Thanks for your faithful support in prayer and finances. We can’t be here without you.

Les with 33 and 30 pound king salmon catch

Les and Jane Zerbe
Missionaries in Alaska

November 2008

Greetings from Fairbanks, Alaska.

I’m flying for a missionary family in Fort Yukon today. The missionary’s wife received the “Citizen of the Year” award from the village of Fort Yukon, a very high honor indeed. We can all praise the Lord of these victories when they come. It’s winter here now so a whole new set of flying priorities and habits apply. Pray for my safety.

It’s so easy just to breathe this next statement: I’m in the process of cutting up 13 cords of wood for winter heat. Easy to say, but I’m grateful for a really nice Stihl chainsaw that a visiting work team member gave me a few years back.

I’m also grateful for a fall moose in the freezer. It was about 7 a.m. September 20, at a spot 50 air miles south of Fairbanks in a small cabin on an abandoned gold mine claim on the Totatlanika River. I was just making some strong coffee and the wind was blowing gently northeast. The rising sun let me discover a cow moose across the river and halfway up the side of a mountain not far away. The only thing I can figure is she smelled the coffee because suddenly she stopped, looked at the cabin, and ran all the way to within 20 feet of the cabin door. I let her smell the coffee for a while and then opened the cabin door and let her see me. She evidently liked the coffee’s smell better than the coffee’s maker, so she ambled off. Then, running from the same area was a large bull moose who ran to within 80 feet of the cabin, smelling the coffee and his cow moose girlfriend getting away. His hasty retreat toward the cow was short-lived. He now resides in my freezer as moose burger, filet mignon, and BBQ ribs!

The only thing that would make this hunt easier would be Sarah Palin cleaning the moose for me, while lecturing me on the evils of Barack Hussein Obama-nation! She’s a great lady! Her pastor is a man who grew up under my dad’s ministry in Grace Baptist Church in Anchorage. She has character and courage and can surround herself with the right advisors if she is inexperienced in some areas.

Last week a little girl named Tess called me, upset about her 11 year old Eskimo friend. The Eskimo girl had told Tess that she was pregnant! Tess asked her who the boy was. The Eskimo girl didn’t want to say. Tess’s older sister took the phone and pressed her, told her a boy had to be part of the situation and demanded an answer. The Eskimo girl said she was not sure if it was her daddy or her brothers.

More than ever we need a home for these kids! Note this article detailing Alaska’s suicide problem.

Alaska receives youth suicide prevention grant--The Associated Press, 10/15/2008, JUNEAU, AK The state will receive $500,000 a year over the next three years to try to stem the high rates of suicide among young people across Alaska. The federal grant will target youth between the ages of 14 and 24. The money will help create regional trained teams who will identify the things that stress local youth in a community and those that strengthen and protect them…. Young Alaskans committed suicide at three times the national average in 2005 - nearly 30 deaths per 100,000 people….

Meanwhile, a grant writer, a lady from a supporting church in Illinois, came to teach and help us apply for a grant for the Hot Springs Children’s Home. The Hot Springs property is still available for sale, and we need it. Pray for the 91-year old owner’s soul and health. He still hopes we can get it. Pray for us throughout this process.

Jane attended an interpreters’ conference in Anchorage last month, fine-tuning her deaf ministry skills. She said that it makes her realize how much she’s got to learn. Yet, she’s been able to help a group of people begin learning ASL and helped establish a new deaf ministry at our supporting church, and several deaf people have come to know Christ as Savior. She’ll be having surgery on her right shoulder for arthritis and bone spurs that are impeding movement and causing pain.

It’s such a tragedy to watch America the beautiful disappear in our lifetime, but it appears it may. Perhaps we deserve Obama. Hitler killed 6 million Jews—we have killed over 40 million babies in our own infanticide Holocaust. Here we are, a “Christian” nation, squandering our future. Many of us “simple folks” could see this financial crisis coming, so why couldn’t those in Washington?

We are grateful to all of you for your faithful support, which must be difficult to maintain for some.

Faithfully yours,

Les Paul Zerbe

　
THE CARAVAN CONNECTION, Inc., 356 Louise Lane, Fairbanks, AK 99709

CENTRAL MISSIONARY CLEARINGHOUSE, P.O. Box 219228, Houston, TX 77218-9228 1-800-CMC-PRAY

Sending Church: Lavon Drive Baptist Church, 1520 Lavon Drive, Garland, TX 75040

Faithfully yours,

Les Paul Zerbe
www.farnorthflyingchaplain.com

www.farnorthflyingchaplain.com
zerbe@alaska.net