Bringing HOPE worldwide To The Last Frontier

Born and raised in Northern British Columbia. I was excited and inspired to take the gospel to the North. We dreamed of planting churches and preaching the gospel to all northern communities. We were excited, hopeful and faithful. Over the years, that passion faded and my dreams became smaller and less risky.

Two years ago we were offered the job to lead the Church in Anchorage, Alaska. After much thought and prayer we moved north to Alaska. Life and the ministry kept us busy. Being an evangelist is demanding, especially if you, and maybe your wife, are the only ones on staff. Your duties are overwhelming and you wake up thinking…

Today I need to:

1. Walk with God
2. Preach, teach and shepherd people.
3. Seek advice
4. Study the bible with people

And as well, I need to work on building the:

1. Campus ministry
2. Teen ministry
3. Singles ministry
4. Family ministry

And I should organize or oversee:

1. A marriage class
2. A parenting class
3. Some benevolent projects

Oh yeah, and help the church to be more:

1. Giving
2. Outward
3. Selfless
4. Spiritual
5. Like family

Oops: that’s everyone else – don’t forget my:

1. Wife
2. Children
3. Family
4. Friends

Overwhelming isn’t it! That’s why we all need hope!

Last year we decided that the Anchorage church needed to get more involved in meeting needs. Though people were serving in the community, we felt we could do more. Brian Felushko had preached a message a few years back that just kept sticking with me: “Jesus went around doing good.” It seemed like we weren’t doing enough good. But there were so many other things to get done - so many important things!

Eager to do more, we decided either to start our own HOPE worldwide, or join up with the existing one. We had questions and concerns about just joining up with HOPE worldwide. Our members were skeptical about the “central” operations and we were concerned about the “way” things were run and about how the money was spent. We thought the best way to tackle this was to ask a whole bunch of questions and do a whole lot of research. In fact, we did a few months worth! It was great. We got our questions answered, joined up and started the Alaska Chapter of HOPE worldwide. Not only that, but we hired Gina Poirier to help get it going.

Since then it has been crazy. You have to understand that though Alaska is doing pretty well during this time, there are parts of the state that are very much like a third world country. But, we discovered that Alaskans really want to help.

In the last several months, we have created an exciting partnership with the Boys & Girls Club, which has been mutually beneficial. We had a fantastic day of serving on MLK day at one of their clubhouses. We had over 100 volunteers come out and only sixty of them were from our Church.

This spring, we conducted a Saturday Academy at one of their clubhouses. Currently, we are doing renovation projects for two of their clubhouses in rural Alaska. One is in Metlakatla, where 14 volunteers flew in and took a ferry to work for a week on the clubhouse. Another is in Tok, where last weekend 16 volunteers served. We will be returning to Tok soon to finish the renovation. We have logged more than 1,000 man hours on these projects so far! In addition, we are partnering with the Alaska Native Cultural Charter School. We will be offering before and after school programs for them. Many exciting plans are in the works.

Of course, these take money and support. I wondered “Where on earth are we going to get money? We need our money for staff and future staff, for interns plus pay the bills. We can’t possibly ask the Christians to give to the unrestricted funds of HOPE worldwide!”

Let me just say, that through it all, the Christians have gotten more engaged, more giving in all respects and more people are coming out. We have families, singles and campus serving together and bringing their friends. Ideas are flowing – great ideas – to help maintain and build our church as well as meet the needs of the people in our state. We are now talking about planting churches and hiring more staff.

Our goal is to engage the community and get them involved and contributing “acts of service” through the work of HOPE worldwide. HOPE worldwide is not just for the poor and needy in our communities, it’s for our churches. They need our support, but I also believe we need them. Instead of HOPE worldwide adding more to our plates, it actually is helping us integrate and work together.

My dream to evangelize the North has returned. We are doing it by going around and doing good!

Read more about the programs in Alaska
Go to www.HOPEww.org/alaska