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

January 2009 Dear friends,

Greetings from Alaska where the sign reads “-64^oF”! We’re going to see -40 to -60 for two weeks. Must be the global warming we’ve been hearing about. The cold affects every-thing. Let me just describe for you what this can do.

It was time to change oil in the plane. As I tried to tow the plane into the hangar with a Honda 3-wheeler as usual, it spun out. I closed the hangar door quickly (it was -40) and put chains on the 3-wheeler. Another guy climbed on the back for traction, but still it spun out. I would need to heat the plane up outside overnight, and then run it into the hangar on its own power. Meanwhile, the hangar door had risen twice allowing frigid air to fill the hangar, causing water in the copper line feeding waste oil to the hangar furnace to freeze.

Quickly I disconnected the line at both ends and blew it out with 120 pounds of air pressure. Black waste oil spattered all over the place, but within seconds the furnace was working against the -40 degrees. However, the extreme cold forced me to cancel a flight for some missionaries in Ft. Yukon. My cut off for flights is twenty degrees below zero. The civil air patrol won’t even look for a downed pilot at 20 below zero.

Next day a call came in at 5:30 AM from the guesthouse that a pipe had frozen and burst on the top floor. Water leaked everywhere, dripping down to the first floor, and then to the crawl space to the top of the heater. We spent six hours fixing the problems--bleed the boiler and water lines, repair the pipe, clean the electric eye on the boiler, replace the main control on the burner, repair a malfunctioning thermostat, recalibrate the burner electrodes, and replace one pop off valve. While I fixed the pipe, Jane and a friend spent hours just vacuuming and mopping up water and finally pulling up the carpet in one room.

Several weeks ago, we received call at 12 midnight from the jail; a lady whom Jane knows through the Reformers Unanimous Bible study had just been released--put out in the cold at 25 below with no money, and nowhere to go. The rescue mission and women’s shelter had locked their doors much earlier. Could we come and pick her up? We did and after a few days decided to extend emergency shelter for several months to help her get on her feet again. She has been a great help during Jane’s recuperation from shoulder surgery, and Jane will appreciate not being alone while I go out to visit churches in February and March. Karin says that she is trying to learn “to lean not” to her own understanding. Please pray for Karin as she rebuilds her life—job, housing, car, new friends, and grows in her walk with the Lord.

Then a deaf woman called asking for our help. She is an Athabascan Indian from an arctic village, who received Christ several years ago, but struggles with lifelong addictions. She is well known by the Fairbanks police and the rescue mission. She came to church with us twice during our coldest week, and then went visiting friends. We haven’t seen her since, but she did ask a bartender to call us at 9:30 PM for a ride to where she was staying--a thirty mile round trip for us. What would you do? We stayed at home, choosing not to enable her to by providing free taxi rides. Please pray for her.

A young couple, recent graduates of Pensacola Christian College, came to visit for a week in December. The weather was twenty degrees the day before they arrived then fell to between 40 below and 60 below for the week they were here. They are considering moving to Alaska to work with us in the ministry and experienced a real Alaska winter.

Please continue to pray about the home for abused Native children. Funding for such a project may take some time due to the status of the current economy. It would be easier to find support for an already established home, but starting a new ministry and obtaining the seed funds to purchase the property is challenging. Meantime we all have to trust the Lord in this financial crisis our nation is experiencing.

We wonder what the future holds for our country and for us in 2009.  Will we be caught up to meet the Lord in the air?  Could Israel become so sick of war that they would accept an antichrist's peace plan?  Our parents’ generation thought the same in WWII. David Rockefeller, a banker a lifelong globalist, said years ago: “This present window of opportunity, during which a truly peaceful and interdependent world order might be built, will not be open for too long - We are on the verge of a global transformation. All we need is the right major crisis and the nations will accept the New World Order.” So we live as though the Lord could return at any moment, but plan as if He may not return for a hundred years. 

Your prayers and support sustain the ministry here in Alaska. Thank you.

Faithfully yours,

Les Paul Zerbe

P.S. Since I began composing this letter, I broke my own rule about flying below -20 today. It was -25 degrees at the airport here and -50 degrees in my destination of Ft. Yukon. However, at 8000’ the temperature was +10 degrees. I ascended quickly to altitude and flew most of the time in the warmer air, descending into the Arctic cold. My missionary passengers loaded immediately. We took off right away to get back into that warm layer of air to get the missionaries to the dentist, to buy groceries, and to fill their propane bottles so they could cook again. Brethren, pray for us.

　
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