Church service

Sunday, January 19

As I mentioned yesterday, the only church in town is the Russian Orthodox Church. Many of the local native people are members there, even though there is very seldom an actual service due to the lack of a priest.  In addition to serving as a teacher in a public school, the other teacher with us, Matt and his wife Rachel, also work with the SEND missionary organization, an interdenominational, multinational Christian mission.  According to the group’s website, “SEND focuses its ministries on the unreached—people who don’t have access to the gospel or a strong local church.”  To that end, our friends have organized a Christian church service every Sunday morning. Since the teacher on leave has the biggest living room in town (and the Raders are the current residents), we found ourselves serving as hosts to the weekly service that 14 people attended.

Shortly after the service ended & everyone had left, the phone rang and I  found myself tagging along with the Grossmanns who were invited to a birthday party for a native 2 year old. Doug had already jumped on the 4 wheeler as soon as the church service ended and headed over to Al’s big screen tv to watch today’s football game. The rest of us piled into the front seat of the school’s red pick-up and headed to the party. It was no different than a kid’s party in Lincoln - all the family in attendance (with most of the men glued to the tv football game), piles of presents, and a birthday cake with candles. The only difference was the big scoop of cherry jello that we all got on our plate in lieu of ice cream.  What!  No ice cream here? I guess since most food has to be shipped into the village, cartons of ice cream would be pretty darn tricky to mail or carry in on your lap from your next visit to anchorage.

And while we are talking about the red truck…I find it interesting that there are no children’s car seats up here and no one uses seat belts .I’m betting it would never fly for 5 of us (one of us with a baby on her lap) to ride in the front seat of a truck down Woodlawn in Lincoln! And the pickup actually serves as the school bus. The bus driver roars up on his 4 wheeler every weekday morning, takes the truck and picks up 3 or 4 kids, brings them to school, leaves with the truck again and returns with another load, continuing until all 10 are at school. Then he roars away again.  A different world, I’m telling you!