Winter has arrived...

Grace and greetings.

Yes, it is December, and Christmas is next week, though I am still having a hard time believing it. The church is busy trying to get the Christmas Pageant ready, which open to the whole congregation to participate rather than just the Sunday School. This year it started out late because of several different situations happening at the same time, so there is a rush to get it done by Monday night.

Then there is the Christmas Feast, which is just like the Thanksgiving Feast, only for Christmas . There is the setting up of the materials, covering the floor again, and getting the people lined up.

As if that is not enough to do, we will be having a funeral this weekend to confuse the other activities as well.

The temperature has dropped as well. This week it has been averaging around -22 degrees. Fortunately, there has been only a light breeze to go with the cold, when the wind picks up, of course the wind chill will drop far below the present heat wave.

Hope all is well, and your Christmas is fantastic if I do not make anymore entries between now and then.

Peace and blessings.

Mid-December already?

Grace and greetings.

Here it is December 13th already, and I am still wondering what happened to October and November. Though winter has set in here on the North Slope, I still have a hard time believing how fast this year is going by, Faster and faster every year.

I know I am in trouble already, as today is my baby brother's 44th birthday, I have purchased only one Christmas present. Though it seems that the way to buy Christmas presents now is over the Internet, I am still way behind on my gift giving.

Anyway, Happy Birthday little bro.

Peace and blessings.

Busted boiler and broken pipes

Grace and greetings.

After causing problems for the last couple of months, and spewing glycol every couple of weeks, the boiler for the Christian Education wing finally gave up and died completely. The church had been running on one boiler for so long, nobody remembered when the other one died, and was to be replaced. So on Saturday night we decided to replace the boiler completely, (what other choice did we really have?). Of course finding two boilers was going to be the question. We were told that it could take any where from one to six weeks to the the situation fixed. With the outside temperature ranging from 5 to 20 degrees we had to worry about the water pipes freezing and busting. So we shut down the water, which included the only bathrooms in the entire building and prayed for the best.

Monday morning we were told that two boilers were found in Anchorage, and would be sent up as soon as possible, it all depended on when the airlines could get the space to ship them up. We notified the different people who rent office space in the building, from city, state and federal agencies, to let them know that the heat and water were all gone. We made it through the first week okay, with the hope that the boilers would be here soon.

They arrived Friday, and the workers from Barrow Mechanical worked all day Saturday to install the boilers. We had heat for Sunday, but still no water. Somebody donated a honey bucket to be used for Sunday School while waiting for the water to be turned on. The water company came by on Sunday afternoon to reinstall the water gauges and turn the water back on...giving showers to people and our new boilers as the water pipes upstairs had frozen over the week. Monday morning, Barrow Mechanical was back on the scene and by yesterday afternoon, the water problem had been fixed, the bathrooms were working and we had heat for the workers in the offices. The honey bucket was picked up this afternoon, so all is well....until Barrow Mechanical gets back with us with the bill.

Well, we have a new heating system for the Christian Education Building and hopefully water and heat for the cold weather to come, January, February and March.

With prayers of a safe and warm holiday season for all of you,

Peace and blessings.

Open Seas

Grace and greetings.

There are discussions taking place through out the world pointing to Barrow and the North Polar Ice Cap as their proof. Some are saying that there is global warming and it is affecting the area as well as the world. The two seas that meet at Point Barrow, Beaufort Sea to the east and Chukchi Sea to the west; they are part of the other bodies of water that make up the Arctic Ocean. With the winds and currents as high as they have been this winter, and winters of the past several years, the waters are still open as of today. There have been times where it looks like it will freeze over, but the winds and currents break it up.

The other side of the argument is that this is how the cycles of Nature go. There are times of cold, and times of warmth. Eighteen (18) years ago, Barrow made world news because three bowhead whales were trapped in the frozen over seas and leads were cut in the ice to get the whales to open water. That took place in late September and early October. Now the whales would have no problem getting back to the Pacific Ocean. I was talking with somebody the other night who said he remembered in the 60's and 70's there would already be four to seven feet of frozen ice out in front of Barrow in December. I also spoke with someone earlier this year who remembers swimming in the lakes and ocean growing up as a child, during the summer of course!

