God's Miracles take 10

God keeps surprising us with so many things. Yesterday (Monday) Nathan happened to hear that the Methodist Church in town had a work crew in town for their church and they were just about finished with their work. Nathan contacted them and they were excited of the oppurtunity for more work before they leave on Thursday. One of the things happening next on the church is welding more support rods to the future attic. Guess what one of Nathan's new crew has done for 46 years? Welding of course! So that was the project for today.
On Wednesday the crew of 10 will be working hard. We were also asked by Scott Kirby the work team coordinator for projects here in Alaska, if we could possibly use the full team of 16 people that is scheduled to be here next week. The original plan was to have just 10 of the team of Alabamians here at our projects and the other 6 elsewhere. Nathan said send them on over! We are praying 2-4 of the team members have construction experience to help Nathan divide the crew into effective units! Framing will be the main project.
We are now waiting to receive the electrical plan so we can take all the necessary paperwork to the fire marshall in Anchorage to apply for the permit. Keep praying for that process.

engineer approval

We now have stamped plans from the engineer for the church project. Next stop fire marshall. The first work crew was top notch. Hard working and willing to do anything. We dug all the footings and poured them on Friday. We also built a yard barn for the church to use for storage. Busy busy week. Accomplished much for the kingdom.
Nathan

Special Blessing

The work crew this week blessed us by including us on the Resurrection Bay boat cruise with dinner! We saw sea lions, jellyfish, puffins and mountain goats. It was so beautiful. Caleb got a tad seasick but a 1/2 hour after Dramamine took care of that. Josh absolutely loved it. They had a park ranger on the tour pointing out the animal and things and a junior ranger program for the kids so the boys have now been deputized. Thanks guys!
Wendy Milligian, the pastors wife, graciously took care of timothy for us so we could enjoy the cruise with Caleb and Josh. Timothy hasn't been away from me for a few weeks but he was a very good boy and took a 3 hour nap for her and had fun playing with 2 year old Anna until we got back at 10:45pm to pick him up.

Week One!

Can't believe we've been here a week already. God has done so much already it seems like we have been here much longer than that though. The church building is progressing forward with concrete footing work being done and tons of brush clearing away from the building. The engineer was very happy with Nathan's drawings but we are still waiting for his final stamp so the plans can get to the fire marshall and we can get the building permit. The engineer is doing all of his work for free for the church which is a huge blessing because an earlier candidate for engineer wanted thousands of dollars to do his planning. God worked His wonder again!
The work crew that is here from all over the lower 48 is busy at work with Nathan in the building. They have been digging holes for footings. One of the women in the group was so excited about being up here she called her husband who is a bridge builder in Pennsylvania to come up and help. He has been a huge help to Nathan.
Vbs for the kids has been blessed by the leading of the women from the group as the kids make a journey through the bible. Please pray that the kids will impacted by the word of God and the community will come to know the truth.

Summer Address

Our address for the summer is
PO Box 21
Moose Pass, AK. 99631

We are settled in to our place now and the boys have made a few new friends. I met a few people from the church yesterday. Moose Pass is a town of about 200 or so. It's hard to tell population since the towns are spread out along the highway and there are probably many people that live up in the mountains. Tourism is the main source of income for many residents. Prices for things are about double the lower 48. We walked around town a couple of nights ago and there is a lodge/resteraunt, 2 small churches, a tiny school, little post office and a general store add a dozen or so houses and that is the town! A float plane touring service flies out of the lake bordering town. The train from Anchourage to Seward (29 miles south) comes through town but doesn't stop.

moose pass miracle

Hi,
I've hijacked Amy's phone to bring you an update on what's been happening on the project. Yesterday I went with pastor Mark to the neighboring house to the north of the old church building. Apparently the owner died a few days ago and his family was here wrapping up his affairs. They told us we could take anything that might be of use to us on the church project. He was a contractor in the area. As the saying we like to use at Rejoice goes -where God guides God provides. To my great joy there was a Bosch brute jackhammer with 4 bits and so much equipment we had to take about 6 pickup loads.Then this morning they said we could have all the lumber that was around too. That took about 7 loads to haul all total it is over $10,000 worth of stuff that will all get used on the new Church. The very sad note in all of this is that the man who died was not a christian. All of his family I met are Christians -1 is a pastor in Washington state. They where extremely sad about their brother but where overjoyed that his stuff will be put to good use on the new building.

