Retired Baptist Pastor Howard Bess Speaks Up About Mormons In Alaska's Matanuska-Susitna Valley

Pioneer Peak, the 6,398 ft landmark of the Mat-Su Valley

The Mat-Su Frontiersman has published a column by retired Baptist Pastor Howard Bess entitled "Comfortable or not, the Mormons are with us", in which he delivers his assessment about the impact of members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Alaska's Matanuska-Susitna Valley. He was obviously prompted by the public debate triggered by the presence of two Mormons, Mitt Romney and Jon Huntsman Jr. in the presidential race. Because Bess is a registered Democrat, neither of the two command his political allegiance at the moment. He does believe religion should be fair game in order to show how a candidate's faith would function in the public political arena, and wants to hear more hard religious questions asked of all candidates.

It's obvious that Howard Bess highly respects the local LDS community and its impact. He writes:

...I live in a community with a heavy Mormon population. There are three large general education public high schools in our area. Near each of them is a beautiful Mormon church. Each is home to multiple congregations. With their distinctive architecture and manicured lawns, a person would have to be blind and uninformed not to recognize the extent of the Mormon presence.

Mormons are an active part of our community structures. Mormons serve on most of our elected boards, councils and assemblies. While I have no research to support my understanding, I strongly suspect Mormons have a much better voting record than the general population. In my own experience, Mormons are responsible public citizens.

Mormons are great supporters of the public school system. Mormon young people bring a strong work ethic and personal discipline to our schools and school activities. Teachers love to have them in their classrooms and coaches are eager to have them on their teams. These kids obviously are coming from stable homes with positive motivations. We have a growing number of Mormon teachers and school administrators. We are a more stable and better functioning community because Mormons are our neighbors. We are blessed by the heavy Mormon presence in our Valley...

Right on all counts, and we appreciate the props. Howard Bess also notes that there are two significant developments taking place among Mormons. First, he notes the significant campaign to identify ourselves more explicitly as Christians, and believes this will ultimately lead to full partnership within the Christian community and our evolution into a large, vigorous and distinct Evangelical Protestant denomination.

Second, he also suggests that we are becoming the model for American family life through our successful faithfulness to the two-parent model at a time when there are so many single-parent families. We show that the two-parent family is doable and that it works better. He concludes by saying "The Mormons are with us. They are our neighbors. We need to know them better. One of them could well be our next president".

What's interesting is that Howard Bess refrained from making any remarks about LDS policy towards homosexuals. This omission is significant because when he was a pastor, Bess was one of their first mainstream Christian pastors in Alaska to call for greater inclusion of gays in Christian churches. In 1995, he even wrote a book entitled "Pastor, I Am Gay" to drive the point home. It was not very well-received by some socially conservative Christians in Alaska. He even ran afoul of Sarah Palin, who allegedly tried to have the book removed from the Wasilla Public Library while she was mayor. Yet Bess respects our church's right to require gays to be celibate in order to be members of our church.

The LDS Church in the Mat-Su Valley is organized under the Wasilla Stake, which has 13 congregations, 11 of which are in the Valley itself. The other two are located in Valdez and Glennallen.

Anchorage Daily News Publishes Detailed Profile Of LDS Missionaries Kyle Offley And Lorenzo Matamua Working The Mountain View Neighborhood

The Anchorage Daily News has published one of the most detailed, accurate, and photo-laden profiles of LDS missionaries I've seen from a mainstream media source since I began this blog. In their Focal Point: Mountain View blog, they profile Elders Kyle Offley, who hails from Meetetse, Wyoming, a town of 400 east of Yellowstone National Park, and Lorenzo Matamua, who comes from Sydney, Australia. Both are 21 years old. Nine photos are included on the blog.

In this story, Elders Offley and Matamua were proselyting in Anchorage's Mountain View neighborhood, the city's most diverse and also the least financially-empowered neighborhood. Although it has its rough spots, it is nowhere close to being a "ghetto". They are both assigned to Anchorage’s Northern Lights Samoan Ward of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and target their outreach towards Samoans, although they will also randomly tract various neighborhoods and speak to anyone who answers the door. Both speak Samoan.

Reactions to them vary. In one instance of random tracting, they stopped at each house on both sides of Irwin Street for one block. It was the middle of a weekday, and almost no one answered the door. They spoke briefly with the few who did. No one invited them inside. Elder Offley notes that there are a number of people who slam the doors in his face, but says it helps him develop a thicker skin. During one split, they were joined by 73-year-old Elder Merlan Ellis, who, although not identified as such, is most likely a ward missionary who's indigenous to the local congregation. Ward missionaries don't face the same financial constraints as full-time proselyting missionaries.

A scheduled visitation to a Samoan family went much better. Many LDS members frequently sign up to feed missionaries, which helps stretch the $135 monthly stipend given them for food and other incidentals. What's interesting is that according to Samoan custom, guests are fed before family members, so the missionaries had to deal with eating while others were watching. That can take some acculturation. And guests are expected to eat.

There are 63 missionary pairs (126 missionaries total) working in Alaska and the Yukon Territory, geographically the largest Mormon mission in the world. Thirty-six missionaries are based in Anchorage. In Anchorage, each missionary companionship is issued a car and each individual missionary a cell phone by the Church, which monitors usage of both quite closely.

Another Alaska-based missionary, Elder Mathieu Squires, regularly blogs HERE. He's been posted to different places throughout the region such as Fairbanks and Whitehorse in Yukon Territory. Elder Squiers recently noted that he had experienced less success than usual in random tracting in his part of Anchorage, which is why the LDS Church urges members to seek out prospects and steer them towards the missionaries, so the missionaries can be more productive.

LDS Missionaries Leave Unalaska For More Populous Parts Of Alaska

Unalaska (map HERE)

According to KUCB 89.7 FM, two unidentified missionaries of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints were re-deployed to areas where they could be put to more productive use. One was sent to Eagle River (just north of Anchorage), and the other to Fairbanks.

Unalaska, with a population of 3,584 as of July 2009, is not large enough to sustain a ward, but it has a branch, which is aligned under the Anchorage Alaska Stake. Branch President Don Clark explained that the missionaries' departure does not presage a contraction in Church membership on Unalaska. "They don't have a set deal where they have missionaries out here all the time. They've been coming and going since 1999," he says. "There's been some times all along when we haven't had missionaries here, and we've had young missionaries and senior missionaries out here. We just kind of bounce back and forth."

While they were in town, the missionaries' task primarily involved working the community's LDS congregation, and they had no interest in proselytizing to members of other churches in town. They also spent considerable time engaged in community service. "They helped at the senior center, and they also helped out with the kids at the PCR when they were asked to. They try to do community service," says Clark. "It's not just church stuff."

No new full-time missionaries are expected in Unalaska until after the new year. With a limited local population combined with the branch's policy of not proselytizing to members of other churches, there's only so much they can do.

Unalaska is located about one-third of the way out on the Aleutian Islands. Dutch Harbor, the official name of the city's port, is often applied to the portion of the city of Unalaska located on the smaller Amaknak Island, which is connected by bridge to the rest of the community on the larger Unalaska Island. Its economy can be summed up in two words: fish and fleet services. Its weather is diplomatically described as "invigorating", meaning if you don't like it, wait a minute. Unalaska averages 250 days of precipitation per year, and can be windy as hell. But on those infrequent calm and clear days, it can seem like a picturesque paradise.