Valley youths make the long haul to help others

MAT-SU — What happens when 29 people drive the haul road in two days to Deadhorse/Prudhoe Bay to arrive in time to catch a chartered plane and there is no plane? There’s no evidence of a flight in the system at the front desk or in the paperwork with the ticket agent.

When that happens, you wait.

And wait we did, as two seats became available on one plane and six seats on another until our whole group was ferried to Nuiqsut. The mission trip was to provide a Vacation Bible School (VBS) for the village children of Nuiqsut, as well as paint the Kuukpik Presbyterian Church.

For 10 days, 23 youths and six adults from First Presbyterian Church of Wasilla and United Protestant Church (Presbyterian) in Palmer lived together on the Dalton Highway, also known as the Haul Road.

We were a caravan of five vehicles, one pulling a trailer. We camped in tents and ate hot meals from a camp stove. We carried all of our food, water, toilet paper, walkie-talkies, mosquito netting, spare tires and gas with us. We needed three of those spare tires one afternoon. As we lost time with flat tires, we drove the second day until 2 a.m.

We were 20 miles from Deadhorse and decided to camp on the tundra. As the clouds rolled in from the coast, fog made it seem dusk-like as we set up camp. In the morning, we woke up to a herd of caribou sleeping all around us. They didn’t seem to mind us as we broke camp and ate breakfast. Farther up the road we saw nine musk oxen, including a baby, grazing for their breakfast.

As soon as the VBS leaders got into Nuiqsut, we began setting up. The commissioned lay pastor, Heather Smith, announced over the CB that vacation Bible school was starting in an hour: “Come meet the group that has come to our church!”

And so the children came, and the youth from our Valley had a wonderful time making friends and sharing stories about Jesus.

A second group of youth and adults painted the church. We brought a paint sprayer and other supplies. The church had already secured paint. There was a concern that unless it got above freezing, we wouldn’t be able to paint. Luckily, all week it was above freezing during the day.

As children sang, played games and became transformed inside, the church on the outside began to be transformed — white with blue trim.

Since the village was celebrating Nalukataq (the whale festival) on Friday, we completed our work by then and joined in with the village for the 35th anniversary celebration and the whale festival.

Two whaling crews sponsored the community feast as our group tasted whale in many forms. In addition, there was duck soup, goose soup and caribou soup, juice and coffee, fruit and candy. A truly amazing feast.

As the blanket toss got going, our group joined in pulling and one of our group even took his turn in getting tossed. The evening brought drumming and singing and dancing.

Earlier in the week we got to join in a village singspiration. Afterward, many of the people throughout town thanked us for coming and helping out. In the evenings we watched other dance groups from nearby villages perform and we got to dance with them. When it was time to go home, we got ready to catch our early morning charter plane.

It didn’t come, or was filled with other groups needing to go home. Our group slowly began ferrying over to Deadhorse/Prudhoe Bay.

Once there, we immediately began our long drive. We wanted to get as far south as we could before camping because of the cold. Once again we would be above the Arctic Circle when we stopped to camp at Marion Creek Campsite. It was 1 a.m., but for 29 people setting up camp, I think we were pretty quiet.

Our second night we made it to Fairbanks, where the University Presbyterian Church gave us floor space for the night — and access to showers!

And so it was, another mission trip for our youth completed. It was an Alaska adventure where all had to do some deep searching of who they really were as young adults.

After 1,700 miles on the road, you get to know one another quite well. It was not always an easy trip. It was a time for them to think about their faith, and use it to share God’s love with others. The youth of our Valley are truly amazing and 23 of them rose to the occasion to be wonderful emissaries for Christ.

Rev. Leisa Carrick is co-pastor of United Protestant Church, Palmer.