Home from Alaska

I'm home from Alaska now. I left Kako around 10am on Tuesday, and I arrived home around 8am on Wednesday. I ended up sleeping half of the day on Wednesday. ;) My time up there was really good, and it was especially fun for me to have lots of the kids from last year come again.

I'm not going to go into extreme detail on here, but I can at least you give a little bit of an overview.


I ended my last post with some pictures of us down at the lake. The very next week actually found some of us down there again.


All the High School guys hiked down to the lake to spend the night on Tuesday.


I think the best part was the special mosquito flavored food. Mosquitoes are high protein I hear.


On Wednesday we all hiked up to the mountain again. There is a really pretty view on the way up.


Group picture for High School camp.


Caleb setting up the rockets with some of the campers looking on.


Everyone always enjoyed watching the rockets launch. Catching them afterward was always fun too.


One of the other counselors found this great piece of tundra and let me try it on. ;)


The basketball got very competitive on High School week. The counselors versus campers matches were very tough. It basically went like this... if Kyle sat out, we would lose. If he played, we would win. In our defense, a lot of the counselors hadn't played much basketball before.


Playing a little Foosball during some free time.


On Saturday, some of us guys went down the road to remake a bridge. We were pulling one of the logs with the truck, and got the truck dreadfully stuck.


While the other guys actually built the bridge...


...Caleb and I tried to get the truck out. The jack didn't work perfectly, so we had to pop one of the pins out manually every notch it went up. We never did end up getting the thing out until a bunch of other guys came and we all pushed.


Our almost completed bridge. Turned out pretty good.


The next week was Elementary camp. I "triple counseled" with Caleb and another guy during Elementary week, but Caleb and I were so busy running activities during the day that we weren't much help except at mealtimes and nighttime.


The camper in the picture with Caleb was the best kid ever. He was a ton of fun. :)


The 206 landing at Kako.


Next was another Junior High camp, and Stephen and I co-counseled. I ran the archery activity in the morning, which was fun. Here two of the guys in our cabin are shooting.


Two of the guys posing with the target while a third is in the background searching for a lost arrow. We spent so much time looking for arrows in those bushes back there. What usually happened was, you would lose an arrow, and go look for it and find another color arrow instead. Finding the other arrow would give us enough arrows, so we would all shoot again. Inevitably, someone would lose another arrow, look for it, and then find the first arrow instead. It happened so many times I was beginning to wonder if maybe the arrows were just changing colors. ;)


One of the guys in my cabin on top of the hill overlooking Kako.


Group shot for Junior High camp.


We had a nice big bonfire to roast marshmallows. Maybe a little too big actually... we had to wait till it got smaller before we could even got close to it.


Thursday dinner is spaghetti with crazy utensils. You're always really hungry, but it can take a long time to eat for obvious reasons.


Makes for some great pictures. :)


Our cabin at around 11:00pm. We were all inside on our beds, and we found out that some of the guys were leaving really early the next day so we wouldn't have time to take a picture then. Lucky for us, it wasn't exactly dark yet, so we all went outside and took one.


Kyle and Stephen are still up in Alaska trying to build a camp on an island near a village, and they only have around a week to get it done. I'm sure they would appreciate your prayers, as it is going to be a whole ton of work. It is really wet and rainy out, so it isn't exactly perfect condition for that either.

An update from Alaska

Well I'm up here at Kako and we just finshed Camp 3, which was for Junior High. It has been great to come up again this year and continue where we left off last year. Kyle has been helping direct camp this year, and it has been great having an inside source. ;) I knew some kids from last year, but a whole lot of the kids this week were first timers.


Kyle working on the obstacle course.


Jimmy on the new repelling wall.


A group shot of the first camp.


Jimmy working on the craft with his cabin. The guy he is working with in this picture was in my cabin last year.


A group shot of camp 2.

Stephen and I arrived on Friday at the very end of Camp 2. We arrived at the village we were going to be picked up at 3pm. We didn't know when they were going to pick us up so we had to stay at the airport instead of going into the village. We didn't get picked up till a little before 8pm, so we were pretty tired of waiting by the time we got picked up.


The kids arriving for the Junior High camp on Monday.


My cabin doing archery.


Here I am hanging out with two of the guys in my cabin who were brothers.


Jimmy broke his leg on Tuesday evening while he was playing basketball. It was a clean break on his femur, so it was pretty bad. They flew him to a nearby village, and from there he was flown to Anchorage. We're all really disappointed he had to go home so soon... we're definitely missing him.


Since Jimmy left abruptly, we had to divide the guys in his cabin out to the other cabins. The "Yukon" cabin did miss him though, so they got this picture on top of the hill.


Kyle and a number of the guys hanging out on top of the hill.


On Wednesday everyone hikes to the top of a nearby hill. A new activity we do this year is launch rockets on top of the hill. I got this picture of a rocket launching with Kako in the background. I thought it turned out pretty cool.


Here is the group shot from Camp 3.


On Wednesday evening we had a bonfire with marshmallows.


And some singing.


For the kids to get seconds on marshmallows, they had to swing the marshmallows on the end of a string in to each others mouths. It was great fun to watch.


The guys in my cabin on Friday morning before they headed home. I'm really happy because a couple of my guys got really homesick during the week, but at the end of the week, they all told me they had fun and wanted to come next year. They also told me that I was "really fun", so that pretty much made my week. :) Most importantly I think they all understand the gospel now to more extent, and they realize they need to be saved. It is really confusing for them because they hear that they are already "Christians" because they got baptized, took communion, or any other number of thing they hear from their village priest.


Last night after all the kids had flown home, some of us rafted down the creek to the lake, and met up with the rest of the counselors at the lake and camped overnight. It was really pretty rafting all the way down to the lake, but it did get pretty tiring. I think it took us about 3-4 hours. It wasn't the most physically relaxing time, but it was definitely mentally refreshing.


Please pray for us as this next week is High School week. A ton of people have flown in the last few days, so there are a lot of people around that we don't know very well. Most of them are just staying for a week or two, but it is nice to know the people you are working with. I'm also coming down with a cold, and a number of the other guys are too.

Hopefully I'll be able to do another post while I'm up here, but I'm not making any promises. :)