Thursday, July 16, we finally made our first flight out as a family. We went to Shageluk, 400 miles SW of Fairbanks on the Innoko River, to help a family that is building a house (it is the first new home to be built in Shageluk in 15 years, they said!). It was a 2.5-hour flight. On our way home on Monday, July 20, we also stopped in the villages of Grayling (to take a look at a mission house there and say hi to a few people), Galena (for fuel), and Ruby (to visit some Native friends and fellow missionaries). A full day, but still got the airplane tucked back in the hangar before sunset!
(To easily click through the images, just click on the first one to begin.)
-
- With rain gear, tent/camping equipment, food for 5 days, and 7 people stuffed in the Lance, we were quite, um…cozy!
-
- Staging all our stuff before stuffing the airplane
-
- James engineering the stuffing
-
- All hands helped move the airplane out of the hangar
-
- Christa helped fill out the baggage area
-
- We didn’t get good pictures, but we counted about 15 fires between Fairbanks and Shag. The terrain from the air is so varied and always beautiful. As we took off from Shageluk and looked once again at the spread of land, Rachel exclaimed, “Alaska is the best place ever!”
-
- What are the chances of THESE staying in?!
-
- By the end of the 4th day, all of the courses of logs for the first floor were done.
-
- Jared found his “favorite job in the world”: using the push broom to move water off the floor and out the door!
-
- C&J had a hard time giving up their umbrellas even after the rain stopped
-
- View of the Innoko River plain from the hill in Shageluk
-
- Recently re-introduced bison found our airplane to be great for rubbing on. unsure emoticon Looks like we’ll be taking out an electric fence next time, after James gets the repairs done.
-
- Don’t all babies get diaper changes on airplane wings?
-
- Stop in Ruby
-
- Four villages, and this is the only welcome sign we managed to remember to take a picture of…
-
- Stop in Ruby
-
- Happy to see good friends in Ruby – chickweed fight! — with Jen Johansson Tramm.
-
- Rachel’s first hands on the yoke moment. Mom had to pretend she didn’t notice.
-
- Refueling after arriving in Fairbanks
-
- Sunset glow as we get the plane ready to tuck in
-
- And that’s a wrap!
Millers in Alaska 
Dear Millers, Good to hear from you again and see the pictures of your airplane and the Alaska scenery. To us it looked over loaded and hope you won’t have a crash with it. Your little guy is growing fast. Ruth and Arlie have left us for their retirement home in AZ. Things just aren’t the same here without them. We have no one to play the organ and many other holes they left by their absents. The board members are busy looking for an interim pastor but that will take awhile.
Our garden is producing more than we can handle so I sold a bucket full of cucumbers and several zucchini. I usually give them away but was able to sell them for .10 each which was a bargain. The temperature here today is in the 90s and will be that way for a few more days yet. The forecast is for cooler on Tuesday.
Keep up the good work. Prayer partners. Bert & Melvina
Glad to hear from you, Bert and Melvina, and that you enjoyed the pictures. It must be quite a change to have Ruth and Arlie gone. You might consider contacting Sangre de Cristo seminary in Colorado to see if they have any referrals for candidates/interims. They would probably line up pretty well with the church doctrinally.
Though the plane looks bulkily loaded (6 pillows and artic-weight sleeping bags take up a lot of space!), James very closely keeps an eye on the weight and balance of everything that goes in; we are thankful to have a well-trained pilot!
That hot weather should continue to yield bunches of cukes and zukes. We are sweating it out here in the 70s. 🙂