With grateful hearts and exhausted bodies, we arrived home yesterday afternoon.  Our two and a half months in Alaska flew by (pardon the pun), and it seems appropriate now to take a glance behind at a broader perspective of what that time entailed.  We’ll keep it brief, since many of you have been following our updates throughout the summer.

Things got off to a chilly start at beautiful Kingdom Air Corps, as Jared spent time training under Dwayne King in preparation for a summer of bush flying:

After two weeks of enjoying the grand, mountainous terrain around Kingdom Air Corps (in the Sutton area), we traveled to Kako Retreat Center in western Alaska.  There are rolling hills around Kako, but much of the outlying terrain is tundra–a nice word for boggy, buggy lowlands.  From mountains to tundra, Kako to coast, Jared spent the summer as air taximan, mailman, cargo transporter, you name it!  With no roads connecting villages in this area of Alaska, the whole ministry depends on the airplane.

The Kako ministry reaches about a 160-mile radius.  Within this radius are 56 villages–oh for the resources to reach them all!  We’re praising God that this year, about 200 children from over 15 different villages attended camp and heard the message of the gospel, many of them for the very first time.  Several of these kids now confess Christ as Savior.  Please pray for their continued growth in the Lord, as many of them return to families and communities that are hostile to the truth of Christ.

After the end of the five-week camp season, our family remained at Kako for another week and a half.  After a little relaxation (those campers keep everybody busy!), we filled much of the time with clean-up projects (Carol and Lucy) and airplane maintenance (Jared).  Jared had a bucket list for his last couple of days, which included panning for gold (Kako is a viable gold mine, but we certainly didn’t strike it rich this summer):

Fishing was also on Jared’s list.  Watch the progression of Titus’ interest in what Daddy is doing:

We had beautiful weather to send us off on Tuesday afternoon.  We will miss our Kako family but treasure the memories from this eventful summer!

Thank you from the bottom of our hearts for your prayers, support, and encouragement during our stay in Alaska!