Nathan

We are both so blown away by what God is doing! On our trip up here we listened to a cd message from a church service 4 years ago when Grahm Sellars visited our church and talked about tithing. We were reminded about the passage in Malachai where God tells the Jewish people to test His provision by their faithfulness in tithing and He would open the floodgates of heaven. God certainly has done that here- preparing it even before we arrived at precisly His right timing. We are so blessed to be apart of His plan here in Moose Pass.

Settling In

Yesterday proved to be successful in getting everything unpacked and organized here at the house. The trailer we are living is very adequte with 2 bedrooms- our bedroom is the room between the house and church and was used as they nursery which they moved to a different classroom for the summer. We have our own laundry and well stocked kitchen, a living room with bookshelves and a little entryway for all the boots and jackets. The only highway in the area is right out our front door but the traffic really is not to bad beyond that is a couple of houses then the snowcapped mountains!
The weather has and is supposed to be 40s and rainy this week and the cloud cover has been low so we can't fully take in the beauty of the area yet.
Monday night we had supper at Pastor Milligians house and the boys and I met the family. Wendy and I are going to get along great. She drinks her coffee black like me! Anna is 3 and had a great time showing Timmy her toys and Caleb and Josh hit it off with Jacob who is 5 1/2. Unfortunatly Andrew who is almost 8 was sick so the poor guy was in bed. Immediatly after dinner Nathan was ready to get going on the project so he and Mark dove into the planning. God is doing awesome things.
Tuesday night we had our fist houseguests- the Boetcher family flew down from Soldotna for supper. They are 3 hours away by car but only 15 min by plane. They are our missionary friends that started us down the whole serving in alaska thing. Their three little cutie pies had fun with our boys. Caleba and josh taught them musical chairs.
We are adapting pretty well to alaska time. We are 3 hours behind minnesota and the light 24 hours a day really throws you off. Like last night we finally got all the boys in bed at 10pm but it looks like it is 8pm out and back home it would be 1am!
Today we are going down to Seward- a little bigger town about a 1/2 hour to the south to to get groceries and nathan wants to talk to the lumber yard down there.

day eleven

Beautiful morning here in Anchorage. Our time is now three hours behind MN so I am writing this at 9am. Nathan is getting an oil change on the truck while I have some laundry going and the kids are watching PbS. We don't have to be out of our hotel room until noon so we are taking advantage of that. You can see the mountains from our window. Its absolutely beautiful with the mountains, lakes, glaciers and plants.
When Nathan gets back I get to do a little shopping then on to Moose Pass. We are so excited to get there and begin working! Can't wait to see what God is going to do.
Thank you so much for your prayers. God granted us the safety, patience and peace that we needed!

Day nine

this was probably our most eventful day. We started out swimming in the Hot Spring Pool after tenting for the 3rd night in a row. Somehow we managed to sleep in until 8am despite all the light. We finally got going about 10:30. Just a few miles down the road we saw our first grizzly on the side of the road! They look cute from the safety of the truck.
After driving for miles and miles on rough bumpy roads we thought we had better check on the receiver hitch cargo carrier. Sure enough the weld had cracked a third of the way through. We had to try to fit the 6 tubs of supplies into the truck and ditch the carrier. Fortunatly we could combine some bins since we have been eating the food up. Two of our old sleeping bags had to go. Now the truck is completely packed including the cab for the last 600-700 miles. We will be so glad to unload and unfold our bodies.

Camping in Canada

We finally had the oppurtunity to tent for the night once we got on the Alaska Highway in Dawson City, British Columbia. Our first night Wednesday, was at a beautiful provincial park at milepost 49. We woke to temperatures of 38 degrees brrrrr. We were up and out of there by 6:45am!
Thursday night we planned to camp at milepost 477 but the campground was full so we had to drive to mile 615 for the next best campground. It was a really hard long day but God provided the energy and daylight (it is light just about tound the clock up here) and we finally got setup and to bed by 10:30pm. We had abreakfast fire at 5am to warmup so light out we couldn't sleep in.
Friday night we camped at Tahkini Hot Springs in Whitehorse, Yukon Territory. Swam in the hot springs pool the next morning before we left. Our first bath in acouple of days!
Saturday night we got the tent put up in between the rain in Alaska. Rained all night but we stayed dry.
Overall we enjoyed the camping and the boys were a big help and timmy adapted so well to the crazy schedule. It was a little nerve racking being in a tent in bear country! God. Is our protector thanks for your prayers.

thanks for the prayers!

