End of Week 1

God has continued to shower down blessings on me and all of the guys up here. Monday was the first day that we were allowed to look for jobs so my roomy Joe and I went around looking. Or that was what we wanted to do anyway. We actually ended up looking for jobs online for a while, then taking me to an interview that I had for a souvenir shop. On Tuesday three of my friends and I decided that since we didn't have a bus pass or bikes yet that we would walk to downtown. Probably not the best idea. We had about 4 hours to walk downtown (the walk turned out to be about five miles), apply for jobs and walk back. Needless to say we kind of figured we wouldn't get a whole lot done, but God definitely led us. When we were on the outskirts of downtown we were walking by a hotel and on a whim we decided that we would walk in and inquire about jobs. As it happened they were looking for four bellboys for the summer and there was four of us. We gave the front desk our names and numbers and took applications to fill out. After that we left the hotel and went to look for jobs in the nearby mall. As we are walking in we get a call from the hotel asking if we could come back in a half hour and do a group interview. Obviously we said yes so we got a quick bite to eat at the food court and headed back to the hotel. Once there we had a group interview with all four of us but we found out that because of our unique time restrictions that they would only be able to take two of us and that it would have to be the two oldest which as it was was myself and my friend Ben Ooms. They set up a second interview with us for the next day bright and early so Ben and I woke up the next day and did that. We had a very successful second interview and then we were told that there would be a third interview with the head of all of the three hotels (all in downtown anchorage) that we would be working for. Up until this point Ben and I were under the impression that we would just be hauling bags back and forth to and from peoples rooms. We found out that the job was mostly driving a twelve person shuttle van that picked up from all three hotels, the Anchorage Museum, the airport and the train station. Since this would be our job (if the boss liked us of course) our future supervisor loaded us into one of the vans and took us around to the different places we would be driving. Then we had the interview and it went great! After this we picked up some work clothes to give our boss some time to draw up some papers and went back to the hotel to sign some things and do paper work. After this we were kindly driven down to the headquarters for the company we are working for to fill out more paperwork and then a couple blocks down was the place we needed to do our drug testing. It was definitely a long day but if all goes to plan we will be working by Tuesday! The job is also awesome because it pays over $10 per hour plus tips which is pretty good for a couple of guys with zero experience.

Since Ben and I had our jobs locked down, we were able to focus the rest of this week on our community team stuff, and as it happened we were on the same one which was strangely convenient. We had a meeting with the rest of our group and we decided to do a sports club for junior high and high school kids for the remainder of the summer on Friday nights. Once we had this vision set into place we spent the whole next two days going after it to make it happen. Muck of our time was spent trying to find a venue for it but luckily we ended up finding a Boys and Girls club on the east side of Anchorage that was more than happy to partner with us and seeing as they had an indoor gym, they were a perfect fit for our needs. We were supposed to start the program tonight (Friday night) but we couldn't because they were having a BBQ/concert there so we decided to go anyway and hang out with some kids and spread the word about our Sports Club that would be starting next week. All in all we had some amazing conversations with some even more amazing kids and our whole team is super excited for getting to start this club with them next week. Just so that you can get a feel for what the other community teams are doing as well I will give a brief description of each. One of the other teams is a college team that is partnering with the Campus Crusade here at UAA and is reaching out to college students. The other team is dedicated to Native Alaskan ministry and they are partnering with a church that is giving them ways that they can serve and love on that community. I have to say though that I have a particular fondness for my community team. While we are the smallest community team, and probably had the most to figure out on our own, I love what we're doing. I've always wanted to teach high school and it has been really neat getting to interact with students of this age and just to be able to connect with them. I also really like the sports aspect of our ministry since if you know me very well at all you know that I can be pretty competitive and I definitely like that about this ministry. It has already been a really amazing experience and it hasn't even technically started yet! Anyway that was what this week has looked like. Sorry I don't really have any new pictures but I will be sure to take some this weekend since we are going camping and fishing! Also next week Ben and I will hopefully be starting work!

