Visit to village offers up new lessons

Aug. 5, 2007

Homefront/Tiffany Horvath

I left both of my babies with their grandparents for five days and flew to the Inupiaq village of Wainwright in Northern Alaska last week.

I went to meet up with 17 people from my church, who had ventured up earlier in the month to teach vacation Bible school to village children.

My flight to the village, located 50 miles south of Barrow, was entertaining, to say the least.

From Anchorage I flew to Fairbanks aboard a plane from Frontier Flying Services that seats 19. There were eight people on board.

The co-pilot, who introduced himself as Kevin, yelled the pre-flight instructions to us from the cockpit as he gnawed on a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.

Once in Fairbanks, I left the plane and waited an hour, only to reboard the same plane with the same pilots. Apparently, the plane needed gas.

Upon seeing me again, Kevin grinned and offered me a bite of his PBJ.

We then flew to Barrow, where I again left the plane and realized I had not packed a warm coat. This realization hit me once I was on the tarmac and experienced the gentle hurricane gusts of wind and realized there were ice crystals forming on the airplane windows.

Upon finding out that I had a three-hour wait until my flight to Wainwright, the pilots of the plane I had been flying on told my they were headed to Point Lay to drop off some Slope workers. They said if I wanted to go with them, they could drop me off at Wainwright on their way back.

I had visions of being given a parachute and being told to &#8220jump” when in position over the tundra at that point.

So, of course, I agreed with alacrity.

Upon arriving safely at Wainwright, clad in my new winter coat with the logo advertising &#8220Frontier Flying Services” emblazoned on the front, I realized I was about two hours earlier than anticipated.

I was touched to see a &#8220WELCOME TIFFANY” sign affixed to the chain link fence encircling the airfield, apparently awaiting my later arrival.

As I stood in the midst of the tundra, my small suitcase in one hand and a helpless look on my face, a very nice man approached me and asked if he could give me a ride somewhere.

All my mother's warnings about going off with strangers rang out in my head, until I realized that in a village with a population of 500, things were probably a bit different.

At any rate, the nice man assured me he was safe to ride with. I realized just how safe when I saw his car came complete with flashing lights and a siren.

As it turned out, he was the local policeman and he knew almost immediately where to take me. I guess strangers tend to stand out somewhat in remote communities. Especially almost a dozen teenagers and five harried adult chaperones.

When I arrived at the Olgonik Presbyterian Church and got out of the car, I was immediately surrounded by yelling children.

The teenagers I taught Sunday School swarmed me, laughing and talking and hugging all at once.

The 50 or so local children participating in the vacation Bible school saw their teenage teachers surrounding me and decided that, although they didn't know me, they weren't about to be left out of the action.

In the end, I imagine we faintly resembled one large, multi-colored sea anemone with multiple antennas.

The next few days I spent in Wainwright went quickly. I learned some Inupiaq words, almost walked into a hungry polar bear, waded in the Arctic Ocean and watched 10 teenagers become a part of something bigger than themselves.

I watched as they touched others around them through kindness they were unaware they possessed, and they in turn were touched.

I remembered my own mission trip more than 16 years ago when I traveled with a group from the same church in Palmer to work with children in another area of the world. I hoped these two weeks in Wainwright, Alaska, would mean as much to these youth as mine had to me.

This trip, for me, was a time of inner reflection. I missed my children desperately, like twin holes in my heart, and I thought constantly of my husband, who seemed even farther away than ever from my remote location.

Yet, through it all, I also found a peace I'd thought lost and a sense of wellbeing and contentment I hadn't known since before my husband's deployment.

I was part of a group that taught vacation Bible school, but I think I'm the one who got the best lesson.

Every now and then I turn inward and remember little girls following us everywhere we went, slipping their small hands into ours so that they would not get left behind. I remember teenage giggles at jokes only they could understand, and I remember smiling to myself when I saw that they all realized laughter is the same in every language.

I only hope that what I've learned, and the patience I used to learn it, stays with me.

Tiffany Horvath is the mother of two and the stepmother of one. Her husband, Drew, is deployed to Iraq. She writes every Sunday about life at home for the wife of a deployed soldier.