It has been almost three years since I traveled across the state of Alaska with four other energetic college students and recent grads.  The destination was not as far from home for me as it was for everyone else since I was born and raised in interior Alaska, but the experience has had a great effect on every step I have taken since the last day of debrief in August 2005.  It was the kind of summer one has to recover from.  By now I have gone through the stages of depression, withdrawal, doubt, times of seriously questioning my sanctification....  But even today, talking to my friends from SEND of Alaska's Summer Missionary Program (SMP) sometimes reminds me of what I imagine an AA meeting to be like. 

I am getting ahead of myself; let me give you a little background information before I get on with my story.  Currently, I am moving steadily toward long term ministry through the church in western Alaska.  But I have not always been moving west.  God has brought me to missions in Alaska through Africa, which was the location of my first summer mission trip.  I went on this initial trip in response to my guilty conscience about not wanting to be a missionary and my desire for adventure in the wilds of Africa.  But God worked with me there and I came home not so set on my original plan to be a rich and wild rancher in Wyoming.  I guess I saw there what I had been unwilling to see all around me up until that time: the orphans, the widows, the poor and downtrodden - and the fact that I had a role to play in it all.  The following summer my youth group went to help at a Bible camp in western Alaska called Kako (the Yupik word for "clay").  There I learned that there are "orphans and widows" in my own state.  I did not have to go across the sea for a "3^rd world adventure" - it was right next door if I had eyes to see it.  So I logged that information away and finished high school and three years of college. 

Then in 2005 as I contemplated what I would do after the impending college graduation, I decided to try SMP and see if western Alaska might really be where God was leading me.  This Summer Missionary Program is an 11 week program (June through August) in which teams are sent out to regions of Alaska and the Yukon Territory.  Each team spends at least a week working at a Bible camp of some kind and the other weeks are divided between about three Native villages per team.  The teams are made up of mostly college age students from the US, Canada, and even Germany.  And just as I had hoped, I was placed on one of the Western teams.

At the risk of building it up too much, that summer as an SMPer will always stand out to me as one of the experiences that changed my life.  In each village we would hold a Vacation Bible School for the kids, which took up about a third of the time we spent in that village.  The rest of the time we basically made ourselves available.  That meant going fishing, berry picking, visiting the homes of our VBS kids and eating whatever Eskimo foods were set before us.  I will never forget the time I caught a pink "humpy" salmon with a couple of the teenagers and then had to cut it with an "ulu" for an audience comprised of one older Yupik woman, speaking only Yupik, one German teammate, speaking broken English, and a handful of kids, all pointing, laughing and offering friendly advice.  Other opportunities included leading a church service, another time it was a ladies' brunch, often it meant staying up until 3:00am. We mostly just hung out with people, but I had never lived every moment so purposefully in my life as I and my team did in those nine and a half weeks.  It was intense, we were challenged and every moment was more than we could have handled without God's grace.  I know we could not have kept that pace physically forever, but I did not want it to end; it was a summer of much joy. 

Not that it was comfortable, or easy, or even "successful."  We saw a lot of pain too; it mingled with the joy of loving others like the beauty of the sparkling snow in the moonlight mingles with the danger of extreme cold on a winter night.  For some reason, it just felt right.  I think it was because I was really living; I was not "coasting through," "just getting by," or "killing time."  I was in Christ, a new creation; I was there for His purpose, struggling to walk in Him and working it out as part of a team.  At the end of the summer I was required to write a letter to myself, here is an excerpt which I think illustrates the sense of being I had gained over the previous weeks: 

8/15/05

Well, it's been a few months, where are you?  Do you remember what you learned over the summer?  Everything you had known about God was deepened - you came to understand much that had only been theory before.... God is so worthy of praise, so great and mighty!  Remember what you saw in the villages - the darkness and lostness - the void.  Do not lose your burden for those who are lost.  What you saw was the same soul condition of people all over the world, don't forget just because the people in Philadelphia clean up nicer.  Never forget that you are a Light bearer.  Shine brightly. 

