Dear Family and Friends,

No, it's not an April fools' joke. This really is a newsletter update from us! Rumor has it that spring is here, but we are not so sure. The week that spring officially started, we had -23F wind chills one morning and a couple more inches of snow added to our already high piles in the yard. David took a picture of a moose walking through drifts at a neighbor's house that shows how deep the snow is here (shown below right), but for those of you who don't speak "moose size," the snow was over 3 feet deep here last week. This week we had a few 40+ degree days and saw that the white snowshoe hares are starting to turn brown again (our first sign of spring...the robins are smart enough to fly up after it's warmer!), but our April Fools' Day surprise was waking up to more snow falling.  All.  Day.  Long.

The past few months have been busy as always. MARC welcomed Kyle and Ellen Braband as new staff additions this winter. Kyle is a pilot and a mechanic; he's doing aircraft maintenance work in our hangars and has already been a great help to Travis McCullough, our director of maintenance. Travis is also getting some help from volunteer April Erhardt who is helping out while accumulating required hours for her A&P mechanic certification. April and her husband Isaac have become great friends; they love to experiment and are good at shaking up us "old folks" to try new recipes and activities like snowshoeing. You may also remember that another couple, Brendan and Rebekah Yoder, stayed with us for a couple months last summer while they were here volunteering with MARC. They came back in March to help out with some flying and stayed with us again; this time we got to meet their 4-month-old daughter Joella! 

MARC teamed up with Carry the Cure and Broken Walls again this March to provide transportation for their Iditarod tour. Our planes carried them to six different villages this year.  About half of the villages only have between 100-250 people in the entire village. One village elder said Broken Walls was the first real band to ever hold a concert there! Broken Walls is able to reach the Native Alaskans in ways that touch their hearts through dance and music, signature traditions of the people here. They saw many people begin a relationship with God and inspired others in the local community to step up and start making a difference for Jesus where they live.  It was a great trip all around for the MARC, Carry the Cure, and Broken Walls team.  We look forward to sharing the videos from the trip in the near future as we used this particular ministry trip as a venue to have a professional missionagrapher accompany the team and shoot footage for new promotional videos for MARC. We can't wait to see the results!

David & I have enjoyed the winter in spite of the unusually cold weather. We enjoyed watching the start of the Tustamena 200 dog sled race in January. Seeing the dogs and mushers take off is always fun, even if it was -25F that day! I wore nearly every piece of winter gear I owned, and I understand why people here wear fur--it makes a huge difference in being able to stay warm! We were also able to see an amazing view of the Northern Lights here a few weeks ago, twice in one night!

I'm enjoying the spring semester at the local community college and am taking Health Psychology, Behavioral Neuroscience, Personality, and Trigonometry. I managed to end up in three classes that are heavy on papers and presentations and have had at least one due every two weeks since the end of February. This will continue until the first week of May.  (Next topics up for publication are stem cells, music therapy, and positive psychology. Sounds like fun, right?) The classes are very interesting and enjoyable, but they are definitely time-consuming this round! I've also signed up for ten hours of summer school and register for my fall semester classes this week.  I'm actually socially savvy enough to be embarrassed about admitting that I'm already excited about the upcoming classes. 

We mentioned in a recent newsletter that MARC had submitted a grant application to the M.J. Murdock Charitable Trust to fund a salary for David's position as Development Director for MARC. Although they encouraged MARC to resubmit a different type of application later, the Trust's board met at the end of February and chose not to fund this particular request for funding. They gave some great feedback to MARC's board for future applications, so we're thankful for future possibilities despite this particular setback. 

I still have enough education benefits to attend two more complete school years plus summer sessions, which helps with the earned housing allowance, but we are also currently exploring other income-producing options and hopefully will find one that will enable us to stay here and serve with MARC. David has been very busy investigating and developing possibilities as well as working on a potential consulting company opportunity (more to come later!).

With your help this past year, we were able to help the MARC team increase their impact and ministry outreach during 2011. Despite the poor economy, God blessed MARC in gaining 24% in additional ministry support this past year, which is vital as we are now serving more communities and organizations than ever before. Our increased focus on outreach and information sharing helped enable a gain of 76% more donors and 62% more prospective contacts for MARC during our first full calendar year here.

We can't say "Thank You!" enough for all your prayers, involvement, and support in helping MARC serve the needs of those working in Alaska's remote and isolated places! We're very thankful for what God has done and continues to do here in Alaska.

With much love,  

David & Karin