Fall 2005 Newsletter

I am attaching our Fall Newsletter that is getting ready to go out. I haven't published anything since September, and I just spent several hours writing the newsletter, so I thought that I would "kill two birds with one stone." Of course, many of you may get our newsletter already,so this may be old news, or our newsletter will be old news by the time you get it. Sorry!

Happy holidays to you from Fort Yukon! The end of the year is fast approaching, and the official beginning of winter is now here. We have had a mild fall this year, with the first good snows not falling until right before Thanksgiving. We were beginning to wonder if it would get too cold to snow before we got snow! No snow here is a bad thing, since many people, including our family, use a snowmobile for transportation during the winter. Shortly after we got snow, the temperatures dropped to 47 below zero for several days. By the end of that same week, we were at 20 above zero. Most places probably don’t ever see a difference of almost 70 degrees in one week!
We have had several exciting events this fall. We started out in September with a children’s after-school Bible school. We were contacted this summer by Christ Chapel in Mount Vernon, MO about them coming to do VBS at our church. They came last summer to do VBS and had such a great time that they wanted to do it again. We couldn’t arrange everything in order to do VBS during summer vacation, so we decided to have the Bible school after school started. Last year the average attendance was about 14 children. This year we had 29 by the second day. It was amazing! The kids loved the songs, skits, videos, games, and dramatized Bible stories. They also loved the workers so much that we had trouble sending the kids home at the end of the day. We had parents tell us that the VBS was the best thing their children had done in a long time. The kids were excited to go tell their parents about what they were doing at Bible school! If you would like to read more about the VBS and see pictures, go to our blog page at http://northernlightministries.blogspot.com.
In October, we had a group of people out from First Assembly of God in Fairbanks. Two of the six people in the group were the church’s missions and music pastors, Kelly and Phillip Anderson. Phillip preached on Sunday morning, and Kelly did the music. Also in the group was the church secretary, June Roland who is Eskimo and has an amazing testimony. She spoke Sunday evening and had many people talk to her afterwards about what they have gone or are going through in their lives. We had a full church on Sunday night. After the service we served a ham dinner that the Fairbanks group helped provide. Everyone had a wonderful time. We enjoyed the fellowship and the “day-off” from music and preaching. That same day, we had 4 or 5 children accept Christ as their Savior in Traci’s Sunday School class.
Bryan’s parents were able to join us in November for Thanksgiving. It is always nice to have our family here with us. They were here to join us for Audrey’s preschool family Thanksgiving meal. Audrey was thrilled to have her grandparents here for the family event. Traci was excited to get through the holiday with propane for our oven. Trader Dan’s, our local gas station and the only place to buy propane, has been out of propane since June. We have been at the end of our tank for a while, and we were concerned about cooking a turkey without an oven. Microwaves and electric skillets are wonderful, but microwaved turkey and pumpkin pie didn’t sound too appealing! We actually made it until December 14thbefore running out of propane. Now we are using all of our small electric appliances to do our cooking. There is only one company that fills tanks and flies them to Fort Yukon, and so far our propane has not been a priority for them. Bryan may have to take the snowmobile and haul sled to Circle to pick up a propane tank. That 150-mile roundtrip would take a day of travel on the frozen Yukon River.
Last Sunday we had our annual Christmas potlatch and gift exchange after church. It is fun to see what people come up with for gifts. Some of the gifts on Sunday were a hand-beaded rabbit fur keychain, “home-grown” honey and strawberry rhubarb jelly, “Moose Juice Soap” (store bought!), hand made potholders and jewelry, and many other neat gifts. We also gave all of the children stockings full of gifts that the Women’s Ministries of Matanuska Valley Assembly of God church made and filled. The kids loved the gifts, and all of the women admired the beautiful stockings. One of the ladies brought a casserole with Dall sheep meat in it. The meat came from a guided hunt that cost someone $10,000, and they left some of the meat here with our church lady.
Traci is teaching preschool full-time this year. She has Audrey in her class again since Audrey missed the cut-off day to enter kindergarten. Rachel still stays home with Bryan, who is working on his master’s degree.
Thank you to all of you who support us financially and who remember to pray for our family. We wouldn’t be able to stay here without all of you.