The Ernest Chronicler

The Covenant Church is doing pretty well in Alaska.  During Youth Nexus and CHIC I got the opportunity to meet four Alaskans.  When Sarah Palin became known, all of us mainlander thought she is a pretty outdoorsy lady:  she hunts, fishes, and snowmobiles.  After meeting the kids and youth leader at YN (including one from Wasilla) I've come to the conclusion that Alaskans are just hard core.  A girl my age from Youth Nexus, Kira, told us of how she killed a bear.  The number of species that I've killed is limited to ants with my most powerful weapon being the magnifying glass.  Well, once I used a Super Soaker loaded with soapy water to rid a backyard tree of inch worms.  And I guess I have de-wasped the house using the miracle spray that shoots 20 feet.  But, a bear?

Another different thing about their lives is the communities they live.  Two of the girls I met are from the same town of six hundred people.  They all know each other and many of them are related.  In fact, when I saw Kira with her church at CHIC I asked her about that and she pointed out maybe a third of her church that are her distant cousins.  My cousins live in New York and Maryland.  I don't know who most of my distant cousins are.

They have native olympics, in which one of the sports is balancing all of your body on one hand while holding it horizontally.  It looked painful to me.  In Michigan, we hope for seventy degree weather, Don the youth leader likes fifty five.  The coldest it gets here is probably ten degrees, they've experienced negative forty!

The thing I envy most about my Alaskan friends is the landscape they enjoy.  Katiya showed me a picture from her bedroom window.  It was white and watery and went on forever.

I hope to go to Alaska one day and see all of this for myself.  There is a Bible College up there.  That might be worth looking into.

Bonus material:
A status update from the Alaskan youth leader from Youth Nexus a half hour ago:

Don if any of you UNK kids wanna make leather sheaths for your knives there will be an opportunity to do that sometime next week...let me know