December 2, 2005 - Issue #24
Local News | Opinion/Editorials | Letters to the Editor
Communion comes to the homebound
Carson Evans of Anchorage is only 13, but already the eighth-grader has been going with her father for nearly four years when he brings Holy Communion to the homebound.
Carson’s dad, Bill Evans, is an extraordinary minister of the Eucharist at St. Elizabeth Ann Seton Parish, and together, the two spend many a Sunday afternoon visiting homes and assisted living facilities.
"It’s really great," Carson said, "because you’re helping people who can’t get out and go to church themselves."
Taking the Eucharist to the homebound is a valuable but not very visible ministry in most parishes. And because of the declining number of priests, it’s a ministry increasingly performed by laity, who are referred to as "extraordinary" ministers because they are acting in place of the priest.
Brenda Bergsrud is part of an approximately 12-person team of ministers at Anchorage’s St. Anthony Parish. The ministers assigned for a particular weekend visit the tabernacle after the 8:30 a.m. Mass before heading out with the Eucharist.
Some visit Providence Horizon House, a large assisted living facility where those who are able gather for a group service while others are visited individually in their rooms.
In addition, the St. Anthony ministers visit five to eight private homes and smaller assisted living homes.
Bergsrud said it’s rewarding "to see their faces when you give them Communion."
But the ministry has also influenced her own spirituality.
"One of the biggest things it’s given me is a deeper sense of joy from the Eucharist," she said. "I see the ‘I need’ and ‘I’ll miss the Eucharist if you don’t come.’ It reminds me that it’s so valuable."
At Our Lady of the Angels Parish in Kenai, the demand is smaller but the need is still there.
Parishioner Audrey Little, whose "real" job is home nursing care, learned that a couple with whom she was working wanted to return to the Catholic faith. A priest visited the couple, and since then they’ve been on the list of those Little visits regularly with Holy Communion.
"I don’t just take Communion," Little said. "I read the Gospel, share prayers, have more of a Communion service. Because it’s in the home, we can be more informal. We can talk over the Gospel."
The question of what kind of Communion service to provide varies from parish to parish and depends greatly on the communicant.
Ministers said sometimes the person is so ill they can barely struggle through the Lord’s prayer, or are moving into a stage of dementia poorly served by a long service.
Others, such as 85-year-old Sally Benedetti, have a quick and agile mind ready for prayer and religious discussion.
"Without my religion, I don’t know what I’d do," said Benedetti, a St. Elizabeth Ann Seton parishioner who lives with her son and daughter-in-law but is too physically frail to attend Mass. Having a minister come from the parish weekly "helps keeps my faith alive," she said.
For Benedetti, who has lived in the state only about four years, it has also provided new friendships, people who occasionally give her a call just to chat.
At St. Andrew Parish in Eagle River, Marian Maroney heads up the homebound-ministry team and pastor Father Leo Walsh provides training. The group uses the popular "Communion of the Sick" booklet published by Liturgical Press.
Maroney said that, seven or eight years ago, someone invited her to a meeting about ministry to the homebound.
"It just called to me," she said; she’s been bringing Communion ever since.
"I know I personally get more out of it then they do," Maroney added. "Sometimes you’re their only contact with the outside world. You get to know them, find out about their lives, their history. We hear it all the time — ‘I’m so glad you came.’"
The ministry has been "an awesome opportunity," according to Evans, the St. Elizabeth parishioner who takes his daughter with him. "Reaching out literally with the Body of Christ seems really amazing."
Like other extraordinary ministers of the Eucharist interviewed for this story, Evans understands that along with the sacramental Body of Christ, ministers are also bringing the presence of Christ as expressed in the community of the church.
Evans in particular said he worries that, at his 1,300-family parish, the list of those receiving Communion at home sometimes stands at only 10 individuals. He knows there must be many others out there.
The state Division of Senior Services reports that there are about 500 licensed assisted living facilities in Alaska; the vast majority are small, neighborhood-based dwellings that can accommodate up to five residents.
Evans said it might be possible for parishes to find out the location of these facilities in their area and offer the ministry to Catholics.
However, to undertake such a project, the ministry needs what ministries always cry out for: more help.
"It’s the traditional plea that we need more people in the ministry," Evans said. "If we had more, we could do more."
Two distant archdioceses celebrate a year of partnership
In Cotabato City on the Philippine island of Mindanao, Maria Ida "Deng" Giguiento grew up hearing the chiming of Catholic church bells alongside the daily Muslim call to prayer filtering through city’s streets at dawn.
