Covenant News

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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