BRBC: Behind the Scenes
Brooks Range Bible Camp is being held this week and next. Many photos and a great video are already on Facebook, and more will be posted over the next couple of weeks. I thought it would be fun and informative to give you an inside look at a few of the challenges we face behind the scenes as we hold our annual arctic bible camp for 80-100 native children and teens off the grid in the Brooks Range Mountains. There is no road to the camp; we cannot drive there—it is accessible by airplane in summer or by snow machine in winter.
This past Sunday night, Joe Gerwig, our Assistant Director, his wife, Theresa, their daughter, and a friend, took off in a Cessna 180 loaded with gear for two and a half weeks at camp. They planned to be the first ones there because Theresa is the camp cook. She wanted to set up the kitchen before the rest of the staff arrived hungry on Monday evening. They arrived around midnight—remember, it is still light in Alaska at midnight in July—unloaded the airplane and got a few hours of sleep. On Monday afternoon, seven more aircraft took off from Chickaloon (from our base, known as the “Ranch”), loaded with staff including camp counselors, teachers, craft, and activity leaders, and they arrived with no significant weather or operational issues around dinner time. Add to that a van of a dozen staff that had driven to Coldfoot, the closest town by road, and then had been flown in small groups to the camp. I’m sure Theresa had something delicious for all of them to eat.
Kitchen. Our cook and her team plan the menus, make a huge shopping list and buy all the goods a few days before camp, then precook or pre-make as much as possible to minimize the prep time in the tiny camp kitchen. Challenges include filtering water from the nearby creek to make it potable, making enough “pour over coffee” in the mornings because the big coffee urns blow the circuit, and cooking in an old, temperamental oven where the bottom shelf has a tendency to burn. But Theresa does a superb job.
Attendance. Today is Wednesday, the day we’ve been waiting for—when all the airplanes will fly to the villages and pick up the children for their five-day camp. The tricky part is we don’t ever know exactly how many kids will be attending. Even planning ahead as we do, expecting between 40 and 50 each week, we only have a rough idea. Once the kids see the airplanes, some of them who were on the fence as to whether to attend, rush back home, throw some clothes, and a dozen cans of soda into a plastic bag, get their permission slip signed and jostle for a seat in one of the small aircraft! This is a joy to watch every summer! So, our pilots fly the first group to camp, then return to shuttle kids for as many trips as are needed. We hope that eight new cabins—four for girls and four for boys, is enough—but there have been camps when the counselors slept on the floor, giving up their beds to a welcome overflow of kids!
Weather. Those of us (about 50) who stayed at the Ranch have all been praying for safe flights in and out of the northern villages and a great opening day. We’ve been eagerly waiting for news from the camp via satellite phone. What we heard a few minutes ago was disappointing. Joe said the weather was too low to fly into Anaktuvuk Pass (AKP). This is the village that sends the majority of campers. It’s about a 45-minute flight though steep, remote mountain passes—nothing you want to try to do in low visibility. Some of the pilots will fly to get campers from other villages with better weather, and we are all praying the low ceilings and fog will lift this afternoon. (By the way, the weather did improve, and 34 campers were brought from AKP, five from Allakaket, and one from Hughes—40 total.) I remember a few years ago when raging forest fires across the state made flying nearly impossible because of the smoke. We wondered whether we’d be able to have camp at all. But the Lord made a way and gave us some breaks in the haze, and, although we did have to alter the schedule, it was a very wonderful time with the children and teens.
How many camps do you know of where the campers are picked up and returned home in airplanes? We do it because there are no roads into or out of any of these arctic villages, nor into the wilderness camp, itself. If we didn’t have airplanes, we wouldn’t be able to have camp in that part of Alaska. But we do have them and have held this camp every summer for more than 30 years.
Most of the villages have no church. These two-weeks of Bible camp can be the only time all year the children will learn from the Bible, hear the Gospel, talk about spiritual things, and pray with other believers. Camp has a very big, life-changing impact on their lives. But we cannot and do not do it alone. Many individuals and churches help and we thank all of you who participate in one way or another with prayers, support, supplies, and work. It takes an army of believers working together in various roles to make Brooks Range Bible Camp a blessing to our native brothers and sisters!