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February, 2007
Shipwrecked! Greetings Everyone! Welcome to the latest edition of The Craig Chronicles. If you caught the double meaning in that first sentence, you’re on the right wavelength to enjoy the rest of this letter. Before I get to the story that prompted the headline, I would like to tell you about some of the serious news and prayer requests. We had a very busy and productive winter. We started off the fall season with our annual harvest party. We had several carnival type games for the kids with plenty of food and prizes. We had a great crowd, and we were able to distribute a good number of tracts. Next came our Thanksgiving dinner, and once again we had a great crowd and were able to present the Gospel to many of the folks from the village. Our Christmas program was our best attended service of the year, with seventy-six people in attendance. Looking at that another way, we had about 20% of the village at the service– and that ain’t too bad! The theme of our program was "Come to Seek and to Save." We had shepherds, angels, Mary and Joseph and baby Jesus was played by four month old Ian James. He did a great job, though his costume could have been better. (I seriously doubt whether Jesus wore a cardigan sweater that first Christmas night, but I have to admit that Ian was adorable) We combined our teens and children to form the "Fort Yukon Kid’s Choir." The program went very well, the kids memorized their lines, and once again we were able to present the Gospel to a significant number of villagers. Next came our watch night service. We began our evening with dinner; then we watched a film, "The Climb." Next, we all walked over to see the fireworks display that was put on by the town; finally, we returned to the church, and played games until midnight when we all went outside and shot our guns up into the air with most of the rest of the town. The gunfire didn’t completely die down until about 12:20. It’s a different world up here. We just had our Valentine’s day banquet this past Wednesday, and though our crowd was only about half of what we had for Christmas (several of our church families were sick or out of town) we had several visitors, and again gave a salvation message. This brings me to an important prayer request. We’ve had a number of folks raise their hands to indicate that they are unsaved or need to make a decision for the Lord, and have asked me to pray for them. Two ladies raised their hands for salvation just this last Wednesday at our Valentine’s day banquet. My concern is that very few have followed through with their decisions. At least very few as far as I can tell. I have been praying that these people are serious, and that they have truly accepted the Lord, but they need to make their decisions public. They need to begin growing. I think I’ve told you before that there seems to be a serious lack of commitment here. The attitude of most of the people here seems to be very apathetic. It’s very clear that the Holy Spirit is working in peoples’ hearts, but it’s tough to get them moving. Please pray that the Lord will "light a fire" under the folks here, and that they will get busy doing the work of the ministry. OTHER PRAYER REQUESTS 1. Please continue to pray for the money for the camp to come in. I have been told that the paperwork is almost finished, and that we will have the title to the property free and clear by this spring. So far, we have received $11,750 of the $80,000 that we need. We have an additional $2,500 pledged, but that still leaves us $65,750 short. We have work crews lined up to come this summer, but we can’t start work on the camp until the property is paid for. Is the Lord speaking to your heart about helping out with this need? God uses individuals to accomplish His work (see HUGE PRAISE below). Be sensitive to the prompting of the Holy Spirit. The Lord will bless you far more than you can imagine when you set your heart on seeing His will accomplished. 2. Please keep praying for Heidi. Her health has been good, but she works hard constantly. She does most of the work for all of our banquets and parties single-handedly. Pray that the Lord will strengthen her, and send her someone to help. Maybe you? 3. Please keep praying for Rachael and Stephen as they continue with their school work. 4. Please pray for Andrew. He is still planning on heading off to Pensacola Christian College this fall, and is still seeking the Lord’s will for his life. 5. Please pray for all of the kids that the Lord will encourage them in the work here. They suffer a lot of persecution from some of the village kids. They have to deal with a strong anti-white sentiment up here disguised as "Native Pride." Not everyone, certainly, but enough to make things very unpleasant at times. 6. Keep praying for that airplane! HUGE PRAISE! As you have probably gathered, our boat motor gave up the ghost this fall (complete story to follow). A replacement would cost in excess of $10,000. We use the boat heavily in the summer to haul gas, fuel oil, and firewood. We also use the boat for transportation to and from the Village Family Camp, and on our annual moose hunt– not to mention using it to take visiting dignitaries and work crews on a ride on the Yukon River (with a little fishing thrown in for good measure). As soon as we get the camp up and running, we are also planning on using the boat to ferry campers to and from their villages (at least until the Lord provides the airplane). Anyway, my point is that our boat is a very big part of our ministry, and I was really at a loss about how to find a replacement. Out of nowhere, I received an email this week from an individual asking me what we needed. I told her, and within just a few minutes received a reply from her telling me what she had available, and asking me to choose the model that would best suite our needs. I’m not sure if this person wants to remain anonymous or not, so I’m not mentioning her name. Suffice it to say that she or her family owns a marina or marinas, and the Lord has put them in a position to be able to do this. The Lord is wonderful isn’t He? Heidi had just prayed that morning, "Lord, I need some encouragement." Her prayer was answered in a HUGE way! And now, what you’ve been waiting for! I was going to write up my own (accurate) version of our adventure on the Yukon with my mom and dad last September, but my dad sent me his own (highly embellished) version. He told me to feel free to edit his work, but I wanted you to get the full effect– such as it is. Perhaps now you will understand how I came by my writing style a bit better, and maybe, just maybe, understand a little better that it’s not my fault that I am the way I am– it’s genetic. Our Alaskan Adventure (My dad’s highly embellished title) or, if you prefer my unembellished version of the title:
