356 Louise Lane
Fairbanks, Alaska 99709
Phone 907-479-3779, cell 907-322-8807
zerbe@alaska.net

Dear friends,                                                     

 Hello from the arctic where the dirt freezes ten feet deep every winter.  I should know, I’m trying to dig a foundation for the hangar in it right now! 

 As you know I tried to get past the bureaucrats, but couldn’t to put a hangar at the big airport.  Then I told you that a good Christian businessman who has been on the airport for twenty years wanted to build a very large hangar there and mine was to be build right beside his.  It was a perfect set up, but this good businessman also could not get past the bureaucrats.  They would not allow him to lease the land and then wait to build on it—that would be speculation.  What is capitalism if its not speculation?

 Consequently, I have purchased a lot at a small airport one mile from the big airport.  At least this lot is outside the city limits and what a difference that has made!  No permits are required, no inspections.  I can build on it a hangar or a hog farm!  I’m sure I’ll be happier where I’m building.  The only draw back is that I won’t be able to fly into that airport in quite as nasty weather.

Thanks to a church in Callahan, FL that has purchased a boiler to heat the hangar.  A big thanks to all of you who have contributed toward the hangar.  It feels really good to break ground on this project.  Four work teams are coming this summer to help.  Thanks to you all.

We had about 80 inches of snow on the roof of the guesthouse this past winter.  When spring came, the whole mass of snow came down like an avalanche and crushed the deck right to the ground.  We’ll put it back on with twice as much bracing and support underneath.  We had held a neighborhood Bible club there two years ago.  With changes in the families on our street, we’d like to hold another this year, but perhaps the deck won’t be repaired in time and we’ll find another location.

Scheduled just around the corner in June and July, the camps are so important to the village young people.  Effie Ballot, an Eskimo girl from Selawik, had attended Rock Crossing Camp three years and trusted Christ as Savior at camp.  Just a few days ago Effie and two others were overdue from a spring hunting trip.  Their snow machine broke through the “rotten” ice on the river.  So far two of the bodies, including Effie’s, have been found.  

Donations to sponsor campers helped Effie and others fly to camp.  While Selawik is only 3:15 hours away, some of these teens are 4½ hours away, one way.  That is 18 hours of flying to bring 5 of them to camp and back.  Gas prices in the Arctic–well that’s another story.  So far one church and two individuals have participated in sponsoring a trip in my plane for these remote Eskimo teens.  However, we could use more camper fees at $150 per camper. 

Manley Hot Springs along with other villages on the rivers are shrinking due to a lack of fish coming up river.  Large scale foreign commercial fishing boats are taking so many fish that the Native folks on the Yukon River and Its tributaries are not getting enough to live on as they have done for centuries.   Folks leave the village to find work in Fairbanks or Anchorage or the North Slope.   Still our church in Manley is growing a little.  Some folks are coming from quite a distance to be in church on Sunday—some over a hundred miles.  Others are moving into Manley proper and will be faithful to church, they say. 

 

Prayer requests:

1. Praise & prayer for the progress my dear mother has made since surgery in April for another stint and a pacemaker.
2. Pray for wisdom, finances and safety in building the hangar.
3. Camp staff, Campers and camper fees. 
4. A good annual maintenance inspection and safety in the flying.  The annual inspection is around the corner.  Pray that I’ll see every little flaw, for safety sake.   Missionary aviation is easy –all you have to do is keep your intake ahead of your exhaust!
5. The church at Manley to continue growing.  I’d like to see change in the hearts of many villagers who have rejected or ignored the Gospel.
6. Selawik village and the families who lost loved ones in the ice.  Pray that Effie’s testimony of salvation will lead others to Christ.
7. Our new neighbor family—though only in their thirties, both parents have serious disabling health challenges.  They are trying to rear three teenage girls and leave them a good heritage. 

 Thank you for your prayers and support.

 Faithfully yours,

Les Zerbe

907-479-3779 

zerbe@alaska.net 

  

PS.  Many of you send us email messages.  Please, if you would, always include your phone number.  At 3.4 cents per minute on our phone card, I can usually do business much quicker and for little cost.  Usually people email back and forth several times.  So, please send your phone numbers, because my wife will be emailing you  to ask for them. J

  

SOURDOUGH SAM SEZ:

 “Think I’ll raise two hogs and two bureaucrats outside the city limits in two pens to see what happens.  My guess is the hogs will make a real stink, and the bureaucrats will get overtime trying to figure out why hogs stink and how to regulate it!”

  

 “Farming looks mighty easy when your plow is a pencil, and you’re a thousand miles from the cornfield!  ---Dwight D Eisenhower, referring to bureaucrats  in a speech September 25, 1956

 

Faithfully yours,

Les Zerbe
Les and Jane Zerbe

SOURDOUGH SAM SEZ: