Lydia & I made it to our first village this past weekend! On Saturday morning we went to Savoonga, a small village on St. Lawrence Island, of about 700 people. We flew in a small 18 seater, and it was about a 45 minute flight from Nome. When we got in, we were greeted by what must have been the only guy in town that owned a truck. That’s right folks, this was a four-wheeler heaven.

We stayed in the local Presbyterian church’s parsonage, and after getting settled there, we went and explored the city on our way to the local native store. I guess most villages have these little “everything” stores, where prices if you can believe it….are more expensive than they are here in Nome. Lydia tells me that a large bottle of V8 Splash! was $14.

Saturday evening we hosted a ‘listener appreciation’ spaghetti dinner, and had 125 people show up! After the dinner, we went back over to the Presbyterian church and held a service where locals could come up and sing a praise song, usually in a native language. Sunday morning we got up and went to the service, and then took a hike out to the cliffs.

One thing that really hit me while in Savoonga, was the passion of one man that I met while on the island. He is often in Nome, and actually took a majority of our dinner supplies out to the village for us ahead of time. This guy is amazing. I don’t think I have ever met someone who had as much joy as this man. During worship while others were singing, he sat there the entire time with a huge smile on his face. This guy has a passion for his fellow natives, and feels deeply for some of the problems that plague the villages such as drugs, drinking, gambling, and suicide. He shared with us the hatred he has for the darkness that satan brings to the area. He also shared that he knows God can use him to reach these people, because he can relate…he has lost two of his own children to suicide as they were involved in drugs & drinking. One 11 months ago, and one three weeks ago. THREE WEEKS. He said that while he is still grieving the loss of his daughter, he feels like the Lord can use his situation to reach others. And while he does not channel his anger to the people he feels are responsible for his daughter’s death, he is channeling it to fight the powers of darkness that have a strong hold in the area. It was really a blessing to meet this man, and see that despite one of the worst things imaginable happening to him, he still shines Christ’s joy.

I also learned that Nome is ‘the big city’. This was very good for me to realize, and it helped my perspective on our situation quite a bit. It was great to get back home and see cars, paved roads….and paved airstrips among other things.

Pictures from the trip can all be viewed (here).

Lydia & I, along with the rest of the KICY staff took a trip to a local village over the weekend. We provided a spaghetti dinner for about 125 people in the 700 person village. Afterward, we held a service at the presbyterian church, where locals sang praise songs. We recorded this service, as well as broadcast it live on KICY.

There are great pictures to be viewed, you can (click here).

The past few days have been pretty routine, well as routine as you can get after only being here for a little over week. Lydia and I have been delegated our own show that we started hosting this week. The show is entitled “The Edge” and airs on both the AM and the FM station from 8pm-10pm. So far, we have been having lots of fun with it! However, yesterday it caused me much grief. Each day I’ve been attempting to bring the level of quality up on the show, and yesterday’s show was going to be awesome. The way we do most of the shows here (except for the morning shows) is to record voice-tracks. You pre-record these voice-tracks, and you don’t have to be in the studio when the show is on the air. With the Edge, we have been encouraged to do the show live atleast 2 times a week. However, most people aren’t able to tell when the show is live vs. pre-recorded.