Oh one last quick story. We needed to try our waders on since this weekend we were going fishing. We also needed to make sure they didn't have leaks in them. The way we checked this is we went across the street to the pond and we all waded in. Somehow I ended up getting into a wrestling match with my action group leader Byron and needless to say we both ended up soaking wet! I have to give him credit though, he definitely bested me that time. Rematch pending. Thanks so much for all of your prayers and support they are much needed! There have been a few requests for my street address up here in Anchorage so here it is:

Tim Joyce
c/o UAA Conference Services
3700 Sharon Gagnon Lane
Anchorage, AK 99508

A few prayer requests:
For Ben and me as we start our new jobs that we could learn quickly and do them with a heart of love
For our Sports Club, that we would have lots of kids show up and that we could show them the love that they may or may not be getting at home

Days 1-3

And so the adventure begins. I took off for LAX at 4 am with my father to catch my plane for Anchorage Friday. Even at 5:45 am the line for airport security was ridiculously long but alas I made it through. The five hour flight went by surprisingly fast. Even though there were small children running up and down the aisles and three loud Bulgarian men making fun of each other directly behind me I was able to get some sleep and soon I was landing in Alaska. Right when I turned on my phone on the tarmac I received a text from Byron Womack who said that he would be picking me up and that he would be my action group leader for the summer. I called him and as soon as I picked up my bags he was there to take me back to the place I now call home at the University of Alaska Anchorage in on campus apartments. There is six of us in this apartment/action group and we are all from all over the place. I am sharing a room with my new friend and brother in Christ Joe Klinger who was the only one to road trip here. If I thought my 5 hour flight was bad I have nothing on Joe who made a 10 day road trip all the way from Pennsylvania. After we got settled in the staff threw a barbecue for us and we went on a really sweet hike pictures of which can be seen below:

Here it's a little difficult to see but that is a gigantic bull moose on the trail. Luckily we weren't going that way...



The end of the hike where we stopped was absolutely gorgeous. We could see for miles around and it was breathtaking. God's majesty is even more evident on top of a mountain. Oh and in case you were wondering all of these pictures were taken between 8 and 10 pm. Yes it's true, the sun is just always up which is great if you want to do something outdoors at night like go on a hike.

Needless to say after we got home we all just fell right to sleep since many of us were suffering from jet lag and general tiredness. The next day we heard from a great guest speaker named Kirk Brower for most of the day and  it was simply amazing! Yesterday (day 3) we received some evangelism training and we went sharing in Anchorage. The part of town that we went to was a somewhat lower income area and one of the first residents my partner Brian and I talked to warned us about some of the people in the neighborhood but we had no problems. One thing that did kind of shock me is as we were walking by a car I happened to glance and see a guy rolling a joint right there in the front seat of his car. This broke my heart for this guy and this community. One conversation in particular really stood out and blessed Brian and myself immensely and that was completely unexpected was a conversation that we had with a guy named Tom (Tom wasn't his real name but to respect his privacy that will be his name for the sake of this blog). Brian and I were walking by his house and he was in the front yard trying to get his lawn mower to work. We asked if we could talk to him and he was very kind and had us come right into his yard and sit with him. We asked him some questions about manhood and how he felt on certain issues concerning what it meant to be a man and he told us how his father had been missing from his life. Soon after this Tom just began to really open up to us about so many things. His girlfriend and he had recently had a child and had recently been released from prison. They had been stealing food in order that she (being pregnant at the time) could eat and feed the starving child inside of her. Because of this they were not supposed to have any contact with each other and a father was not supposed to be in contact with his child or girlfriend. He also shared with us that his older brother was in prison as well but that his dream was to start a halfway house of sorts where guys getting out of prison could come and stay until they get back on their feet. Little did we know that we were sitting on the stoop of that house, the dream of his brothers that Tom had brought into reality. Just that morning he had gone down to the local food pantry and had filled up the house with food for the people he was currently helping to rehabilitate. Another issue faced tom though in that he was not supposed to have any organization like this due to the terms of his probation. With sponsorships from local organizations though he was able to pull it off. Through all this we could clearly see how great his heart was and how much he really cared for people. This was so encouraging for Brian and me. We also got to share with him our beliefs and how we could rely on God when the going got tough. While Tom was not a Christian when we got there, and he wasn't a Christian when we left, we were still able to share a little of the good news with him and just to let him know that in a world of people who were trying to keep him from achieving his goals that we were praying for him. I also got to help him with his gas can that he had been having trouble with since we got there. While walking away from that conversation left me heartbroken and with hands smelling strongly of gasoline, I also felt this tremendous peace and joy from talking to Tom.

Well that has been the last three days in a nutshell.I hope that now that I have gotten the difficult part of making this blog out of the way I will be able to post pretty often about the rest of my experience here in Alaska and how God is working in this place.

A  few quick prayer requests:
For job seeking
For bonding with my brothers
For a heart of service for the Alaskan people