• Alaska
    1984 Yearbook of Jehovah’s Witnesses

    • CIRCUIT TRAVELS

      The steady assistance from traveling overseers has done much to build up the brothers and to provide training. From 1963 to 1979 Brother Robert L. Hartman faithfully visited the congregations in Alaska and the Yukon Territory. Brother Hartman recalls: “When I took up the circuit work in February 1963, in Alaska and the Yukon there were 428 publishers scattered among ten congregations. Reaching the congregations and isolated ones by various means of transportation posed an interesting challenge. I used the auto, commercial jet plane, small bush aircraft, ferryboats and fishing boats to visit our dear brothers and sisters needing to be built up by the circuit overseer.”

      He tells of Sister Alma Laughlin and her teenage son, who were the only Witnesses in the tough logging-fishing town of Wrangell. To visit them required expensive travel by bush plane or long hours by ferryboat plus being housed in an old rooming house. He accompanied Sister Laughlin and her son in preaching from house to house, on return visits and Bible studies, all on foot and often in the soaking rain. But just as the larger congregations did, the two of them needed the visits. On one visit he recalls taking off by bush plane from Sitka, headed for Wrangell:

      “Midway on the trip, with rugged mountains and islands on each side and the salt water of the Inside Passage below us, we suddenly ran head-on into a brisk rainstorm. The pilot made a quick about-face and headed back toward our place of origin, the strong winds and rain pounding at our tail. Our turnabout was so abrupt that we seemed like characters in a cartoon drama being pursued by a ‘monster’ storm. But Alaskan bush pilots do not give up easily. He made a wide circle to the west around several islands, searching for a pass where the storm was not so fierce.

      “As we followed this circuitous route, the storm forced us down closer and closer to the surface of the water below. But the pilot forged ahead, skimming 200 feet [60 m] above the water. When he opened the window on his side to see how near we were to the mountain shoreline a few yards away, I couldn’t help but wonder if we would reach Wrangell safely. Before long, through the haze ahead, I could barely make out three dim figures waiting with an auto on the shore. Sister Laughlin had hired the lone taxi to meet the plane at the rural landing spot. For the rest of the week we trudged around in the rain in our field service, but at least we were safe on land.”

      Brother Hartman continues: “Everyone in that small town was used to seeing Sister Laughlin making her rounds on foot in her Bible teaching work. She continued faithful, living in this isolated town for several years until her husband finally moved them nearer to a congregation. Being able to serve such faithful brothers and sisters for over 16 years in Alaska was an indescribable privilege for me. Although I traveled well over 250,000 miles [400,000 km], many times in storms and with temperatures as low as 60 degrees below zero Fahrenheit [-51° C.], to reach the brothers in the circuit, to share the faith and integrity like that of Sister Laughlin is one of the greatest blessings a person could enjoy. And what a pleasure to have seen the number of publishers of the good news reach more than 1,240 in 23 congregations by the time I left Alaska in 1979!” Today Brother Hartman continues to work as a traveling overseer under the United States branch.