During the last supper, Christ gave a new commandment to His disciples instructing them to love each other the same way He loved each of them individually.  He also prayed very specifically to the Holy Father to keep the disciples unified together as one.  In fact, Christ exemplified His own singular relationship with God the Father as His prayerful desire for unity among the disciples.  Today, most Christians are very familiar with the John 13:35 commandment; but like other Biblical imperatives, many struggle to truly emulate Christ's commandment to love each other.  Even in the smaller community of Alaska--where the harsh winter conditions, unforgiving terrain, and immense distances between villages should make Christians more reliant upon each other based on their shared love for Jesus Christ--it's still very easy to lose sight of our unified purpose.  Our sinful human nature leads us to spend more time focusing on differences than similarities.

 

Although we ourselves sometimes fall short in keeping Christ's commandment, our MARC family spends a lot of time praying for the personal relationships we share with our ministry partners and fellow Christians here in Alaska.  Our desire is to remain unified in purpose wherever possible in order to demonstrate the love of Christ to the rest of the Alaskan community who need His love in their lives.  After all, Jesus promised to His disciples that their demonstrated love to each other would point to their relationship to Him.  We believe the same is true today.

 

Recently, our hearts were encouraged by the love and partnership we share with several other Alaskan Christian ministries.  As you may know, January was one of the coldest months on record in Alaska.  During the peak of the cold, our friends at Arctic Barnabas Ministries (ABM), who are focused on strengthening and encouraging pastor and missionary families in remote Alaska, received a call from Mountain Village where SEND missionary Amanda Hunt was staying in the Evangelical Covenant Church of Alaska's local parsonage.  Amanda sent out a distress call after freezing pipes burst fluids into the home, causing both water and heat loss to the parsonage.  

 

With rapid coordination, ABM put together a repair crew and called upon MARC's expertise to fly into the cold arctic conditions.  To keep the operating expenses as low as possible, our MARC team reached out to SOAR International, a nearby local ministry dedicated to service and outreach in Russia, to borrow a smaller but capable airplane perfectly sized for this emergency trip.  Since the bitter cold at those temperatures can easily freeze a home until spring, success wasn't a given, but God blessed the unified team's effort, and they successfully restored heat and water to the parsonage! 

 

While in Mountain Village, MARC pilot Bob Widman was also blessed to be able to reconnect with Josh Mathlaw, a pilot he had the privilege of instructing more than 20 years ago through our student pilot training program at MARC.

 

Joshua Mathlaw & Bob Widman

 Meanwhile, word came to the team that a parsonage in Marshall had also experienced frozen pipes, and during their journey home, they were able to stop and make those repairs as well--but God still wasn't done!  The bitter cold forced another overnight stop in Bethel, where the team landed to discover the Moravian church and seminary had both just experienced heating unit and plumbing failures.  It seems God anticipated their prayers for a repair team.  How surprised they were to know the team had all the necessary skills already warmed up just for them!

 

Had the unified efforts of this team not been ready to answer God's call across denomination and organizational lines, Christians would have suffered and the testimony of teamwork and God's provision would not have spread through those communities.  We thank God daily for our ministry partners!

  

"By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples,

if ye have love one to another."

John 13:35