Juneau, AL and Honolulu, HI

Have you ever booked a long flight to Alaska, then realized that you somehow booked it for a week earlier than you were planning on? I have. Let me explain. After being able to spend Christmas and New Year’s Eve with my family, I started looking into which dates would work best to fly to Alaska and Hawaii to round out the trip. Somewhere along the lines of this planning process, I met up with some friends that I went to middle school with but hadn’t really kept in touch with. As I was telling them about my mission trip, I mentioned that I was going to Alaska and Hawaii and asked if they wanted to join me. They both said yes! So we all met up for breakfast one day and decided that they were actually going to join me to do service in Juneau, Alaska. After we sat and discussed our plans, we booked our flights. I booked mine on a different computer than theirs, double checked everything before I booked it, and even read it aloud to one of the other guys. Perfect. All set!

About a week and a half later, I was looking at my flight itinerary and noticed that the departure date said “January 22nd” rather than the 28th! From there, I was faced with two options: 1) switch my flight or 2) keep my flight and find an inexpensive hotel to stay at. In my mind, I had to choose between: 1) paying to get nothing or 2) paying to spend a week alone in Juneau. Neither option was ideal, but I decided to fly to Juneau a week early and make the most of it!

When it came time to fly, I had a pretty bad cold. The fact that it was 40 degrees and raining in Juneau didn’t help my cold either. I figured it wasn’t a great idea to work with other people and risk them getting sick, so I decided to spend my first few days trying to get over my cold. While I was recovering, rather than just sit and do nothing, I decided that I would make some Valentine’s Day cards for people in the nursing home!

Once I started feeling better, I took the hotel shuttle to downtown Juneau to help serve lunch at a soup kitchen. My help was needed at 11:00am. The shuttle drop off time for downtown was at 9:15am. Since I had some time to burn, I decided to walk around for a while… in the cold, windy rain. Little did I know that most shops in downtown Juneau don’t open until between 10:00am-11:00am. After walking around in the rain for 45 minutes, I bought a poncho and continued to walk for another hour. After that, I headed back to the soup kitchen to help prep and serve lunch!

The next day, I put on my poncho and walked along one of the local trails picking up garbage in the rain! After a week alone in Juneau, where it rained literally every day, my friends Jason and Josh flew in to help serve others, and the rain stopped. The day after they arrived, we had the opportunity to spend time with the residents at Wildflower Court nursing home and rehabilitation center. We were able to play games and visit with them, as well as mix in the occasional card trick! Things went well enough that we were invited to come back and help out the next day! It was nice to be able to return and call our new friends by name, even if most of them didn’t remember us!

We also spent some time hiking through the forest picking up garbage. It was nice to be able to see some of the wilderness, while helping to keep it clean at the same time! In addition to spending time picking up garbage, we also stopped at the local thrift shop. Earlier in the week I tried to volunteer there, but I was unable to do so on such short notice. Since we were not able to volunteer, we decided to make an impact at the thrift shop in a different way. I wrote some little notes and stuck them with some money that we pooled together to give the lady at the front desk. The money was to be used for paying for the purchases of the next families that walked in!

On our final day in Alaska, we set out to hike to the Mendenhall Glacier with one of the workers from the nursing home, because when else will we have a chance to walk on a glacier? I wasn’t exactly sure how long the hike was going to be, so I brought a granola bar in case I got hungry. I ate that granola bar fifteen minutes into the hike… the hike lasted four hours. As ill-equipped as I was, the hike was great! We had some great views and had a chance to walk on the glacier as well as crawl into an ice cave under it! It was a great way to end our time in Alaska!

On Tuesday morning we headed to the airport at 5:00am. Jason and Josh headed back to Minneapolis and I headed to Honolulu! I made it to Honolulu in the evening, and after a bite to eat, I headed to bed. Honolulu was quite the opposite of Juneau. Instead of 40 degrees, rainy and windy, it was 75 degrees and sunny! I decided to take advantage of the nice weather by hiking up the Diamond Head volcanic crater! After enjoying the views, I headed back to my hotel. On the way back, I saw two members of the military in line waiting to grab lunch. I asked them if I could buy them lunch. They respectfully declined. So I thanked them for their service and went on my way… 0 for 1 in kind deeds for the day. Later on, I saw a man sleeping down the street from my hotel with a sign that said “hungry”. I walked a ways down the street, grabbed some burgers, and headed back, hoping to sit and share a meal with him. When I got back to his spot, he was gone… 0 for 2 in kind deeds for the day. With burgers in hand, I spotted a lady in a wheel chair with a bunch of bags hanging off the handles. I approached her and asked if I could help her in any way. She said no. So I asked if she would like a burger. She said no again… 0 for 3 in kind deeds for the day! I headed back to my room, ate the burgers, and came up with a game plan for the days to come.

