After they married, Roland and Jackie started talking about ways to reach out to the native Alaskan community around them, and decided to build a Seventh-day Adventist school on their property by the lake. They called it “The Mission School” and offered grades 1-8. Students and parents were delighted, and kids came from as far away as Nome just to attend the mission school. In order to accommodate the students, two dormitories were built. Additionally, the Moodys started an Adventist congregation and built the first Aleknagik Seventh-day Adventist Church.

As the school grew, Roland and Jackie wanted to provide more for their students, so they started a camp. We just didn’t have any place to take the young kids for activities and stuff,recalled Roland, and kids like to go some place. They named the new place “Camp Polaris”–after the guiding light of the North Star.

Roland Moody purchased several old buildings from Crick Cannery, which had gone out of business. He barged these buildings across Bristol Bay to Aleknagik, and then 12 miles up the lake to Camp Polaris. More than 60 years later, these old cannery buildings are still in use each summer by the children of Western Alaska.

For decades, Roland and Jackie Moody enjoyed hosting the children and ferrying them up the lake by barge to the camp. Each year on the last Sabbath of camp, the entire Aleknagik Adventist church prepared a feast for the kids and made the 1½ hour boat trip up the lake to Camp Polaris where they enjoyed a special Sabbath by the lake with the campers. After Jackie passed away, Roland married Beverly, who helped continue the Camp Polaris traditions.

Over the years, the camp has been a vital ministry to the young people of Western Alaska. Many of the children who attend camp come from less than ideal homes where poverty, alcoholism, and abuse are too often the norm. They often exclaim that coming to the camp is the highlight of their year, because it is a place where they feel loved, accepted, and cared for.

While Roland and Beverly have since retired and moved to Walla Walla, Washington, the ministry of Camp Polaris continues. You can become a part of this special ministry to the children of Alaska by contributing to this quarter’s Thirteenth Sabbath Offering.

To meet some of the children at Camp Polaris, read their stories at www.adventistmission.org/resources.

Print/PDF/Email