. The people of St. Michael, the team who went, the Missions Aviation ministry that transported us, the work that was accomplished and the adventures of it all. Unfortunately, my camcorder/digital camera inadvertently got left on and shoved in a coat pocket and burned up my batter life just as we were entering St. Michael. That was on the first day. So, I was not able to get pictures or video of the rest of the trip! However there were many other cameras and I no doubt will get copies of those pictures to share with you in future blogs.

This trip was outstanding in so many ways, not the least of which was paying our own way to do volunteer work that makes a difference in a very remote place. It was good for the soul. Lots of hard work was done, several mammoth projects completed in such a short period of time. In the end, it will help missionaries Brian and Linda Staub be able to live there comfortably and spend less time trying to cope with the contingencies of living in such a remote place and more time in ministry to the people of St. Michael.

Look for new updates on this trip soon as I obtain more pictures from team members of the trip.