Several people have commented on how mild the winters have been of the last several years. Of decades past, December is usually around zero degrees Fahrenheit, but now it is around 20 degrees above zero. So the debate continues...

Anyway, I wanted to get another blog posted this week, two in two days, Oh wow...

I pray all is well with you and your families.

Peace and blessings.

It Has Been a While

Grace and Greetings.

It has been a while since my last post, so I thought I had better get something up.

To answer the major question on everybody's minds, yes the sun has now set for the year. Though it set on November 18th, we still get some light for a couple of hours at the moment, but I am sure that will be gone too here soon.

The weather has not been that bad here, averaging between 15-25 degrees above. The fun is not the temperature itself, but the wind chill, with winds up to about 30 miles an hour. There was one day last week that got down to -15 then add the 15 mile an hour wind, and it was cold.

Thanksgiving here is a little different as well. The majority of the people gather at the church for a service on Thanksgiving day, then they have a feast. The feast is all traditional foods, starting with duck or caribou soup; fried bread; Eskimo ice cream, (whipped caribou fat with some meat in it); muktuk and of course the whale meat from the hunts earlier in the year. The whole church is prepared three days before the feast by having plastic sheets and cardboard covering ALL the floor space; people cook at home and then come to the church early in the morning and get ready to share the feast with all that show up. The service started at about noon, the feast started about one, and they were through serving people about 4:30. By 7 pm you would never had known that the feast had happened, except for the particular smells that come with the prepared food.

We will be having another feast this Christmas, but that involves a week long celebration between Christmas and New Year's Day.

Until next time, hopefully it will be MUCH sooner, thank you for sharing your time with me.

Peace and Blessings.

Ian

Trying to get back

Grace and greetings.

My physical and emotional low points are still keeping from working on this blog. It just seems that I do not have the mental capacity to say anything witty or worthwhile, (not that I have said anything witty or worthwhile anyway).

Now to answer the question most people ask, no it is not completely dark yet. The sun will be setting for the winter in a couple of weeks, then will re-appear again at the end of January. Winter has hit here, snow and cold blowing winds, with the temps around 20 degrees above zero Fahrenheit.

I am not sure that I had mentioned this before, but the addresses here run a little different than other places. Here, each building has it's own "house number", this includes the garages and sheds. Though the Church is 1268 Agvik St., we would only have to say 1268 for people to find it. ("Agvik" means Bowhead Whale) Of course it would helps to know which street houses are on, because like in other places, the numbers do not always follow the same pattern, 2500 may not be on the same street as 2700, nor just two streets away.

Well, I am late for another meeting, so I will sign off for now, just trying to get back into the swing of things...

Peace and blessings.

Making a comeback

Grace and greetings.

It has been a couple of months now since I last wrote, and I thank you for the readers who let me know that I have not written for a while.

Since the last time I wrote, as you can guess, much has happened.

In Barrow, the weather has changed. Since the end of September, we have had snow. The average temperature has not really dropped that much, it has been around 25 degrees above Zero for the last couple of weeks. The ice has finally returned to the Barrow shoreline. Most years the ice flow comes in and out of Barrow all year long, but this summer we had not seen the ice since it left in early July. The missing ice flow has caused problems the nature here above the Arctic Circle, walruses, seals and polar bears do not have the ice flows to live off of or give birth off of. In Greenland they are growing vegetables they have never been able to grow before. Whether it is Global Warming or the cycle of time, I do not know, but what ever it is, it is not good for up here.

I have been fighting a cough and bronchitis for the last couple of months, which is part of the reason I have just not felt like writing. My wife got sick just after we returned from Wisconsin for her mother's memorial service. The flights back left me with plugged ears for about a week, which meant more pain and a loss of hearing. Since returning from Wisconsin, both my wife and son have tested positive for strep. All three of us are recovering slowly. (I thank my daughter for catching a spelling error,strep, but she missed the other one).

Now is the time to get something to eat to keep up my strength. I find that I tend to not eat, then get too tired to work or do anything...eating on a regular basis just might be a good thing.

Peace and blessings to all.