WHAT WE’RE EXCITED FOR IN ALASKA THIS SUMMER

What We’re Excited for In Alaska This Summer

By Adam Swenson, Director of Alaska Operations

Alaska in summer is glorious. After the cold and dark of winter, the landscape explodes with life. The days are long (with 21+ hours of summer sun) and people come out to savor the all-too-short summer season. We are excited to be bringing up 15 teams from all over the “lower 48” to partner with local churches and ministries in Anchorage, Wasilla, Palmer, and the greater Matanuska Valley.

Church Partners

Our Alaskan church partners range from recent church plants to a bilingual Spanish church in the most diverse neighborhood in the US, a vibrant African-American church in Anchorage, and a Cowboy Church that meets in the afternoon in mountain pastures so folks can get their morning chores done first.  We are partnered with Baptists, Assemblies of God, and nondenominational churches—as long as the church is preaching the gospel and doing kingdom work we are blessed to work side by side.

Ministries

This summer’s ministries will reflect the needs in Alaska, so each team coming up will have a specific focus that is unique to their church or ministry partnership. Some of our teams will be doing day camps for at-risk kids including trips to yak and reindeer farms and hikes to mountain lakes. Other teams will be providing mentoring and discipleship training for people coming out of homelessness. Another team will partner with a Bible camp on a mountain lake to provide help with outdoor projects as well as the camp ministry.

We will put on many VBS programs throughout the summer as well as popup block parties in small towns in Alaska as an outreach for our partner churches. One of our teams is actually marching in a parade(!), and another is putting on a seminar aimed at bringing healing and wholeness to women coming out of domestic violence, homelessness, and addiction.

Recreation

Our main focus in ministry, but we also don’t want to waste all this glorious nature and long days of sunlight, so some teams will be playing midnight rounds of disc golf, and others will get out for some late night salmon fishing.

Our teams will enjoy sea kayaking and mountain biking, and taking a tram to the top of a mountain where they can buy a coffee and sit out on a deck with a view for 100 miles. We very much embrace a “work hard, play hard” philosophy on our trips!

Please keep our summer 2017 trips in prayer as we go through final details of preparation and hosting the teams for ministry.

And if you’re interested in exploring missions in Alaska for the summer of 2018, please get in touch! We’d love to connect with you.

Adam Swenson is the Director of Alaska Operations and the Director of Sales and Marketing. When not at work, he’s typically disc golfing or watching Madam Secretary with his wife and daughter.