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Alaskan Team to Minister in Greenland
ANCHORAGE, AK (August 4, 2005) - A team of six Alaskans left Tuesday to spend
three weeks in the small town of Ilusiatt, Greenland, to help a local
church develop leadership and its youth programs.
The small town of 4,500 - the third largest in Greenland - has roughly
50 born-again believers, says Nathan Toots, the associate pastor of
First Covenant Church in Anchorage, who is leading the group. The town
is located in the southwest coastal areas of the country.
The missionary team plans to help the State Lutheran Church develop a
leadership program, organize a youth ministry to reach into the
community, and do evangelism. The leaders of the church in Greenland
seek to have their ministries based on the models of Alaskan churches.
"They have similar social problems that we do," says Toots. Alcoholism
and drug abuse are rampant, he explains. People struggling with
addictions are considered social outcasts. "People see no hope for you,"
Toots says. "Unfortunately that is a big stumbling block in (people)
seeing them being used of God."
Toots will again be bringing the message that "our duty as believers is
to love even those addicted to alcohol and drugs." He encouraged people
in that duty the first time he traveled to Ilusiatt when he testified
how God had delivered him from alcohol.
Toots and others made the first and only previous trip in 2001 after the
president of the Danish Covenant Church learned of youth ministry in
Alaska, Toots said. The Danish church then invited a team to come to
Greenland. Toots says he hopes youth leaders will be able to take
classes on youth ministry at Alaska Christian College "under the
tutorship of Covenant Youth of Alaska (CYAK).
In addition to Toots, other members of the six-person team are Tom Mute
and Larissa Shimanek of Bethel; Blassie Shoogukruk and Marta Thrasher of
Anchorage; and Amy Kulp of Fairbanks. They will return August 31.
In addition to the 4,500 residents, the area also is home to 6,000 sled
dogs, according to the country's national tourism board. The average
temperature in August is 4.5 degrees Celsius (40.1 Fahrenheit). "It was
unseasonable warm the last time we went," says Toots, who wouldn't mind
another heat wave.
Greenland is the world's largest island and is 81 percent ice-covered.
The country was granted self-government in 1979 by the Danish
Parliament. The law went into effect the following year. Denmark
continues to exercise control of Greenland's foreign affairs.
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