Published August 13, 2004
Alaskans take a spiritual journey
Field trip to Magadan
Young Russian parish impresses youths
"The epitome of what church should be."
When Sarah Gillette, an 18-year-old from Palmer, used those words to describe the Catholic community in Magadan, Russia, she wasn’t talking about the new church building recently dedicated there.
She was talking instead about the remarkable faith community she encountered at Nativity of Jesus Parish on a recent visit to Magadan.
"There’s so much love," Gillette said. "They literally have created a family of faith."
Gillette was one of three youths and eleven adults who traveled from the United States to Magadan last month for the dedication of the new Church of the Nativity of Jesus. The youths and most of the rest of the group stayed July 2-16 in Magadan, spending a week with host families.
The youths went on a three-day hiking trip and spent time in retreat with Father Michael Shields and Father David Means, pastor and associate pastor, respectively, of the Magadan parish. Father Shields is a priest of the Archdiocese of Anchorage and Father Means is from the St. Louis Archdiocese.
John Burger was so moved by his visit to Magadan that he enrolled in Russian language class at the University of Alaska Anchorage this fall.
"God willing, I’m hoping to spend all next summer (in Magadan)," he said.
Burger, who is spending this year in the archdiocese’s new St. John Vianney House of Discernment, hopes to enter the seminary after he completes his degree in social work.
"The people there have so little, they have no option for the things we have," Burger said. "Our concept of material wealth doesn’t exist there, so they search for other growth. Spiritual growth is abundant over there. It seems like what reality should be."
Gillette came away with the same feeling.
"Our spirituality is so crushed by our culture — we have so many things that compete to make us happy," she said. The people of Magadan’s Catholic community, with so few choices, have embraced the faith, she said.
Palmer parishioner Rosalie Leiner, 17, was the youngest member of the group. Both Leiner and Gillette, who didn’t know each other well before the trip, had fond memories of Father Shields as their childhood pastor at St. Michael Parish in Palmer.
"He’s so charismatic," Gillette said. She was impressed with the way Father Shields turned the language difference between the Anchorage youths and seven Russian teens into a plus on the retreat, where prayers before the Blessed Sacrament were said in English, Russian and Latin.
"He can make anything work," Gillette said.
Leiner, like the others, hopes to go back to Magadan, and is e-mailing friends she made there, including Anna, the 19-year-old with whom she stayed the first week.
The trip began with a flight on Magadan Airlines, which flies to the city from Anchorage with one stop in Petropavlovsk, Russia.
The plane was "kind of a small, older style," Gillette said. "At first I thought, ‘Whoa, what are we getting into?’ "
But the travelers discovered that, like Magadan itself, the airline brimmed with hospitality.
"We had two different meals, a huge spread, and before you landed they came through with a plate of candy," Gillette said.
Host families were equally generous.
"Incredible," said Leiner of her host’s generosity. Meals often were soups and salads, with soup usually containing a portion of fish or chicken.
The three-day hiking trip included "old World War II bunkers, beautiful scenery and lots of mosquitoes," Burger said.
The retreat combined prayer, discussion and helping Father Shields with younger children at the parish.
Father Shields is a strong catalyst for building church community, Gillette said.
"He fits his role of priest so well," she said, noting that he has become a strong father figure to many Magadan youths whose biological fathers are gone or enmeshed in alcoholism.
The Alaskan youths said Nativity of Jesus Church is more than a place for Sunday Mass. People gather there to socialize, eat and work, they said.
Theresa Lutes, one of the archdiocese’s three Youth Evangelization Team members, accompanied the group and described the experience as "absolutely awe-inspiring for all of us."
Although the trip included only three youths, Lutes said it was a successful "first time."
"We can tell people we were safe, we were well cared for," she said.
Next year, Lutes said, a group of Anchorage teens will meet up with youths from Magadan in Germany at World Youth Day, and then the trip to Magadan will continue as an annual affair.
Archbishop Roger Schwietz led the group of Americans that, in addition to the three youths and Lutes included Brian Kuzel, who helps coordinate support for the Magadan parish; Janet McCullough, a member of Holy Family Cathedral’s music department who taught organ in Magadan; Christina Kaminski, a retired art teacher from Eagle River who remained to teach English and art for several more weeks; and Father Means’ mother, Clarine Means, and sister, Cathy Cunningham.
Additionally, Daughter of Charity Sister Jean Marie Williams of Anchorage, her provincial Sister Margaret Keaveny, and two other Daughters of Charity accompanied the group.
Sister Williams, who came to Anchorage with the idea of eventually going to serve in Magadan, told the Anchor last week that the Daughters of Charity has received official permission from the Bishop of St. Joseph in Irkutsk to establish a community in Magadan.
Now, the Daughters await approval for the plan from their international headquarters and hope to establish a presence in Magadan in March 2005.