THE ALASKA DIARIES - PART 1

THE ALASKA DIARIES DAY 1 – July 11, 2000 Dear Diary, After 12 hours of traveling we finally arrived in Eagle River, Alaska. We will be meeting the eight other members of our team tomorrow and will have 3 days of orientation before heading out into what the locals here call the bush. We will be traveling by boat and bush plane to seven villages along the Kuskokwim River. The objective of our mission is to help the, already Orthodox, natives understand the foundations and traditions of our Faith. With approximately 30 priests and 90 villages, most villages only saw a priest 1 or 2 times a year. Each village had what they called a chief, who was in charge of reading Vespers or other daily services in the Church. Though the natives carried out most Church traditions few knew what they meant. I am staying in one of the dorms in the big house, which is just literally a big house. I was told it was where Fr. Lazarus Moore, who is buried here, stayed when he wrote his book on the life of St. Seraphim of Sarov. I am sitting here at the little desk in my room and even though the heavy drapes that cover the enormous window of my room are closed, light is still coming through. I keep thinking that I hear children laughing outside, but it’s 1:00 a.m. I just looked out the window, and astonishingly enough there are children playing kickball in the yard below my window. I asked the woman in charge here (yes she’s still awake too) what was going on and she laughed and stated simply “It is summertime in Alaska.” I totally forgot that in the summer here it only gets dark for a few hours very early in the morning and since it is dark for most of the winter days, the children play outside for as long as possible now that there is light. I put down my pen and listened to the sound of pure joy coming from their laughter. It was invigorating. I changed as quick as I could and ran down the stairs. If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em! DAY 2- July 12, 2000 Dear Diary, The cool morning air hit my cheeks as I closed the door behind me. As I took a breath I immediately noticed something different. I took a deep breath. It was fresh air! I believe that was the first time I ever really breathed fresh air, I know it sounds silly, but I still cannot get that feeling out of my mind. It was pure, clean, cool, fresh air. As I walked to the Church to meet the other team members before Liturgy, I looked at the thousands of trees that stood before me. I noticed the glimmering dome of another Church in the midst of them. I thought I overheard someone say it was a chapel to St. Sergius. I’ll have to see if anyone wants to hike up there for midday prayers. The Church here is dedicated to St. John the Evangelist. It is one of the most beautiful churches I have ever seen. All the people in the town built it and a local did all the iconography as well. It is the center of this little haven, just as it ought to be.  I met everyone else on the team and everyone seems so wonderful. After Liturgy some of the locals had us over to their house for snacks, we also hiked to the chapel. It is absolutely beautiful One of the locals gave us “Bear 411”, he told us if you meet a black bear you’re supposed to curl up and play dead and he’ll leave you alone. If you meet a brown bear stand on your tippy toes and scream and you’ll scare him off. I reminded him that even on my tippy toes I’m barely pushing 5’4 103 lbs (not very intimidating) and he responded very coolly saying, “Well make sure you go with someone who runs slower than you.” He also told us that bears sometimes try to break into the chapel to get warm in the winter. Needless to say I wasn’t sure how serious to take him… until I saw the marks for myself. Sure enough one of the front windows of the chapel was broken and there were claw marks all over the front.   DAY 3- July 13, 2000 Dear Diary, Today we went back to Anchorage, to St. Innocent’s Cathedral. There we met with Bishop Innocent, who is one of most humble bishop’s I have ever met. He has such a great love for the native people and had tears in his eyes as he spoke of them. The Cathedral is simply breathtaking. It is the first time I have been in a Russian style Cathedral and I was simply awed. Also there was Fr. Nikolai, a native priest from the village of Napaskiak, he would soon become our team leader. The two of them informed us of some of the issues of the native people, a major issue being that Mtv was being broadcast there now. We venerated many relics and at the end Bishop Innocent commissioned us as missionaries. It was such a touching service; there wasn’t a dry eye amongst us. We were blessed with holy water and given an icon to keep with us during our journey. Fr. Nikolai gave us a quick lesson in Yupik.Chomai means helloDoy means stopChalee means more We soon boarded a tiny bush plane and headed towards Bethel where we would then climb aboard a tiny boat that would take us to our first stop in Napaskiak. Looking out the window I saw God’s bounty. We flew over the land with such might; it felt as if St. Herman himself was carrying our little plane. I believe he was.  While you could undoubtedly feel the presence of God, we all agreed that we felt the evil one’s presence as well. We knew he did not want us here and we would have to be watchful and in a continuous state of prayer. Once we arrived in the tiny village of Napaskiak we went straightaway to the Church of St. Iakov for Vespers. I cannot describe the spiritual joy in hearing our brothers and sisters in Christ sing the service in their native tongue. I recognized the melody but couldn’t understand a word, yet my soul understood it all. We introduced ourselves to the locals and spoke with a few of them after the service ended. Fr. Nikolai invited us over to his house for snacks and to meet his matushka (who to this day is considered my matushka). Now when he said snacks, we were expecting something along the lines of Doritos and Pepsi, therefore you can imagine our surprise when we were served smoked salmon strips and juice. Not wanting to be rude we helped ourselves to a few and realized how different this world was from our own. Soon people were showing up at Father’s house on four-wheelers, (there were no cars or streets just the boardwalk), to take us to their homes where we would live for the duration of our stay. Some people took 1 or 2 of us and others housed 3 or 4.