Cleft of the Rock

Mark Smith thought he'd been called to mission work, to serve God in Nome, Alaska. He sold his car to buy a one-way plane ticket, dropped out of college, gave up his campus housing, and quit his job. Then, when his plane landed in Nome, he discovered the state had pulled the funding for the job he'd been offered.

Six thousand miles from home, with everything he owned in his pockets, he was filled with a blinding anger and an overwhelming sense of betrayal. Desperate for answers from God, he stormed into the hills surrounding Nome. Soon he was six miles from town, atop Anvil Mountain--the highest peak in the area--and facing a strong storm blowing in from the north. He was clad in only the jeans, sneakers, and thin, long-sleeved shirt he'd worn on the plane, facing pelted by sleet and gusts of wind and freezing rain, his clothes frozen to his body and his tears to his face.

Knowing he was in serious trouble, he crawled into the only space available to get out of the wind--a cleft below the anvil formation in Anvil Rock. Too cold even to pray, he squeezed as far up into the rock as he could and passed out.

The cleft of the rock became a powerful metaphor for God's protection and the fruitful ministry he would plant in this rugged terrain with temperatures reaching forty below zero. Join Mark as he hunts with a dog team, ice fishes through the frozen Bering Sea, builds a church from the ground up, and finds ways to minister to the natives while growing spiritually in ways he never could have imagined.