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www.arcticoutreach.org e-mail rinker@arcticoutreach.org
We feel the best way to encourage and inform you folks who are so faithfully praying and supporting this ministry is to report on most recent events and our current schedule here at the mission. So I'll start with yesterday, which was Sunday. We had 72 (Feb. 1st) in our Sunday School and service. We have four separate classes for different age groups in which we have singing, lessons, and crafts so we need lots of help. We had 5 vehicles from central Alberta come with workers including the Bible College van load from Three Hills, the Tab. Church van from Three Hills with it's youth group team (but this van broke down half way here and never made it!), a car from Red Deer with a S.S. Teacher & her family, a car from Rocky with a teacher, and another car from Rocky with helpers, and a number of these workers are Native. We are thrilled with the workers who are volunteering their time and traveling so far to make this possible. Friday, two of the College students came to help with the teen group event we have each week and stayed overnight and helped with some emergency repairs to the damage from the severe wind storm that night, and help with some work at the scene of the death of a young man we had in the neighborhood. Two husband and wife teams from Rocky Mt. House have faithfully been helping us with the teen event on Fridays which is a serious effort on their part and is having a wonderful impact.
Our schedule for special events is as follows. On Feb. 13-15 one of the college students is taking some teens from here to a special event at the Kewatin Native Bible College in northern Alberta. On Feb. 14, one of our twins, Melany Hope is getting married, just out of Edmonton, Alberta. On Feb. 18 a Christian celebrity is coming to the O'Chiese school for a concert focused on drug and alcohol issues and we are working on scheduling his team for a few more days in other schools. On March 2-6 a team from the Rocky Mt. College in Calgary (This is a Bible College) is coming to the Sunchild School to work with students on conflict issues, counseling, and in the evenings will be holding a sports camp and possibly VBS in the gym. This will be Monday through Friday.
The dates for our Sunchild Summer VBS is set for July 6-10. Please consider sending someone to "help". We will be holding another VBS on a nearby Reserve and possibly a youth camp as well. We have a team from Pennsylvania which will be here for 2 ½ weeks to do these events, but we need lots of support workers to come and assist with this. So if anyone from your churches wants a missions experience this is a wonderful opportunity.
Election Update: The Sunchild Band Administration election is over. We feel God really helped the people to get a good Chief and Council and we are expecting great things.
We are still working on keeping our Arctic Outreach operating and I have a trip scheduled into Old Crow in March. In line with keeping a high standard of maintenance for the Cessna 182 for the Northern operations we had to pull all the cylinders. We have a couple of maintenance engineers in Red Deer who are a great blessing to us in maintaining the quality level of reliability we require for the Arctic operations.
We are so dependent on your prayer support. On Jan. 2nd I hit an elk dead center and killed it instantly. It was in the dark, at high speed, and I totaled out the mission van. It could easily have been very serious, but I wasn't hurt. At the last second I think he was falling and that keep the impact down low.
In His Service, Rodger & Karen Rinker
Update: The ministry team to the O'Chiese school was very successful with 200 people attending in the evening. The team was also invited to speak in the school classrooms and invited to come back as soon as they can, which will be in April, with the O'Chiese Band Administration paying all their expenses.
The ministry team from the Rocky Mt. College in Calgary finished their week in the Sunchild school. This team was a real blessing to the school kids and simply wonderful to be able to have a Christian ministry right in the public school. From noon until the end of school they ministered in the classrooms. Then from the end of school until 5:00 they had a VBS type ministry to the elementary students in the gym, and then following that they had a sports camp for the teens until 9:00. This was a real work load.
Many things have been on hold until the Band elections were over. Please keep us in special prayer that we can work with this new administration to develop the mission facilities so we can handle the numbers we are working with. We have some wonderful possibilities and face exciting potential as God is raising up people to work with us and lift this load. We will be posting the names of the new Chief and Council on our web site and asking people to pray for them to discharge their duties with honor and blessing to the people they serve.
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