Yesterday Lydia & I had voice-tracked a great show, and headed home around 6:30. Earlier in the day I had even recorded an interview with a man who has made it his life goal to visit every Starbucks shop in the world….he is already up to 3440. Around 8:00 we were sitting in our front room, and in my anticipation of the great show that was about to air, I turned on the radio. I heard the outdated intro that marks the beginning of the show (it was already in the computer when we got here, and I’m in the midst of finding something to replace it), right after that was supposed to be our welcome…however it went directly into the first song (which happened to be tjr’s majesty). I knew something wasn’t right, so I ran over to the studio, and found that all of our voice-tracks weren’t appearing on the automation computer, they were dead links! After the song ended, I quickly grabbed the mic, and decided to do part of the show live, something that I hadn’t done yet. I intro-ed the next song, and commented on a local event that was happening the next day. The phone started ringing, and I answered it off the air.
“KICY, this is Josh”
“Josh, you’re broadcasting live from the FM studio, right?” it was Dennis the station manager, who must have been listening at home.
“Yes, I am”
“Everyone does this the first time they do the Edge live, but when you broadcast from the FM studio, there is only dead air on the AM station”
CRAP!
I told him that the only reason I was even broadcasting live was because my voice-tracks were failing. We attempted over the phone to figure out what was going on, but were unable. He asked me to look at the log and see when the last time a voice-track was properly played, it was at 2:30 that afternoon! After we saw that, Dennis decided that it might be best for him to come over to the studio and see what the problem was. Long boring story short…we rebooted our automation computer, and our database computer. It turns out that earlier that day there was a toddler, (daughter of a volunteer) who was running around the studio, and turned a few computers off (resulting in temporary dead air). The order in which they were discovered and subsequently re-booted was not correct, and they weren’t able to communicate. I was pretty bummed because by the time we got everything correct our great show was pretty much over, and none of our funny material had been aired. Oh well.

In other news:
- Lydia has been feverishly turning in job applications, and has attracted a number of companies. We will see what comes of their interest.

- We went over to a part time volunteer’s house the other evening for dinner and met some people who left the station right before we got there. It was fun to fellowship with new friends.

- While we haven’t forked over the bill for cable ($64/mo for basic service), and have yet to order ‘the dish’ we were able to catch the season premier of survivor! Thanks to my dad who has been taping the episodes and mailing them up priority mail. We got last Thursday’s premier yesterday (Wednesday).

- The weather hasn’t been to bad, or to cold lately…however last night we went to bed while it was snowing!! When we woke up this morning there was about a quarter inch of snow on the ground, but it was all gone by 2 this afternoon.

- Our phone service is up and working great! We re-configured our wireless internet setup early this week, and I’m now getting a perfect signal, allowing flawless transmission on our internet based IP telephone. Feel free to call us up anytime on our Seattle or Tacoma based 253 phone numbers!

- We are traveling again the weekend! Lydia & I, along with the rest of the KICY team are traveling out to Savoonga on St. Lawrence Island to serve the entire village a spaghetti dinner! We won’t be on a small Cessna 180 this time, we are flying a 8 seater! I believe it might even be a twin prop!

WOW, that’s a lota Blog.

I’m Josh Rogers, and I approve this message.

Paul Harvey introduced this morning’s news that way… a man of such class. I rolled my eyes, but also laughed out loud, the exact reaction that I trigger while on the radio, so I thought I would give you a sample.

Yesterday evening Lydia & I got home from Serpentine Hotsprings! We had a great weekend on our staff retreat. It all started Friday afternoon, we left our house around 3:45 and drove in the van with Dennis & Candice Weilder, the station manager and his wife. We drove for about 2 hours to “quartz creek” where we met up with Donny Olsen, and he took us in his 4 seater C-180 out to Serpentine. Donny had earlier flown in the rest of the staff directly from Nome to the retreat. Serpentine was very remote, and very secluded. We didn’t fly in because we wanted to, we flew in because that was pretty much the only way in (besides a 15 hour hike from the end of the road). There was a bunkhouse, a bathhouse, and an outhouse.

The water coming out of the ground was about 170 degrees, however it was routed into the bathhouse via two pipes, and there was a third pipe with freezing cold river water. You could control how hot the ‘bathtub’ was by plugging the pipes. It was a pretty nifty deal.