The next day I called a soup kitchen to see if I could help serve lunch. They said that they had plenty of volunteers, which is great, but they didn’t need my help. Upon hearing that, I decided to do some random acts of kindness that couldn’t be turned down. I went to a McDonald’s, bought an ice cream cone, and left plenty of change to cover the next person in line’s meal. After that, I headed to a Burger King to do the same thing. I spent the rest of the afternoon walking along the beaches. While I was walking, I saw three homeless people sitting under the shelter near the restrooms. After seeing them, I looped back around to the McDonald’s, bought some sandwiches, and hand delivered them to my new friends. The woman’s name is Barbara, but I didn’t catch the names of the other two men. Please pray for Barbara and her friends!

On Friday, I got some more sandwiches and brought them to Barbara and her friends once more! Again, they were very thankful for the food. After that, I decided to go snorkeling in an area where I had seen a lot of fish the day before. Snorkeling was an amazing experience, except for when one of my big toes got carved up by the coral. Thankfully no sharks were around at the time when the blood was in the water!

On Saturday, I volunteered all day at the Assistance League of Hawaii Thrift Shop. Along with doing a variety of different tasks to help out around the store, I also had a chance to talk with some of the customers and the volunteers that work there! It was amazing to see an entire store run by volunteers who were outgoing and happy to serve others! After I left the thrift store, I got ready to head to the University of Hawaii’s Newman Center for Mass and a young professional’s get together. I hopped on the city bus at 4:35pm hoping to make it to Mass at 5:00pm… the bus dropped me off at 6:40pm, so clearly I was on the wrong bus. I didn’t make it to Mass, but I made it in time for the meeting, where I met up with my friend’s sister, Molly!

On Super Bowl Sunday, thanks to my unplanned bus adventure the night before, I got up at early and went to 6:00am Mass. Following that, I joined Molly and some of her friends as they went rock climbing on one of the island’s cliffs. Since I hadn’t rock climbed in nine years and I had a gash on my big toe, I decided to pass on the rock climbing but go for the scenery. Afterwards, we went back to the Newman Center to watch the Super Bowl.

On my last day in Hawaii, I took a bus that circled the island. After the bus tour was over, I grabbed some burgers again and brought them to Barbara and her friends for a third time! After delivering the burgers, I walked around for a bit and went to the beach to watch the sunset one last time. As I was sitting there, a couple came up to me and asked me to take a picture of them. After I took the picture, they asked what I was doing alone in Hawaii (fair question). One thing led to another and there I was, talking about God with two strangers on a beach in Honolulu. That seemed like a perfect way to wrap up my trip!

I packed my belongings up on Monday night and headed to the airport on Tuesday morning. After about 12 hours sitting on a plane or in an airport, I made it back safe and sound to Minneapolis!

Thank you to everyone who works at the soup kitchen in Juneau. Thank you to Nancy and everyone at Wildflower Court nursing home for taking such good care of your residents. Thank you to Jason and Josh for meeting up with me to serve others in Alaska. Thank you to Nancy and all of the other volunteers at the Assistance League of Hawaii Thrift Shop for the work that you do. Thank you to Molly for showing me around and for inviting me to the Newman Center events. And thank you to every single one of you! To everyone who prayed for me, housed me, fed me, donated to the mission, put me in touch with other helpful people, or assisted me in any way, shape, or form, thank you, thank you, thank you! God has blessed me immensely with your presence. I am extremely humbled to have had this once in a lifetime opportunity! None of it would have been possible without your assistance!

I’ve seen firsthand that some of the smallest things can truly make the biggest differences! The trip is complete but the mission never ends! God bless all of you!