Strong Rock Christian School

The team arrived this afternoon following a very long day of traveling. They spent a couple of hours in downtown Anchorage shopping before traveling on to the final destination of Wasilla, AK.

We are starting our morning with worship at our host church, Mat-Su Covenant Church! Pastor Rick joined us for dinner last night and has shared about the church, community, and ministry here in Wasilla. We are so thankful for their hospitality and love for the Lord!

Dr. Jay and Marsha pose on a bench during a team hiking adventure at Thunderbird Falls.  Yes, the bench has legs and the snow is really that deep.

On Sunday night Dr. Jay spent a couple of hours sharing a meal and a message on our identity in Christ with a local life group. What a blessing to build relationships and share God's word with believers from across the continent!

We are serving with The Yak (Youth of Alaska) this week, which is an after-school youth center. We were able to hear about the heart & vision of the Yak from Andy who helped start it, and then we played games with the youth that came in today. 

We met some awesome people and had some great conversations! (We think we should have a youth center in Georgia called YOGA...)

Another location we have the opportunity to serve at is Thrifters Rock, a Christian thrift store. The first goal was to help with spring cleaning of the storefront.

Thrifters Rock has so many donations that they ran out of space inside. In this photo, some of the team were unloading boxes of books and carrying them across an icy parking lot to bring them into the store for sorting, pricing, and placing on shelves for purchase.

This afternoon we were back at the YAK where the kids taught us a game called Ninja! We spent a few hours hanging with these kids playing various games, talking, and just loving on them. Another game we learned is called "zoogle." We’ll let the kids explain how it works.

We end each day with an evening debrief meeting to reflect on what God is doing through us. Hannah and Reagan have been leading some awesome worship too!

Another great day serving at Kids Kupboards! After a short prayer walk this morning by a salmon stream and seeing 3 moose, the group cut and packaged carrots and celery that will go out to help feed over 2000 children in the Mat-Su Valley.

Jay, Ike, Bennet, and Landon joined Pastor Rick in some home visits today where we were able to love on some church members and help with some various projects. We were all blessed!

Back at the church, we were hard at work organizing in the upstairs where they are continuing to remodel.

The entire group left the church at midnight to get a view of one of the greatest light shows in all creation. The Aurora Borealis lit up the sky while we sat on top of the mountains for over an hour. Creation cries out His name!

Photo Credit: Serg Bogdanov. He and his family keep a small blog to share God's word and bless others.  https://www.fourlittlejoys.family/

We made it back to Frontline to help with their food distribution day!

Today we got to experience Alaskan dogsledding in Talkeetna! Many of these dogs ran in the Iditarod only a few weeks ago, and some of them are Iditarod champions from past years.

We also learned about the amount of work that goes into dogsledding, met some full-time mushers, and played with the puppies. It was an amazing way to end our week in Alaska!