Don't get lazy, and don't forget that people come before school.... Remember also your dependency on God and the "blessedness of possessing nothing."  Everyday this summer you walked by God's grace and trusted in His faithfulness.  You knew that it was not you doing the work, but Him through you.  You saw God use you in your weakness - you learned to put your security in Him.... Don't look for others to validate you.  If you are feeling bitter and pitiful, snap out of it.  Read 2 Corinthians, 2 Peter, and James again.  Be who God has made you to be. 

Dig deep into God's Word, encourage those around you, keep on relating to people... 

I had known that I was where I was supposed to be in western Alaska, and I knew it even when I felt helpless.  It is like I have heard many of my elders say, "the safest place to be is in God's will."  Not financially secure, medically insured, or with every resource at your fingertips.  I did not want to forget this.  However, by the time the SMP directors sent this letter to me in November 2005, I needed the reminder.  I was bitter and disappointed with the apathy and hypocrisy of my fellow Christians.  I was angry with myself for my own hypocrisy, angry at others for not comprehending the suffering I had seen and at myself again for forgetting so easily.  I felt far away from the world of western Alaska that I had grown to love.

It has taken a long time to figure out how to adjust back into mainstream American culture without denying the truth I found in western Alaska.  I have graduated from college and spent two years working in an elementary school, a coffee shop, and as a receptionist for an air service.  I got through the awkward "can I really bathe everyday? What luxury!" stage, and I do not cry every night because no one understands anymore.  But I have had to fight for it.  I am still figuring out how to walk in what I learned about faith and dependence on God.  That summer changed me, and though it is tempting to give up and give in to the pull toward the smooth and wide road through life, I can never go back to the trivial way I lived before.  Life is not as simple as it once was, but it is richer.  Some of my fellow SMPers have shared similar reflections, my friend Karen has written: 

"It almost felt like Alaska ruined my life... and in a sense, it did.  In the end I'd say that I was changed mainly for the better, but rather painfully. I didn't care about anything I used to care about." 

There seems to be distaste for the mundane life after surviving a summer in the wilds of rural Alaska; what Karen had formerly thought important no longer held meaning - but I do not credit that to the simple fact that she spent some time in the great state of Alaska.  It must be the way she lived in Alaska.

When one looks at Psalm 119 in relation to this it is striking, because it is both God's Word and the petition of his child.  There must be something to learn about God and ourselves in relation to Him.  The Psalmist says: "Teach me good discernment and knowledge,/For I believe in Your commandments" (v. 66).  This is something many of us have prayed.  How does God answer?  The Psalmist goes on in verse 67:

"Before I was afflicted I went astray,/But now I keep Your word./You are good and do good; teach me Your statutes.... It is good for me that I was afflicted,/That I may learn Your statutes./The law of Your mouth is better to me/Than thousands of gold and silver pieces."

I wonder if what these words mean is that God afflicts us (with dissatisfaction with our own comfort and the trivial things that take up most of our time, and heartache for those who are suffering), in order to answer our prayer that He teach us His ways, His wisdom; our request of Him to "open our eyes, that we may behold wonderful things from Your law/instruction"? (v. 18).

Perhaps, as pastor and theologian John Piper says, He has ruined our lives so that we can begin to really live! It is true that ours is a dark world and that the darkness seems to press in on us from every side.  It is often more than we can bear - but when we reach that point, the Psalmist teaches us again to pray "I am Yours, save me!" (v. 94).  Perhaps God sends us to "Alaska," and back again to where we came from, in order to "push [us] to [our] limits, so that He can enlarge them," to quote novelist Jan Karon.  And as the Psalmist says in verse 32: "I will run in the way of Your commandments,/For You will enlarge my heart."

Now that it has been a few years I can see that God did not leave me high and dry after SMP.  This summer program was not just the proverbial mountain-top experience.  God has been faithful and is even now leading me back to western Alaska for another chapter.  But not because that is the only place I can "really live."  No, western Alaska is the path that I have chosen, in Him, to work out the life He has called me to live. 

I must add that I do not think these "revelations" of mine are unique to those who participate in SMP.  The central truth in what I have learned is that where one goes, and what one does, are matters secondary to the fact that "in Him we live and move and have our being," and "unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit"; and, finally, "I am crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself up for me."  This is the life we were created for!  And I pray God will continue to give me this life, even if it means continually going to "the ends of the earth."