Giguiento, who still lives and works for the Catholic Church on Mindanao, feels totally comfortable in both settings, Muslim and Christian, she told parishioners during a recent visit to the Anchorage Archdiocese.
Giguiento works for Catholic Relief Services, the U.S. bishops’ international development agency. She’s a dynamo in the church’s efforts to build lasting peace in the Philippines and East Timor — places that have been marred by civil strife and war in recent years.
Giguiento’s Nov. 4-13 visit to Southcentral Alaska parishes, schools and other Catholic groups aimed to further cultivate the "global solidarity partnership" between the Anchorage Archdiocese and her Cotabato Archdiocese on Mindanao. The year-old partnership, facilitated by Catholic Relief Services, is like a long-distance relationship between two friends, she said.
Her Nov. 6 visit to Anchorage’s St. Anthony Parish, featuring Mass and a celebration afterward with Filipino food and dancing, marked the first anniversary of the signing of the solidarity partnership by Cotabato Archbishop Orlando Quevedo and Anchorage Archbishop Roger Schwietz, who had traveled to Mindanao with seven laypeople from the Anchorage Archdiocese.
Giguiento commended the Anchorage Archdiocese for this "concrete act of solidarity" with Filipino people and said that the partnership’s meaningfulness depends on the participation of the people of both places.
Based in the Mindanao city of Davao, Giguiento, 50, is project officer for Catholic Relief Services’ Peace and Reconciliation program on the island, and a facilitator at the Mindanao Peacebuilding Institute, which trains youth groups, church organizations, village elders and entire nongovernmental organizations to become catalysts for peace. They learn how to mediate conflict, repair relationships and advocate for change nonviolently.
After witnessing violence and armed conflict in her homeland and in East Timor, the tiny half-island that seceded from Indonesia in 1999, Giguiento said building peace through Catholic Relief Services is the "answer to my dreams — blending my passion for change and my faith."
In 1999, she was on loan from Catholic Relief Services Philippines working in East Timor, a former Portuguese colony and overwhelmingly Catholic country, as a special aide to Bishop Carlos Filipe Ximenes Belo of Dili. The bishop, co-recipient of the 1996 Nobel Peace Prize, had called for a democratic referendum to decide whether East Timor would remain a part of Indonesia or split from the country that had invaded East Timor since 1975.
Some 300,000 people had been killed or died of starvation during the occupation.
The Catholic Church’s justice and peace commission was the only group allowed by the Indonesian government to monitor the U.N.-sponsored referendum, according to Giguiento.
Because she speaks Tetum, an East Timorese language, Giguiento was able to organize and educate hundreds of catechists, youth leaders, priests and nuns about the referendum and how to monitor the situation and report results.
In recalling the momentous vote for independence, she said she noticed that elders wore their finest clothes as they walked to polling places. When she asked why, she was told they were preparing for death, which in the local custom included being buried in elaborate dress.
An old man explained to Giguiento that he expected to be killed for taking part in the vote, but that he was doing it for his grandchildren.
As expected, the vote, in which about 80 percent of East Timorese chose independence, sparked violence.
Victims fled to Bishop Belo’s residence, which was attacked and burned by pro-Indonesian forces, forcing the bishop to flee. Giguiento hid 50 refugees in her own home until she, too, was evacuated with other foreigners by an Australian SWAT team. From inside a SWAT car, she watched "the burning, the dead people and the looting" in the streets.
From Australia, Giguiento immediately began organizing relief efforts and promised the East Timorese and Bishop Belo that they would return and rebuild.
When it was relatively safe, she went back to the new nation and stayed to promote peace and teach reconciliation until April last year when she returned to the Philippines.
Following the large-scale, scorched-earth campaign led by the Indonesian military in 1999, East Timor’s infrastructure was in ruins. Approximately 1,300 people had been killed and 300,000 more displaced.
"In their struggle for independence, the church played a key role," Giguiento told one of her Anchorage audiences. "Bishop Belo was often at the forefront of lobbying for the freedom of his people. He was the voice in the wilderness."
In Giguiento’s home country, frequent battles have raged between Muslim liberation fighters and Philippine government forces on Mindanao. The factions have been fighting since the 1970s, in the process killing 100,000 people and leaving more than a million displaced. Since 1997 Mindanao has seen four major armed conflicts.
At the root of the conflict are colonization and land issues that began more than a century ago.
In 1900, 75 percent of Mindanao’s residents were Muslims who farmed the island’s rich land alongside indigenous people. Under U.S. rule (1899-1946), Christians from other parts of The Philippines were resettled on Mindanao and given deeds to much of the land.
By 1990, the island’s Muslim population had fallen to 18 percent.
Violence on both sides of the conflict is buoyed by claims of defending religion, Giguiento said.
She saw a Catholic priest rallying Knights of Columbus to take up arms to defend their churches. At a mosque, she listened as a Muslim leader called for a jihad against those who murdered Muslim people and desecrated mosques. A cycle of killing was justified with Scripture from holy books, she said.
But, she added, there is also justification in religion for reconciliation, for acts of reparation, for building a lasting peace.
Peace education efforts are spreading in the southern Philippines. In 1997, after Bishop Benjamin de Jesus was gunned down on the island of Jolo, the church could have closed its headquarters, withdrawn missionaries and left the island.
Instead, Giguiento said, a "peace center" of interreligious dialogue was born at Notre Dame College of Jolo, a Catholic institution where the vast majority of students are Muslim.
With the help of religious leaders, Muslim, Christian and indigenous people of Mindanao, tired of evacuating their villages during wartime and returning to burned out homes and rotting crops, have worked together to convince warring factions to leave them out of the conflict.
A cluster of villages, or barangays, have become a "space for peace" where opposing forces have agreed to pass peacefully without firing a shot, and all children are "zones of peace" that cannot be harmed. Nine more barangays have stepped up to be trained to monitor peace, learn tolerance, and dialogue with people of different religions as a way to mediate conflict and prevent violence.
"When you go to the peace zone, Muslims, Christians and indigenous people live together, work together and decided together that they don’t want to be involved in any war in the future," Giguiento said.
In addition to training the victims of war to advocate for peace, Giguiento has also brought together major leaders of opposing factions.
In 1997 she helped form a "quick response" team made up of five leaders of the Armed Forces of the Philippines, five members of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front and also priests, Muslim leaders and an international fact finding committee.
When conflict began to escalate, the team was plucked from the sight of the conflict. Catholic Relief Services, a sponsor of the quick response team, rented an entire hotel so unarmed leaders could come together in a neutral place to discover the facts behind the conflict and facilitate their reconciliation.
"They started talking about their families and found out: Oh, my child goes to the same school as your child. They are human," Giguiento said.
The quick response team signed a peace agreement and has evolved into what is now the Coordinating Committee on Cessation of Hostilities.
"That’s why I love CRS (Catholic Relief Services)," Giguiento said. "Imagine — they took the risk" of extracting representatives of warring factions and renting a hotel. "We couldn’t have done that without CRS support."
As the daughter of a politician, Giguiento, grew up being escorted to school by armed bodyguards. She was educated by the Congregation of Religious of the Virgin Mary nuns and Oblate priests in Cotabato City.
The sisters taught her to examine her conscious nightly making sure that she didn’t cause anyone to "commit a sin or cry," she said. You’ll sleep peacefully at night if you shoulder your responsibility to care for others, they told her.
She earned a degree in medical technology from Notre Dame University in Cotabato City and went to work in a Manila hospital, where patients had to pay up front before being treated.
Giguiento pleaded with the administration to make exceptions for the poor. When that didn’t work, she paid their hospital fees out of her own pocket. She frequently owed the hospital money at the end of the month instead of receiving a paycheck.
Witnessing these and other injustices led her toward political activism. In those days, though, Ferdinand Marcos ruled the country under marshal law and people speaking out sometimes "disappeared," she said.
In what Giguiento called an "act of God," American Oblate Bishop Philip Smith appointed Giguiento as the first lay woman ever to coordinate the Cotabato Archdiocese’s justice and peace commission.
"He saw me on the streets, he heard me on the radio. He said that girl is going to get into trouble. … I know what’s in your heart but you’re going the wrong direction," Giguiento remembers him saying.
With Giguiento as coordinator, the archdiocese’s justice and peace commission demonstrated against disappearances of young people and the arrest of priests who, "because they are standing so much on behalf of the people, were called communists," she said.
The church provided legal aid to the poor in land disputes and supported striking workers fighting for better wages.
But disagreement among church leaders about how to handle a dispute between employees of a corporation that was affiliated with the church led Giguiento to seek a "change of atmosphere," she said.
"We can teach and speak justice but the practice of it can be impacted by our own interests," she said.
For a while, Giguiento lived among the poor and learned the Maguindanao dialect, shucking so much corn with the women that she still bears a scarred callous on her finger.
Eventually she went to work for Oblate priests who encouraged her to translate her "revolutionary zeal" into civil society work.
For four years as director of Notre Dame University’s Peace Education Center in Cotabato City, she developed service-learning programs and helped raise awareness about the Muslim victims of armed conflict in the region.
She helped indigenous people draft their own agenda for peace, which was included in the peace accord between the Philippine government and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front in 1998. She also facilitated dialogue workshops between Catholic and Protestant bishops and Ulamas, Muslim religious leaders.
Giguieneto reflected on her years of working for peace through her archdiocese and through Catholic Relief Services. When she was younger she said she was aware of so many issues of injustice but didn’t see a way to bring about change.
Catholic Relief Services has focused her passions, she said.
"This is perfect," Giguiento said. "We’re working toward change, we’re trying to build God’s heaven here on earth in a way that is very respectful of all people whether you’re bad or you’re good. When you’re bad, you have something in there that’s really good and I’m going to touch that.
"One day they have to understand, they can’t forever kill each other. They can’t forever burn each other’s houses."
Annual blues concert draws local and national talent, raises $15,000 for Brother Francis Shelter
A musician who tasted homelessness as a young man has turned his passion for the blues and compassion for the homeless into an annual fund-raiser that nets thousands of dollars for Catholic Social Services’ Brother Francis Shelter.
Son Henry, as he is known, helped coordinate and performed in Son Henry’s Fifth Annual Blues Fo’ My Brother dinner show and music concert Nov. 11 at Anchorage’s Fourth Avenue Theater.
More than 500 people turned out to hear the blues as translated by "the crème of the crop" of the Anchorage music scene and some bigger names from around the country, according to Catholic Social Services special events coordinator Gene Faulk.
Headliner Ottomatic Slim of Massachusetts, known on the East Coast for his harmonica skills and charismatic performances, Blue Lisa Monroe of Texas and Big Robert Tyler of Georgia came north to take part in the event, joining local performers Melissa Bledsoe Fischer, Veronica C. Page, Rick Brooks and the group Spin the Bottle.
All the performers either donated their services or charged way-reduced talent fees, according to Faulk. Son Henry, who writes his own music and performs unique takes on famous works, traveled all the way from Scotland to sing and play his lap steel guitar.
In addition to the quality of musician the event now attracts, Blues this year moved to a new venue, the elegant Fourth Avenue Theater, known for its superb acoustics.
All of it is a far cry from four years ago, when Son Henry, a little blue about his upcoming 40th birthday, decided to do a charity music event to lift his spirits. He was volunteering at Brother Francis Shelter, scrubbing sleeping mats and feeling thankful he had a home, when the idea struck him. He decided that the shelter would be the recipient of any proceeds the birthday concert might generate.
He called Faulk and they threw together a little event for the following weekend. The setting was the now-defunct Whaler bar. Advertising consisted of stapling fliers to telephone poles, but the $10 event packed the house (which only held about 40 people, Faulk recalled) and made $1,500 for the shelter.
Faulk has helped Son Henry turn the concert into a widely anticipated event that combines entertainment and social education.
"The people that attend know what it’s for," Faulk said.
All the advertising — which still includes fliers at street corners and grocery stores but now also features television and radio spots and color newspaper ads — notes the shelter as the beneficiary, and Catholic Social Services fact sheets stand prominently at the event itself. This year when the emcee thanked everyone for supporting the homeless community, there was a long round of applause.
Son Henry said there’s a perfectly natural connection between the blues and Brother Francis Shelter, since both are about lifting people out of tough times.
It’s a common misconception that blues music is an expression of suffering and sorrow, he noted; it’s much more an expression of hope and humor.
Proceeds from the event — $15,000 this year — are only used to directly benefit shelter guests, per Son Henry’s request.
That means providing personal hygiene items for guests, paying the electric bill, purchasing coffee — "the kinds of things most of us take for granted," according to shelter director Dewayne Harris.
The concert is critical to the shelter because money for operational costs is the most difficult to find; most grants are designated for specific uses, Harris said.
But Blues Fo’ My Brother is important in other ways, he added.