Shipwrecked! Last September my wife, Jacquita, and I took a trip to Alaska to visit our son, daughter-in-law and three grandchildren who live in Fort Yukon. As usual, we had a terrific time and when it was all over we judged our visit to have been at least a week too short. It felt really good to get hugs from everyone, the conversation was pleasant and the food was wonderful because Heidi is an extraordinary cook. I’d never eaten moose before and I approached the prospect with a certain amount of reserve that turned out to be completely unwarranted. Moose is delicious. The fresh, grilled salmon spoiled my appetite for any that I’m likely to find here in the lower forty-eight too. Our stay was altogether agreeable and we are looking forward to going back. There was, however, one incident that has given birth to several versions of the same story and I feel compelled to set the record straight. As much as I love her, I’m afraid that most of the skewed versions of the unfortunate incident in question originated with my wife of nearly forty-two years. She can, at times, be a bit unfair where I’m concerned and she is sometimes prone to exaggeration. In addition to that she has a talent for misinterpreting perfectly innocent facts and circumstances. As a result I am often cast in an unfavorable light. For instance, when I give voice to a legitimate concern, she often says that I am whining. She’s been known to refer to one of my occasional reminiscent moods as "a fit of sloppy sentimentality." Once, when a mouse jumped from a kitchen cabinet squarely onto my left foot, she mistook my warning shout to her for a terrified scream. A man really hates to have his courage unfairly questioned like that. I’ve named but a few of the many times that she has jumped to a wrong conclusion in the past forty-two years or so. You can see why I now feel the need to offer my version of recent events. All the hubbub began on the last full day of our visit to the Arctic Circle when we decided to take a boat ride down the Yukon river. We wanted to have a picnic and fish for pike. Up there, they fish for pike simply because it’s fun to catch them. Judging from all accounts that I heard they’re too bony to eat. I really don’t know about that, but I do know that those babies sport bunches of needle-sharp teeth and wear a really ugly expression. If the pike that my son, David, caught are any indication, their attitude matches that expression. I actually wanted to catch one until I saw David pull one from the water. He said it was just flopping around, but I’ fairly sure that it was trying to tear his leg off. Once I got a look at that I began to feign pike fishing. I got a couple of bites, but fortunately I was able to pull the lure away from the fish quickly enough that I didn’t have to take it off the hook. But all that is a story for another time. For now it is enough to know that all the pike seem to live about thirty miles from the village of Fort Yukon. I had used my lightening reflexes to snatch the lure from a number of pike when David decided to take me downstream a mile or so. I suppose he was hoping to find some fish that could match my speed. We got out of the boat and I pretended to fish some more. That’s when David said, "whoa Dad, look at that!" When I landed I was facing away from the water and wearing an expression much like Don Knotts wore while he explored the haunted house in that old movie, The Ghost and Mr. Chicken. I’ll admit that I overreacted a bit, but with good reason. Earlier we had spotted wolf tracks in the mud along the river. How did we know they were wolf tracks? Because they were BIG, that’s how . . . . really big. But David wasn’t looking at the timber behind us and no wolf was in sight. He pointed at my feet. "You’re standing on a grizzly track. You can tell by the size of the track and the length of the claw marks." That was more information than I needed. From then on I was sure I was being stalked by a thousand pound carnivore. [I told you Dad highly embellished his story– the average inland grizzly only weighs between five and six hundred pounds] It took a while, but eventually David saw that I had no intention of laying my hands on a pike which is also a carnivore to be avoided. He announced that it was just about time to head home. I’m not sure just how far from Fort Yukon we got that day, but I know exactly how far away we were when the boat’s motor blew up. We were sixteen miles from town. Without power the Yukon began to take us back down stream. The river bank closest to us was too steep to climb. Even if we had been able to grab a passing tree branch, getting stopped was out of the question. The current was much too strong. David grabbed the pole he kept in the boat and kept us from getting snagged on logs and other debris that jutted above the surface of the water. I began to wonder what the Bering Sea looked like that time of year when I saw a motor boat heading for us. A hunting party consisting of four Gwitch’in Indian men was staying at a fishing camp we passed on our way home. They towed us back to their camp. There was absolutely no doubt that God had intervened. By the time we were safely ashore it was nearly dark. Our four rescuers were on a moose hunting expedition and were ill-equipped to offer us any lavish accommodations. In fact