Day 44 Kenai

We have been grossly delinquent at church of late, so we picked up a “doubleheader”, hitting the Russian Orthodox Church at 9am, then the Kenai Bible Church at 11am.  Both are within ~200 yards of our trailer. Then Travis and I went back to the “Church of the Sockeye River” after lunch, but that story will be for later. 

No one really wanted to go to the Russian Orthodox Church, cause it’s an unfamiliar format (ie Catholic).  I’ve been to exactly one Catholic event before (a funeral) and made a bit of an ass of myself (yeah, hard to believe…. I know) for mistaking one of those “God be with you” sessions as introduction/friendly moment many churches (including our own) has.  So….. instead of saying “God be with you”, which is what everyone else was saying, I kept saying “Howdy, I’m Shane” and grinning like a jackass eating barbed wire. 

I’m definitely not cut out for the Catholic faith, cause I prefer my singing (on note) to be separated from the sermon.  It seemed like they blended the whole service together, in a really bland, hard to follow song.  This will sound prejudiced, but the Catholics seem to be in desperate want of some black folks (better rhythm and far better singing) in the crowd. Our own church could use more too….. now that I think about it….

Just like my home church, the Russian Orthodox folks also have about 15% of the membership who lack an alarm clock, apparently, cause that’s how many came in after the 9am launch. Some of their members are really on it, though, cause when we got there 15 minutes early, one old boy in a robe was singing (again, flat and off key) to welcome everyone in.  I’ll give them points for involving everyone though, cause folks were saying stuff and tapping their chest the whole session.  The pastor wore a cool looking robe that would make Luke Skywalker jealous, and he had this gold dust distributor he kept shaking back and forth making the place smell a bit.  No one slept at all (again, a departure from Protestant churches) cause there weren’t any benches or chairs.  We stood the whole time like an Aggie football game.  All in all, a fun experience and definitely new to us. 

The Kenai Bible Church experience was much more to our normal, with dedicated singing sessions and a sermon on Acts, Chapter 2, about the beginnings of the early church.  We ran into a guy who used to teach classes at UNT back in the late 70’s and a woman originally from Houston.  She said she much preferred Kenai to Houston, and I certainly do too (sorry Leighton….).

After church, we ate leftovers and then the men headed to the river for another run at the sockeye. Travis caught one after about an hour, and did so in honor of his buddy Matt, who has caught 4 of the 5 salmon species, lacking only sockeye.  Travis intends to catch one for himself tomorrow. J  A while later, I hooked into a nice sockeye but lost it on a line break (heartbreaker).  It was a nice fish (they always are when you don’t catch em).  Fishing for sockeye is a totally different thing.  You use a ~3/4 oz weight upstream of a barrel swivel, about 4’ of leader and a big hook with yarn tied on it. You only “cast” out about 15’ of line, just a little up river, let it “swing” down river “feeling” the weight bounce along the bottom. Once the rig has swing about 90 degrees, you lift the rod (hook set) hoping to have hung one in the ~6 seconds your line was in the water. Repeat.  Repeat… repeat….  I think we were casting about every 10-15 seconds. So, between Travis and me, fishing for ~4 hours, is about ~2800 casts for those two hookups.  Still, we both agree it was well worth it, because we’re having sockeye for dinner tomorrow. J

Meanwhile, the ladies walked down to the beach to see how the dipnetting was going.  Deanna shot some video showing what life is like on the beach during dipnet season.

The ladies cooked poboy fillet mignon (hamburger patties wrapped in bacon) for dinner, and of course, that was as good as always.