Friday evening after everyone arrived, we pretty much just hung out, and relaxed. I went for a ’soak’ in the tub, some people played UNO. Saturday, most people slept in until 9:30 or so. We had breakfast, and then after some more relaxing and talking we decided to head out on a hike. We hiked for about 4 hours, and covered about 5 miles. Tundra is *very* hard to hike on in spots. We would be walking, and come into a patch of land that would have these six inch high tussocks of grass, sometimes with marshy water below. The problem was that whenever you stepped on one of these tussocks it would bend over, and you would be in the water regardless. One really fun part was finding all the tundra blueberries, most all of these are out of season in Nome, but it is colder in serpentine, so we were able to find a few handfuls of good berries. A few times while I was kneeling to pick all the berries I could find, I got stains all over my pants (you’ve got to make sure you aren’t kneeling on berries while trying to eat them). ! It was still a great hike, and Lydia & I got tons of great pictures.

On our way back from the hike, we saw some planes land on the airstrip. Most everyone’s initial reaction was “oh man, these guys are going to ruin our private weekend”. About three minutes after we noticed the planes, one of our team members, Luda was attempting to cross a small river and slipped resulting in a broken ankle. We carried her back to the bunkhouse, and found our newly arrived guests in the bathhouse. Fortunately KICY knew the people who had flown in, and they were planning only to be in for an hour or so. They were able to take Luda out with them, making sure she got medical attention at the hospital. What a blessing in disguise. If it wasn’t for the chance visit of these people, she wouldn’t have been able to get to the hospital for another 24+ hours.

Saturday evening we did more eating, napping, and talking. Very relaxing.

Sunday morning we woke up to bacon & pancakes. We then had a short worship service outside, and then started packing up. Our plan was to be picked up at 2:00pm, however after a few hours of waiting, it was around 4:30 when our plane came in. Everyone was dropped off at quartz creek and we drove back in the van.

We had an amazing weekend at the hotsprings, and were very glad for the opportunity to bond with our new co-workers. Again, pictures can be found in the gallery, or by (clicking here).

Take a look at our recent weekend Staff Retreat to serpentine hotsprings (click here).

Wondering what Nome looks like? Lydia & I took our digital camera with us on a walk around town last week. I’m sure we will be adding pictures to this album as we walk around more. (click here)

Now you can listen to this morning’s edition of “The Coffee Crew” hosted by: Neil Peterson, Dennis Weilder, and Josh Rogers, Live from the Polar Cafe. With special Guest Greg Asimakoupoulos! (click here)(mp3 player needed).

(Available after 5:30pm PST.)

“The Partial Observer: an online journal of opinion”. This site features the regular work of Pastor and published author, Greg Asimakoupoulos. Greg is visiting Nome right now, and is a long time family friend of my parents. Greg is in town for a book signing of his recent release: “Ptarmigan Telegraph The Story of Radio Station KICY”.

Well, busy busy busy is the only thing I can say to sum up our past few days. Yesterday Lydia & I sat in on the AM morning show again, and it was very fun. We tried to add as much personality as we could. It makes a big difference when you have more than one person in the studio. We voice tracked (recorded) our show ahead of time, and enjoyed a free evening last night. Lydia & I continued on our quest to explore Nome, taking pictures as we went (look for them to be posted later this afternoon). We found the library, and checked out a few books. There appears to be a much nicer area of Nome than the part we were previously familiar with, much more subtle homes than our area of town.

This morning Neil & Greg Asimakoupoulos (visiting writer, and family friend in town to sign copies of his book, “ptarmigan telegraph”) and I headed down to the Polar Cafe to host the Coffee Crew. The show takes it on the road down there each Friday. I had a great breakfast, hash browns, eggs, and reindeer sausage. It was a good morning show too, I’ve got some audio that I’ll post later. Lydia & I also processed our donations that have come in over the past few weeks, we feel really blessed to be supported so well by friends and family.

This afternoon Lydia & I, along with the rest of the staff will be heading out to Serpentine Hotsprings. We will be flying out in a little three seat plane, owned by the local state congressman, Donny Olsen. It should be an interesting weekend, I’ll be sure to take lots of pictures!

Take the tour! I just posted photos of our new house, here in Nome. (click here).