Inside Story: “Please Stay”

Inside Story for Friday 29th of November 2024

By Andrew McChesney

At 8 p.m., an elderly married couple knocked on the door of the parsonage beside the Seventh-day Adventist church in Savoonga, Alaska. It wasn’t late. The summer sun shone brightly in the sky. It wouldn’t go down until 2:30 a.m. The Siberian Yupik people living on St. Lawrence Island, located just 36 miles east of Russia in the Bering Sea, wouldn’t go to bed for hours.

Image © Pacific Press

Eugene and Marie, who were in their mid-80s, didn’t wait for anyone to open the door. Nobody waits for the door to be opened in the remote village of 835 people. Everyone knocks and walks in. The couple wanted to speak with the visitor staying in the parsonage. I was visiting the island to collect stories for Adventist Mission.

Marie spoke directly. “Are you a pastor?” she asked me.

Her eyes filled with emotion when I shook my head. “Please stay,” she said, softly. “We need someone to keep the church open and to teach us.”

The church had closed several times since it and the parsonage were built in 1972. Pastors had preached and lived there for a while, but then the Adventist presence shrunk to little to nothing for two decades. In 2010, the church had reopened when two retired nurses from North Carolina, Bill and Elouise Hawkes, arrived as Bible workers with the Alaska Conference’s Arctic Mission Adventure outreach program to Alaska Natives. Bill died in 2016, and Elouise stayed. But shortly before my visit, Elouise left for health reasons.

Marie missed Elouise terribly and described how she invited villagers to her home for meals and prepared food packages. “We need her,” she said.

I never met Elouise. She was enthusiastic and helpful as we exchanged emails for my trip. My respect grew as I heard about her love for villagers.

As our conversation wrapped up at 9 p.m., Marie looked at me again.

“Please,” she said. “Stay. We need someone to teach us about God.”

With her pleading gaze, I caught a sense of the compassion that Jesus must have felt during His earthly ministry. “But when He saw the multitudes, He was moved with compassion for them, because they were weary and scattered, like sheep having no shepherd” (Matthew 9:36, NKJV). I didn’t want to leave. My heart ached for the precious people of Savoonga and the other more than 200 native communities in Alaska. Only 11 of those communities have an Adventist presence.

When Jesus’ heart ached, “He said to His disciples, ‘The harvest truly is plentiful, but the laborers are few. Therefore pray the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into His harvest’ ” (Matthew 9:37-38, NKJV).

Pray for Savoonga. Pray for Alaska. Thank you for your Thirteenth Sabbath Offering this quarter that will help open a center of influence to share God’s love with Alaska Natives in Bethel, Alaska.