Sunday Aug 15 Marshall Alaska

Today was a rest and worship day.  We had a worship service in the new church that was led by Pastor George Landlord.  There was our team and about 6  people from Marshall. at the service.  We sang a number of songs and then Pastor George gave a message on why Christ came.  It was a very solid biblical message.  He peppered the message with examples of how Christ has changed lives.

After service we many of us took walks around the village.  We discovered several moose heads on the beach which means that fresh meat has come into the village.  We were talking with a man who is a school teacher and local historian here in Marshall.  He was telling us that the fishing has been very bad this year.  In fact there are very few salmon coming into the mouth of the Yukon river.  This is very bad news for Marshall for two reasons.  First many of the local people are subsistence hunters/fishers.  The depend on the salmon for a significant part of their diet, and for food for their dogs.  Second one of the few industries in Marshall was a fish processing plant that specialized in shipping freshly caught salmon to premier restaurants around the country.  Few salmon means no processing facility and fewer jobs.

This teacher told us that in the early 1900's Marshall was a town of about 2000, and was a supply town for gold mines up in the hills nearby.  He told us about a ghost town about 15 miles away where the had the mine located.  He said that most of the miners left for WWII and never came back.  Since then most of the buildings have either collapsed or been hauled off by river to some other site.  He was concerned about the lack of work opportunities and the survival of the town long term.

This evening we had a "sing" at the church.  There were about 20 people from town who turned out for the sing.  We sang songs from a gospel song book the church has.  The song was about 1.5 hours long.  I think they would have sung till dawn, but having a work day tomorrow we had to shut the building up so we could go to bed.

Today the weather was mostly overcast, with a few scattered minutes of sunshine, and hardly any rain.  The wind was blustery this afternoon and we took a advantage of that to do some kite flying.  we brought out a half dozen kites and soon had plenty of kids volunteering to fly them.  The wind was just strong and variable gusty enough to make this a little difficult.  But all the kids enjoyed flying the kites and having adults fetching their kites off the ground to help get them launched again.  Our goal was to build goodwill and have fun with the kids, and in this we were successful.  We will do this again later this week if weather permits.

Thank you for your prayer, we can feel the presence of God on this mission.  Seeds of eternal change are being planted.  Please continue to pray for health and safety for the team.  Several of us still have colds we are fighting.  Pray that there are outreach opportunities this week.  Please continue to pray for good weather.  It has been great to see ground that was not entirely mud for a couple days.