they had nothing at all to offer except a place by their tiny campfire which we gratefully accepted. As we sat in the gathering gloom I silently studied Buddy, Noah, Clayton and Travis, our new-found Gwitch’in friends. I used the flickering firelight to search their faces and watch their actions. I looked for things that I had long associated with Native Americans like a quiet stoicism and somehow, I didn’t know how, I knew if I watched and listened carefully enough I would find the signs of an innate woodsmanship; a superior knowledge of nature, a oneness with the land that ordinary folks like me just don’t possess. I had always admired the people who could navigate this vast wilderness without losing their way. But these guys were chipping away at my romantic image of them. For one thing, I could see that they definitely weren’t living off the land. Their supplies were packed in cardboard boxes and the boxes were stored in plastic garbage bags. As I visually rummaged through a box that had yet to be placed back into its bag I discovered Campbell’s Soup, a variety of candy bars and a package of Chips Ahoy cookies. At that very moment Travis was noisily sipping a cup so Swiss Miss and Clayton was toasting marshmallows and yakking incessantly. I was beginning to wonder what the world was coming to when I noticed Buddy. He sat there quietly alternately staring into the starry heavens then looking downward into his cupped hands– at last! It looked as if I’d found the embodiment of all my romantic notions. This man was probing the heavens for signs. He was searching for nature’s direction in the morrow’s hunt or maybe trying to discern the coming weather. Silently, I gave a satisfied nod. It was then he turned his cupped palms toward me so I could see his GPS. "I’m getting twelve satellites," he said. So much for my romantic notions. There is a superstition among the Gwitch’in that if you whistle while the northern lights are dancing overhead they will come down and snatch your spirit. One of our benefactors, Noah, sat there staring at the lights and he just kept whistling. He wasn’t whistling a tune either. It sounded more like he was calling his dog. I figured he was testing the superstition or trying to prove his bravery. Either way, it was a bit eerie and it put me in an uneasy mood for the remainder of the night. Just before he went to bed he stopped whistling, looked at me, grinned and said, "If the bear come, don’t shoot that way." He nodded toward the darkness beyond the puddle of light that the little campfire spread, "That’s where we’re sleeping." He didn’t have to worry. I wasn’t armed, but the thought of a grizzly wandering into camp once again put me on high alert. As nighttime settled in, the day’s heat dissipated. What I’m trying to say is that it got cold . . . . REALLY, REALLY cold. We had no tents or sleeping bags. David wasn’t even wearing insulated coveralls like the rest of us. I think I was wearing his. [He was wearing my coveralls, but I didn’t mind. We Alaskans don’t usually stop wearing shorts and tank-tops until the temperature drops below twenty] The ladies in our company got to spend the night in the boat because it had a homemade cabin. It wasn’t heated, but at least they were protected from the chilly breeze. The cabin was too small for everyone so we fellows got to stay outside. As mentioned before in this tale of woe, the fire was small and the supply of firewood extremely limited. There was a chainsaw in camp, but something was wrong with it. The long and short if it was, as my mother used to say, that we were in for a very cold and miserable night. Needless to say, none of us slept much. Whether we were inside the boat’s cabin or outside, sleep came in shivering little fits. It was that incomplete kind of rest where you’re not really asleep, but not really awake either. It was as my wife emerged from one of those little fits of sleep that the bear story was born. According to her version I woke her, and the rest of the camp for that matter, screaming "BEAR! BEAR!" She further claims that I was trying to protect myself by waving a flaming log in the air. But, that’s just not true. She was emerging from a sleepy torpor and simply misheard. I wasn’t shouting "BEAR! BEAR!" I was asking the question, "WHERE, WHERE?" I was searching for the somewhat primitive facilities that lay somewhere far from the campsite. Since I had no flashlight the flaming log was to light my way. And as for my tone; I wasn’t screaming. The cold accounts for both my volume and elevated pitch. The night air had constricted my vocal cords and it was necessary to use more force than normal to shape my words. So, everything that happened had a reasonable explanation and there is absolutely no reason to pay heed to my wife’s version of events. I will confess, however, that upon emerging from one’s own sleepy torpor, Gwitch’in snoring coming from the blackness could easily be mistaken for the growling of a hungry, thousand pound carnivore. Not that I did that. I’m just saying that any reasonably intelligent individual could have made that mistake. I did receive a severe wound that night. Jacquita made light of it, but it was fairly serious just the same. While I didn’t actually SEE it, I am pretty certain that a wolf crept into camp and attacked me during one of my fitful naps on the Yukon River’s edge. My wife claims the mark on my ankle was left by a mosquito earlier in the day when it was still warm, but I’m here to tell you that only something that is absolutely lupine could leave an impression like that. I dug at it for the entire twelve hour airplane ride home and for a week after that. I was lucky that whatever inflicted that welt didn’t drag me into the timber and eat me at its leisure. Believe it or not that’s my story and I’m sticking to it. END So that’s how we came to be needing a new motor for our boat. Only now you know . . . the rest of the story– from my dad’s highly embellished viewpoint. Please keep praying. We love you all. Yours in the Lord, The Craig Family
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