KICY Christian Radio visits Waseca Real Life Covenant Church

About 60 people gathered at Real Life Covenant Church in the 600 block of Waseca’s West Elm Avenue the evening of Wednesday, Oct. 8, for a free salmon dinner and information about KICY Christian radio station located in Alaska. This event was free to attend but required registration in advance.

 

Presenter for the evening was Patty Burchell, KICY radio station manager. Waseca was one of  seven destinations where she was scheduled to give a presentation. Still, she not only served the salmon but took the stage to share the story of her own journey to the organization’s leadership, and provide information about the population the station serves. One of the leaders in frontier Christian ministry has been the KICY Christian Radio in Nome, Alaska. One thing that sets KICY apart from other radio stations, said Burchell, “In our basement recording studio we have the biggest collection of Native gospel music in the nation.”

 

Burchell shared that KICY radio first began in 1960 and has grown to broadcast on three frequencies–one AM and two FM–across an area in Alaska about the size of the state of Michigan. She referred to the music and Christian programming the station shares as “the background of life” for about 50,000 people who live in Nome, with its population of roughly 10,000, and many scattered coastline villages populated by indigenous peoples and the descendants of gold miners who arrived in Alaska early in the 1900s.

 

Burchell showed aerial photos of a number of the communities she was describing. Showing Nome, she mentioned that an individual could walk its length, parallel with the beach, in about 20 minutes, and its depth in about 5. She also pointed out that Nome is the only town organized on “a grid,” in other words, with square blocks created by streets, since it is the only community KICY serves which was not originally a native village. The streets, however, are gravel.

 

“Residents of the villages live a subsistence lifestyle,” she revealed, showing pictures of open structures where pink salmon filets were hanging to dry. The salmon, she mentioned, is often smoked and then kept for the winter. In contrast, the salmon cooked on Thursday night was stuffed with tomatoes and onions, baked in tinfoil.

 

In the summer, she told audience members, high temperatures are usually in the sixties, with relatively rare incursions into the seventies and exceptionally rare occurrences of the eighties.

 

Winter temperatures range between 20 degrees either above or below zero. The Bering sea is usually frozen solid from November to May, as are the streams and rivers which crisscross the tundra. As far as the people of western Alaska are concerned, Burchell commented, “anything above zero is downright warm.”

 

Burchell mentioned that she and her fellow volunteers are pleased to serve the scattered population of western Alaska. Much of their programming is Christian music in English, however, the station has a recording studio where local musicians can record translated or original songs for broadcast, since their audience speaks mainly indigenous languages. The station also provides coverage of local basketball games, the Iditarod, fishing reports, and regional and state-wide church conferences, to name a few.

 

Referring to the station as a “holy flamethrower,” Burchell revealed the AM frequency of KICY  reaches as far as 2,000 miles into Russia, especially overnight and when transmissions are purposely aimed eastward.

 

Burchell invited those in attendance to support the radio station in a number of ways, including donating funds, praying, volunteering at the station for some of its summer projects, and even joining the staff. “Give us a year and we can teach you radio,” Burchell commented. More information about the station and its services available, or to donate, find them at www.kicy.org.