"Above and beyond the monetary support that it provides to the shelter is that Son Henry and the others are helping to educate the community about homelessness issues and keeping the challenge we all face in our community as a topic on the front burner," the shelter director said.
Son Henry, a father of four who works days for ConocoPhillips — the main sponsor of Blues Fo’ My Brother — is especially impressive, Harris said.
Son Henry told the Anchor that he still considers Anchorage, where he lived with his family from 1997 until about six months ago, to be his home. And he connects with the plight of the homeless because he was homeless for a few months as a young man, he said.
He lived in his car and relied on the kindness of others to help him get back on his feet.
A CD featuring the live music recorded at this year’s Blues Fo’ My Brother concert is in the works. Also, some of the artists who performed recorded lullabies for a CD that will benefit Catholic Social Services’ Pregnancy Support and Adoption Services program. Call Faulk at 297-7719 for more information.
News & Notes
Illustration by Father Milosh Krakovski
Three Daughters of Charity are now established in the city of Magadan, in the Russian Far East, complementing the work of Nativity of Jesus Parish there. One of them, Sister Jean Marie Williams (on the keyboard at left) studied Russian in Anchorage for three years before departing for Magadan this August. The other Daughters are Poles. The sketch at left was rendered by Father Milosh Krakovski, one of the three priests at the Magadan parish.
Dedication of new church set for Dec. 12
Archbishop Roger Schwietz, pastor Father Vincent Blanco and the community of Anchorage’s Our Lady of Guadalupe Parish will celebrate the dedication of the new church Monday, Dec. 12, at 6:30 p.m. The public is invited to the event; the church is located at 3900 Wisconsin Street. A reception will follow the dedication. For more information call Our Lady of Guadalupe at 248-2000.
TEC youth ministry reunion planned
Archbishop Roger Schwietz and the local TEC (Together Encountering Christ) community are hosting a reunion for anyone who has ever been on a TEC retreat. The event features a Mass and potluck on Dec. 7 at Holy Family Cathedral. Mass begins 6:30 p.m., followed by the potluck in the education center next to the cathedral.
Youths can attend age-specific ‘blasts’
The archdiocesan Youth Evangelization Team (YET) along with youth ministers throughout the archdiocese are putting on two retreats, the "Winter Blast" for junior high school students and the "Triathablast" for senior high. Winter Blast, featuring liturgy, bowling, skating and a movie, is Dec. 10 from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. Call Theresa Lutes at 276-3455 for more information. The Triathablast, which includes a trip to Anchorage’s hugely popular H2Oasis water park, begins at 6:30 p.m. at St. Benedict Parish in West Anchorage. Call Matthew Beck for more information, (907) 745-3229, or email him at stmikes1@pobox.mtaonline.net.
Discernment house moves to new parish
Anchorage’s St. John Vianney House of Discernment has been relocated from St. Patrick Parish to Saint Elizabeth Ann Seton Parish. The house is operating in its second year and will have one resident, Patrick Brosamer, beginning Jan. 1, according to Father Tom Lilly, St. Elizabeth pastor and co-director of House of Discernment. The St. John Vianney House is a residential program designed to assist men, typically between the ages of 20 and 45, in the discernment and development of a priestly vocation through a shared community life of prayer and worship; spiritual, personal and intellectual development; and pastoral service. For more information, contact either Father Scott Medlock at 337-1538 or Father Lilly at 345-4466.
Editorials
Spare murderer because he’s human
The U.S. bishops’ new statement on the death penalty comes just in time to join the fight over the fate of convicted murderer Stanley Tookie Williams. The bishops, and Catholic teaching, add a unique element to this debate.
The crimes Williams is convicted of and the damage to society he is responsible for are reprehensible. In the late 1960s he co-founded the deadly Los Angeles Crips street gang, the extremely violent group that survives through theft and drug dealing and that has spread across the country and to Latin America and Asia.
In 1981 Williams was sentenced to death for murdering four people during two robberies, and although Williams maintains his innocence, the conviction has withstood numerous appeals. Now only California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger can save his life by granting clemency before Dec. 11, when Williams is slated to be executed.
Williams presents a difficult case for death penalty advocates because he has undergone a remarkable transformation during his years on death row, writing nine acclaimed children’s books and speaking out against his former gang lifestyle.
Williams’ reformation and accomplishments have rallied a large group of prominent supporters who want him spared. They point out that his turnaround is a sign of hope that shows even the most hardened criminal can reform and contribute something positive to society. Nothing can bring back the victims, but at least Williams can help others if he is spared.
The U.S. bishops would surely side with Williams in this case, but their support wouldn’t hinge on the convict’s reformation or demonstrated contribution to society.
The bishops are against capital punishment because it is wrong to kill a human being — unless it is the only way to protect society. In America, the chance that a convicted murderer on death row will escape and murder again is so slight as to render justification for capital punishment "practically nonexistent," in the words of the late Pope John Paul II.
So, from the Catholic point of view, it’s wonderful that Tookie Williams has turned his life around so impressively. But that’s not why he shouldn’t be executed.
He shouldn’t be executed because he is a human being, and the state should never kill a human being unless doing so is the only way to protect others.
In their new document the bishops provide common-sense reasons to end capital punishment: Legal prosecution can be flawed in numerous ways, including due to racial or religious biases, and therefore executions can irreversibly punish an innocent person; state-sanctioned execution "diminishes all of us" who are represented by the state; and it is an illusion to think that society can "protect life by taking life."
But undergirding all that is the church’s basic prohibition against intentional killing. That Williams is a human being is reason enough to spare him.
"Friend or Foe" campaign trivializes
Televangelist Jerry Falwell’s "Friend or Foe" campaign to protect Christians’ "right" to celebrate Christmas in public is depressingly silly. The celebrity preacher should be using the power of his position to combat real religious persecution instead of presenting American Christians as victims.
In late October three Catholic school girls were beheaded in Indonesia. In Iraq, members of the long-suppressed Shiite majority are torturing and murdering their Sunni opponents, while Sunnis from around the Arab world have descended on Iraq to murder Shiites and Americans, whom they consider Christian infidels. In Sudan, a campaign of genocide is being carried out by Muslims of Arab extraction against Muslims of African extraction while the rest of the world, for the most part, does nothing.
Falwell, and the hundreds of lawyers who have been amassed to help "friends" celebrate Christmas in public places and to sue "foes" who object, trivialize actual religious persecution.
Letters to the Editor
Don’t withhold Communion
To those considering discontinuing Communion services: A slap in the face is physical abuse. Improper bodily contact is sexual abuse. Depriving us of Communion service is spiritual abuse. With all the physical abuse in this world, and all the sexual abuse by priests that has surfaced, why do you want to add spiritual abuse to your consciences? Please, no longer consider depriving us of our right to receive Communion and putting us in a position of spiritual impoverishment.
Nikiski
Abuse scandal now overseas
Regarding the U.S. non-Catholic media’s attention on the raping of boys by pervert priests, I have heard some people suggest it’s just an American thing. In a sense they are absolutely right. In the rest of the world, the hierarchy has been very successful at hiding these depredations. But now that the Irish pervert priests are being outed, as reported in a New York Times report that ran Nov. 13 in the Anchorage Daily News, you know the non-Catholic and anti-Catholic news media of Western Europe will get busy digging and exposing. The whole Catholic world is going to be stunned by what will come out. The laity will save our beloved church, but we have to get at it.
Anchorage
More to season than shopping
The editorial about Christmas shopping the ethical way (Catholic Comment, Nov. 4) reminded me of my own family Christmas traditions. I am a 79-year-old grandma and a widow with about 50 years of Christmas shopping experience. But there is so much more to preparing for Christmas. My family used to spend Advent learning Christmas hymns to sing in a Christmas procession. Each of us soloed, singing his or her favorite hymn. Christmas in those days wasn’t considered a bounty for the merchants. We learned about the Christmas spirit, which applies to Santa Claus, the Christ child and the Holy Spirit. Christmas explains a whole lot of what Christmas and religion is all about. What better way is there to show a child what a "spirit" is and how they serve all of us, through love, all the time? As for where and how to shop, time, performance capability and what gifts are available seem to be the most important characteristics of the firms with which I trade nowadays. I would be interested in knowing of other firms that are accessible to me and with whom I might trade.
Anchorage
Generosity alive on Peninsula
The generous people of the Kenai Peninsula graciously hosted multiple blood drives across the Peninsula the week of Nov. 7. These community events were supported by the use of a van sponsored by numerous businesses and civic organizations from the Kenai Peninsula. In all 194 people took time out of their busy schedule to donate blood. Thank you to the people of the Kenai Peninsula for helping to provide "the gift of life" to your fellow Alaskans across the state. For more information about hosting a blood drive at your place of business or worship please go to www.bbak.org.
Anchorage