Shinens Visit & a Full House

0Josh • 21st Jul 2005 • blog entries, nome., station life

What a great week here in Nome. Its starting to get beautiful outside again and it looks like we will be having temperatures back up in the 70s again starting tomorrow. I guess the big news is the flood of people we’ve got running through our house right now. We have some two KICY volunteers staying in our upstairs spare room while they are working on the transmitter site, and as of Monday we have a couple who is part of the work team up from Georgia to work on Nome Covenant Church’s kitchen. The couple arrived Monday afternoon and because of their schedules and our schedules it took about 3 days for Lydia to meet them…it was pretty funny the sometimes sitcom like circumstances that would go on in our house that made it so they never met Lydia. One night Lydia went to bed and I decided to stay up a little longer before hitting the hay. They came in about 10 minutes later, we talked about the day they had in Nome, and then they went to bed….about 5 minutes later, Lydia got called back into work and had to leave.

Its been pretty interesting being on the receiving side of a missions trip, especially with church. Having a group come up and put on a VBS and remodel the kitchen is something that we would have grown up doing at our home church. Its really great to see everyone who is willing to take the time and money to come to Nome and help out in the community.

Last night Lydia & I got to have dinner and visit with Dave & Mitzi Shinen. This was a special treat, the Shinens have been working for Wycliffe Bible Translators for over 30 years on St. Lawrence Island which is about an hour plane ride (towards Russia) over the Bering sea. Its amazing how God has used these amazing people over the years and how they have been able to live in literally one of the most remote places on earth. They were telling us that when they moved there no one in the village had running water…well now, a few decades later 80% of the village has water, but for the Shinens as Dave put it “the only running that we get is me running outside to get it”. The Shinens lived in Nome for about 15 years in the middle of the translation project so they didn’t have to raise their kids on the island. My parents were living in Nome at the same time and the Shinens where sponsors when I was dedicated to the church as an infant. We had a great time talking with these amazing folks.

The AM station went on the air Wednesday afternoon a few days earlier than expected and things continue to go well with the project. I’m still fishing, although this week I haven’t been able to go out nearly as much. It will be nice to have all this Alaskan food back home in Seattle!!