In Anchorage

This past Friday Elise and I flew up north to Anchorage. Our flight was delayed a couple of hours because the snow was coming down thick and heavy in Petersburg. It was held in Ketchikan as well as Wrangell for the weather to clear up a bit in our city. But we finally took off, and as we were taking off, it looked like the snow had changed over to rain. (Today – Monday – the forecast for Petersburg was “torrential rain.”)

The flight up was uneventful and we arrived in Anchorage, a couple hours late. We were picked up and Elise went to the Shpherdess retreat in Palmer while I went to one of the Conference officer’s house for a quick bite to eat and travel up to Palmer for a seminar.

We didn’t make it though, because (from the looks of it) not too long before us, about 20 minutes from Palmer, there was a big accident. Officials closed the entire highway for investigation. We sat there and waited for about 40 minutes before deciding to take the off-ramp right in front of us and turn around. We returned to Anchorage. I loaded up my luggage into the Conference van and drove it to the guest rooms at the Korean SDA Church which will be home for a week.

In the morning, I discovered that the SIM card on my BlackBerry was once again disabled. The phone in the room didn’t seem to work, so I ended up using Skype to call support to see if there was anything that could be done. It looks like Anchorage AT&T cell service and my phone do not get along. (It probably needs a new SIM card.) Once it was determined that nothing could be done, I quickly had a bit of breakfast and started off to Palmer to attend church there.

Both Friday and Saturday were very, very cold – bitter cold… So cold that people who live up here were complaining and looking for warmer weather. I didn’t realize how cold –20 to –25F could be. The drive to Palmer takes about an hour. The inside of the van was finally starting to feel a little bit above freezing cold by the time I parked it at the Palmer church.

It was a change to be in a church of a couple hundred, and where I had no responsibilities. Overall it was nice to just sit and relax. The potluck afterwards was nice also.

The van I’m driving has very poor traction. It does have traction control and it comes on rather frequently. I have to make starts gingerly and leave a mile (okay, maybe not quite that much) of stopping distance… A few times I missed a turn or something and hit the brakes and… it wouldn’t stop. It kept going and going… Not exactly a pleasant experience.

Later Saturday evening I headed to a nearby mall to the ACS mobile phone store to purchase a new phone. I was hoping for something fairly cheap, but they didn’t have any of the cheapest (refurbished) phones in stock. I ended up paying out a total of $140 for a prepaid phone + service. The transaction took a while because I wanted to get a Petersburg local number. And then I found out that an old prepaid number we had about a year ago was available. The salesperson tried to sell that number but couldn’t get it to work. She sold me the next higher number, and then discovered she was able to change it to the old number. So I got my old number back!

While getting the transaction done, we chatted – or shall I say, she asked about what I was doing in Anchorage and in Petersburg. I told her I was here for some church meetings and that I pastored a church back home. She asked about some of the differences between Seventh-day Adventists and other Christians. Since she asked, I mentioned that we worship on Saturday rather than Sunday, and I also talked about how our view of death and what happens afterwards is different. It turns out she is a Catholic. Would I have approached things differently if I had known that to begin with? I don’t know. I don’t think I said things in a particularly offensive, judgmental, or “we’re right and everyone else is wrong” kind of tone, and she didn’t appear to be turned off. That all got me to thinking that maybe the SIM card dying turned out good, at least in a way. However, I am not going to be bringing the BlackBerry to Anchorage again, or at least not with the SIM card installed. I don’t need any more SIM cards destroyed and $140 “divine encounters!”

On Sunday Elise returned from her retreat. After picking her up we went to Wal-Mart (not in any way my favorite store, but not much choice here) and picked up a few items of clothing, a small automatic coffee maker, cups, stirrers, hot chocolate mix, and 4 gallons of drinking water. The reason? Because the tap water is awful! And I wanted something to make hot water. We searched the shelves of Wal-Mart for a hotpot or something that could boil water, but couldn’t find anything other than a coffee maker. So that’s what we have. I have no idea what we’re going to do with it when we go home. Leave it or take it back with us?

Sunday evening there was a banquet for the pastors and administrators. It was hosted by the Samoan church and held at the Anchorage Junior Academy. The youth of the Samoan church provided the evening entertainment. It consisted of cultural rituals, ceremonies, and dances. The final event consisted of many of us being “dragged” out to participate in the dance. So now you can say that Adventists in Alaska dance!

The food was quite good. Some of it resembled Chinese, others resembled something closer to Indonesian. For the records, Samoans are NOT vegetarians. Many of the dishes featured or contained chicken and there was one good curried baked salmon dish.

The pastors’ meetings started in earnest today. Our guest speakers are the Central California Conference President and his wife. The topic is prayer. Coming into the meeting I had some questions, reservations, and trepidations about what exactly would be presented. Seminars on prayer can go in so many different ways, and I didn’t now how it was going to go. Going through the meetings today, however, I am feeling a lot better about it.

The temperatures have warmed up and one of the weather station says we hit 31F today. It’s now just cold. But no longer the kind of cold that makes you want to stay inside.

So this is how things have been going the last few days.