"Training Workers in Alaska" (November 2003)

Greetings from the "Last Frontier" of Alaska! We arrived here on Wednesday night to temperatures in the mid-20's and ice on the ground and to our surprise some of the folks here in Fairbanks were wearing shorts and flip flops! Boy have they got a different perspective on weather than those of us in the Southeast. It has snowed a little since our arrival and yet amazingly everything continues to operate - no school closings, all of the supermarkets even still have milk and bread on their shelves!!! Can you believe it? :)

We've spent the last two days traveling to small villages around Fairbanks to equip and encourage the churches there. Thursday night we were in Delta Junction and trained a small group from there and another frontier village called Tok. It was great to see how encouraged the folks were by our training. One adult Sunday School teacher named Debra told me that she'd been teaching for 12 years and never received training and she couldn't believe that God would send me all the way from Atlanta, GA just to help her. She left with a vision for reaching her small village of 1500 people and with tools to do it.

Today we drove down to the last village outside of Denali National Park - the home of Mt. McKinley, which is the tallest peak in North America. It was a beautiful drive - a little scary since there was plenty of snow, ice and fog. But in the small town of Healy a little Baptist church called Morningstar is working hard to reach their 600 neighbors. Healy is a mining town and the church has been providing AWANAS children's ministry for the worker's children after school rather than in the evening. They are currently going throught the 40 days of Purpose and have 9 groups meeting to study that. They average about 70 in worship, which is not bad - over 10% of the population. The pastor has been there for 20 years and is leaving in the Spring to go to southeast Alaska to oversea an association of churches there. We talked with him and helped him to strategize on reproducing leaders in preparation for his departure so the work of the ministry doesn't suffer.

On Saturday I'll be training a group of adult workers in Moose Creek. Please pray for that.
Thank you for making it possible for these little frontier villages to get the resources and encouragement they need to keep growing the Kingdom here in the "Last Frontier".

You are the BEST ministry partners in the world and I love each of you for being a part of this!