The boys continue to travel very well. Timothy has only had 2 short crying episodes this first half of the trip. He does cringe everytime we approach the truck. We know it is your prayers that are providing the peace. We did lose one of timmys shoes somewhere in Montana.
Yesterday we toured Fort Edmonton Park. A fort from the 1800s, a villiage from 1900 and a town from 1920. A train took us from one end of the park then you walk back through the rest. It was really cool and the boys enjoyed stretching their legs.

Canada

We've made it into Canada with no problems and will be in th
e country for the next 4 days or so. We had hoped to camp last night but the threat of rain nixed that plan. We found a campground that has little tiny cabins with a queen bed, bunk bed and table for a reasonable price. Just as we got settled and started supper a storm started and there was pea sozed hail. So glad we were not in a tent.
Our plan today is to get up to Edmonton (4 hours away) do a little sightseeing then get to our hotel and get laundry done and grocery shopping for the next half of our trip.
God bless your day!

America the Beautiful

Our whirlwind trip through 5 national parks is now complete.
The badland were incredible with the stark contrast of rock formations and short grass prairie. Josh has declared it his favorite stop.
Mount Rushmore was majestic and the state flag avenue is really cool. Caleb's favorite stop so far. There is no picnic grounds there so we had to tailgate for our lunch.
Devils Tower is such an awesome sign of Gods wonderful creation and creativity. It's been good to explain to the boys why the information says millions and billions of years and give them the creation truth instead.
That completed our Saturday sight seeing and we drove off into the night logging almost 800 miles. We did finally stop at 2:30 am to sleep at a motel cabin complete with kitchen. Nathan cooked us breakfast Sunday am then we headed out for round two.

Our first stop Sunday was the Grand Tetons and we saw bison, elk, pronghorn and deer in tje park. It was raining and the clouds were low so the mountains were'nt visible. After a short hike by Lake Jenny we continued up to Yellowstone.
The old faithful area was really neat with all the hot springs bubbling out of the ground. We stood in the rain for a half hour before the geyser finally went off. It was awesome and aweful at the same time.
The highlight of yellowsttone was the herds of bison at the sides of the road and our picnic supper of hamburger helper.

Because of the rain we opted not to camp (it was also only 45 degrees out) so we are now in BOzeman MT ready to start the day and enter Canada.

Thank you so much for your prayers. The boys are travelling very well with only minor crying and whining. Timothy has developed a stiffened body approach to getting back into his seat though.

Day two

Time to immerse the boys in some great american icons. We will be driving through the Badlands, stopping at Wall Drug, veiwing Mount Rushmore and either drive up to Devils Tower or through Custer State Park. It's supposed to be rainy and cooler so we'LL have to be flexible. The fun part will be tonight when we drive straight through to the Grand Tetons/Yellowstone.

The boys have been excellent travelers so far and we can make good time since the speed limit is 75mph.

On the road!

After months of preperation, God-Seeking and generous gifts and prayers from you all we are on the road. Hard to imagine being gone all summer from our family, friends and house. God certainly has orchestrated all the events and planning leading up to this day. We are so excited to be a part of what God is doing in Alaska and can't wait to get there.

Keep praying for the building project as we still need the engineer to approve the work planned to be completed and for the permits to be issued quickly. Nathan has been in contact with the engineer out of Juneau so whatever needs to be done to get the project rolling will be accomplished quickly. We will keep you updated.

Our goal today is to get halfway across South Dakota. Mount rushmore tomorrow.

Love you all and covet your prayers-

The voight family

Packing

We have been slowly packing a few things here and there for a few weeks now but its time to get serious. Nathan has loaded all his tools so I know how much space there is left for everything else. Thankfully his tools have only taken up a third of the truck bed. Still it will be tight to fit in 3 months worth of living! Especially when you start thinking about packing stuff for Timothy like 84 days x 4 diapers a day = 336 diapers. Our goal is to be all loaded Wednesday night so we can spend Thursday wrapping up yard work and house cleaning.