Dear Alaska Baptist Disaster Relief Team Members,

Thank you for taking a few moments to read our Alaska Baptist Disaster Relief – Winter 2026 Newsletter! To get started, we try to keep an eye on every crisis around our state and may need your help soon – please read on. Also, know that we are working on a few training opportunities for 2026, so, mark your calendar for March 28 (Anchorage) and/or April 29-May 2, 2026 (Fairbanks), with more dates to come so – please read on.

First, I want to thank many of you who train each year thru local church and statewide DR exercises and events and then standby, ready to serve and perhaps you are still waiting to join us for your first "call out" or deployment. Again, thank you for being a part of our statewide team that may need 100s of volunteers, working together, in 2026! Please, please attend any DR updates and / or Ready Church training and bring others with you to any or all of our training sessions. We may need all-hands-on-deck at some point in the coming year!

In January of this past year, we were able to send 12 of our own Alaska DR trainers to San Antonio, Texas. They came back ready to help all of us with training exercises and sessions across the state. Unfortunately, Alaska DR did not receive a grant to send key leaders out of state for training-the-trainer exercises in 2026, but most of this crew is still waiting for a request from your church to host a training session. With that, we must always update our current in state team members, regardless of whether they have ever deployed or not and and we must always equip new volunteers!  At the same time, we have to keep Ready Church volunteers, those who only serve thru their church, prepared to go when called upon, so Iet's also thank our 2025 Trainers! Now, let's do some DR preparation at your church in 2026!

Second, I want to give a shoutout to those who did respond in 2025, either to wildfire recovery in Healy, Alaska; flood response in Ruidoso, New Mexico; Typhoon Sheltering at the Eagan Center in Anchorage; or Commodities Distribution in Bethel, Alaska. We learned a lot in 2025 from these responses, and I have personally come to deeply appreciate our DR administrative personnel and I hope to see many of you when we focus on "OPAL," our abbreviation for the admin process, which we will focus on this spring. We experienced "Incident Command" up close and personal in Ruidoso, New Mexico. As a result, we have invited Ed and Loretta Green to come to Fairbanks this spring. Our time in Ruidoso allowed us to assist with a unified, well-prepared, and flexibly executed Operations, Planning, Administration and Logistics (OPAL) Ministry in the midst of tragic and ongoing flooding. At the same time, we saw chaplaincy working right alongside clean-up operations to demonstrate the Love of Jesus, with both spoken witness and 1000s of wheel barrel loads of mud being hauled to the street.

With this shoutout I must also mention one couple. Denny and Mary Thomas actually responded to all four of the 2025 team responses listed above. I realize that most of us cannot give this much time to Alaska DR, but I also realize that these two have impacted many lives in many locations, with extremely varied servanthood tasks, because of their heart for serving and heart for DR recovery ministries. I have listed this couple as our DR Volunteers or the Year – 2025! All of our DR team sends "thanks" to Denny and Mary.

Third, we have added to our numbers, so I want to recognize a large group of new ABDR recruits! Not all, but most of these 2025 newbies were trained onsite at the Egan Center during our ministry response there. One church, Greater Friendship Baptist Church in Anchorage, brought a large group and not only attended the 101 training but received the hands-on training needed to serve in Shower and Laundry Ministries. We did have an impressive number of "gold shirts" at the Egan Center, which did make an impression on Alaska Emergency Management and keeps us on their call list for partners. We will offer the complete 101 training, also known as, Introduction to Alaska Baptist Disaster Relief, on March 28, 2026 in Anchorage, with promotion coming out soon.

As I have mentioned, we learned a lot about the current recovery environment as we have served this past year. State Emergency Management invited us to serve at the Egan Center where they expected 600 Typhoon Halong evacuees. Once we were set up, we were told that we could not operate because our shower units were not handicapped accessible! We are learning to be flexible! So, we praise the Lord that we were able to continue that ministry and also receive a private donation that will allow us to build an additional shower and laundry unit. Of course, this new unit will meet all the current requirements for serving people in crisis, including those with mobility issues. North Carolina Baptist DR has offered to build this unit for us and plans are underway.

Fourth, I want to praise our churches who have adopted a Ready Church Strategy. Let me say again - Alaska Baptist Disaster Relief exists to serve the local church. Three 2025 responses in three very different churches, one need in my own community, and one current crisis have reshaped our understanding of what it means to be a "Ready Church." Alaska Baptist DR did come alongside Morning Star Baptist Church, Healy during their wildfire response in late spring. Their work with their community was very impressive and impactful and will shape our manual for Alaska Baptist Ready Church training. Amazingly the church hosted our volunteers and at the same time housing families that had been evacuated from their homes. The Healy community has previously experienced wildfires and continues to prepare for the next one. We needed their experience and their wisdom of what it takes to be a community involved and caring church in Alaska.

A few of us traveled from Healy to Ruidoso, from a small Baptist church in a small community to a Baptist mega-church by Alaskan standards, and again we could see how locals and a church family work together with 100s of incoming volunteers. First Baptist Church, Ruidoso had new volunteers arriving every day. Because everyone who arrived had adequate DR training and understood a little bit about SBDR Incident Command structure, and especially logistics, it was amazing how everything fit together.

