I had a great Christmas and enjoyed the family.  I sure miss Alaska though.  Here is a really cool booklet that I stumbled across during my research project.  It doesn't have a date, but according to my research, I place it around 1940.  I scanned it and compiled it into a PDF below...probably the first time this booklet has ever been seen on a computer screen.  The title of the booklet is "Our Covenant's Missions in Alaska."  I hope you enjoy it. :-) The picture above is a jpeg file of the cool map on page 2.

It is almost Christmas day!  We have had a good advent season. 

Here are some pictures from our Willow Creek adventure this past semester.  It was a lot of fun.  I was pretty skeptical about how well a mega-church like Willow could effectively minister to so many people.  However, I was pretty pleasantly surprised.  During the service some 1000 people came forward to celebrate that they had been baptized by Willow Creek...just in the last year!  It was also the anniversary celebration for the founding of Willow Creek, so there were some 4000 or so pizzas that were donated for the celebration.  All in all, pretty crazy, but good to see how God works in different ways.

The semester is over!  Christmas break is here!

I turned in my report on Conversion in Alaska Native culture and would like to share it with you.  I would love to hear your thoughts.  Especially if you have any corrections, questions, or any other comments you have.  Even though I turned the report in, I still would like to work on it a bit more to make it better.  Nevertheless, here it is!  Yes, it is 90 pages, so it may take a while to read.  If it helps, only the first 20 pages were my official assignment submission.

I spent 2.5 hours today in the Covenant archives researching the early church in Alaska.  It was a lot of fun.  Here are a few pictures from some of the material that I found.  I should have my research paper out by next Friday...I plan on posting it here for folks to read, I hope that people will find it encouraging.

Just in case you were wondering, the first picture is an early home-made snowmachine (snowmobile).  The second picture is of young Eskimos shooting bow and arrows...I had no idea any Eskimos did that!  The third picture is of early recongnized Eskimo language dialects. Oh, and yes, those are pictures of reindeers pulling sleighs in Alaska.  No, it is not Santa. :-)