Following our time in New Mexico some of these same volunteers moved on to Bethel, Alaska where there is no Southern Baptist Church. We were enthusiastically hosted by Bethel Covenant Church and needed to instruct them in "Ready Church thinking." Every room in their building was needed for someone (housing) or something. I personally slept in the church nursery and tried to follow the rules the church had set, including "take your shoes off in the nursery." A Texas team of six joined us for over a week. A Hawaiian volunteer joined us for over two weeks. Still, because of some DR deployment experience, some unified command skills and a flexible church we survived. Every day I served in this Alaska community that is very different than my own. Every day a team worked as one Christ-like crew alongside agencies who each had their own agenda and their own guidelines, certainly were not faith-based and probably will never understand why "the Baptists" do what we do. We were receiving daily requests from Alaska Native villages for essential commodities and supplies, and in doing so we began preparing to hopefully respond in the spring of 2026 with some type of clean-up effort and spiritual care.

The December 2025 windstorms in the Mat-Su Valley have also brought about a great deal of focus on Ready Church. The four weeks of high winds resulted in various requests for help, including picking up tree limbs, picking up lots and lots of roofing, and hauling downed yard fencing to the dump. Some incidents did require immediate response, such as a front door being blown off a house (my church responded) but other yard debris is still waiting. I am seeking your input and the input of churches that have responded! How can we best assist local churches that might organize, schedule and undertake Ready Church ministries, community recovery and / or individual assistance requests. Do we help local Emergency Management agencies set up a Call-in Center for Needs or do we manage each church office? Do we bring in response teams from across the state or from the lower 48 and if so, how do local churches, in the midst of the storm, house outsiders? How do we help our churches to share the Love of Christ when the wind is still blowing, and it is cold, very cold, outside?

Let's go a step further with Ready Church response. As I write this, we have a crisis happening in Juneau, Alaska. Is this another opportunity for chaplains and care givers? Record precipitation has brought about heavy snow-load affecting roofs. Churches have had to dismiss their own services because of the situation. Where would we house volunteers, if needed? Now, with warmer temperatures and lots of rain, shelters are opening up because of avalanches, landslides and flooding. Every disaster is local and that's where recovery and ministry during crisis begins but I am asking a few potential volunteers to "stand by!" Let me know if you could response in Juneau and I will remain in contact with local churches. Pastor Greg White at First Baptist Church, Juneau, and his wife, Evie, have extensive experience with Southern Baptist Disaster Relief, American Red Cross, The Salvation Army, and with local Emergency Management during disasters! I have asked them to take good notes in order to help us as we continue to strengthen our Ready Church training manual and to know when, or if, to call outsiders to respond with assistance. Again, we are "standing by" to determine if a statewide "call out" is necessary or even possible! The best way to let all Alaskans know about a crisis happening in your community is for you to join and then post on our Alaska Baptist Disaster Relief - Facebook page!

Fifth, let me return to plans for 2026. Both Ryan Deatherage and I serve on a VOAD Long-term Recovery/Rebuild Team, now focused on response in Western Alaska communities. We believe that at least 49 Alaska Native villages were impacted by Typhoon Halong. Will there be ministry opportunities this spring? Many, many agencies are involved in the storm recovery in Western Alaska. A variety of government agencies, spending millions of dollars, evidently wants most of the credit. Rebuild contractors, working 12 hour days – 7 days a week, are now laboring in villages to get many people back into their homes and so the Recovery/Rebuild Committee actually has no idea what we might be able to do in the spring! I am certain that it will actually take some "spiritual compassion" on the ground for a genuine crisis recovery to take place. A number of DR rebuild teams from the lower 48 are committed to come in the spring but, at this moment, we cannot give them hope that there will be significant clean-up and rebuild opportunities. Still, we seek ways to share the Love of Jesus in Western Alaska.

On the other hand, we prepare to serve during 2026! Again, we will offer Basic Training in Anchorage on Saturday, March 28; OPAL (administration, logistics and team building) Training in Fairbanks on April 29-May 2, and at our own Annual Alaska Disaster Skill Set Training (clean-up, chaplaincy and food service) back at LaVerne Griffin Camp in Wasilla in October. That date is to be announced.

Perhaps most importantly, we look forward to training in your church! We have trainers available across the state and funds set aside to travel to you. Again, you are urged to invite a team member to train newbies and/or update team members at your church with a 101-Intro to DR class, with a Ready Church class or with a Basic Spiritual Care (chaplaincy) class. Each of these sessions usually requires 3 hours and can be offered for free on a weeknight, Saturday or Sunday afternoon. Schedule your training by contacting me. With that we hope to provide update training for at least 50 current volunteers and first-time training for another 50 new recruits. Thanks for serving with Alaska Baptist Disaster Relief.

Gary Bearce, ABDR Director

PS – Remember, the easiest way to contact me is to go to the Alaska Baptist Disaster Relief Webpage at www.abcdr.org and choose "Contact Gary." The note goes directly to my text messaging. Contact me if you could response in Juneau for a week or if you want to schedule any type of DR training at your church, or if you are aware of recovery/spiritual care needs in Alaska. Happy New Year!

Alaska Baptist Disaster Relief Update: