Among the people who live in the remote North Slope of Alaska are the Inupiat, a group of indigenous Alaskans whose way of life has long been tied to the land, water, and animals of the region. While the extreme conditions three hundred miles north of the Arctic Circle have always been challenging, at no time in Inupiat history was survival there as marked by tragedy as it was at the end of the nineteenth century. Commercial whalers had discovered the riches of the northern seas, and this led to excessive harvesting of the abundant whales, seals, and walruses that provided sustenance for the Inupiat people. By the end of the 1800s, disease and starvation were driving many families away from their villages.

The Alasuuraq family was one of them. In November of 1891, all the other people of their small Inupiat village had left. But this family, which included Adam and Eve, their children, and Adam’s mother, were waiting in the family igloo because Eve was about to give birth. By the time the baby boy they named Patkotak (later called Paul) was born, the family had no food and was reduced to boiling and eating their boots, which were made of skins.

After the birth, the malnourished family finally began the long walk in search of food. But after just one day, they reluctantly had to move ahead of the grandmother, as her slow progress could mean the difference between life and death for the rest of the family. Soon they faced another agonizing choice: what to do about the infant, as Eve was unable to produce milk for him. Knowing the newborn would be better off dying quickly from exposure than slowly from starvation, they placed little Patkotak in a snowbank and went on.

Miraculously, the grandmother came upon her day-old grandson. Thinking it would be better for them to die together rather than alone, she retrieved the baby from the snowbank and wrapped him inside her own parka. She continued walking for a few more hours, but at last her strength was gone and her legs were giving out. Just then, she spotted caribou hunters coming her way. The hunters brought the two to a hunting camp, where the grandmother fed the baby with milk from a caribou cow. Later that same day, they were reunited with their family who had never expected to see them again.

This is Paul Patkotak’s story, in his own words.

From the depths of my heart, I praise the Lord for what He has done for me. I am an Eskimo, and I come from the “top of the world.” The youngest of six children, I was born on November 24, 1891, in the foothills of Alaska, back of Wainwright on the Utukok River. In my boyhood days, we were always short of food in the village. During some of our winters, the people would almost starve to death because all they had to share was an occasional kill of a grouse or a quail.

When I was a teenager, some missionaries came to where we lived. The wife taught us in school. When I read from the Bible, I had a hard time understanding the big words. I was encouraged to go to a school of higher learning somewhere and get more education, but we had no money.

I knew that if I trapped enough foxes I could pay my fare to the Outside (the world beyond Alaska). My older brother showed me how to use the trap in the snow, and my dad made me some snowshoes. I walked about ten miles over tundra to where the foxes were. The government allowed only six months for trapping, but when the trapping season was over, I had nineteen white fox pelts. I was so happy. I asked my dad, “Can I go Outside, so I can go to school?” He said, “Yes, you can go; your older brother will take care of us.”

The government boat took me down to Nome for nothing. When I got to Nome, there was the Alaska Shipping Company boat. At the dock, I told some of the officers that I wanted to go Outside, down to Seattle, Washington, by their boat. They said, “You can go if you have money to pay your fare.” I said, “I have no money, but I have fox pelts.” One officer said, “Yes, you can go; we like fox pelts; they are worth money.” I asked him how many he wanted, and he said, “Five.”

That was in 1911, and I attended a seminary in Seattle. One day, in 1913, I stood on a street in Seattle, and looked around at the many churches that were there. As I stood, an old man came up to me and asked, “Why are you standing here? What are you thinking? Where are you from?” I told him, “I am from Alaska, and I came down here to get an education so I would be able to understand the big words in the Bible. I am wondering which of these churches are closest to the Lord.”

He asked, “Are you hungry for the Lord?” I told him that I was and that I had read in the Book of Revelation that the Lord does not want “lukewarm” people; He wants them “hot.” I said, “I want to be among those who are hot.” He said to me, “I will show you where to go. The name of the church is the Apostolic Faith.”

As soon as I opened the door of that church and stepped inside, I felt as though someone said to me, “These are the people you are looking for.” I glanced around and saw a long bench below the pulpit; nobody sat on it, and I wondered what it was for. Each person who came into the church went to his seat, but knelt to pray before sitting down. I watched them closely, and said to myself, There is something to that.

When the preacher came to the pulpit, the service started. Then came testimony time, and many people got up (sometimes five stood at once!) and told what God had done for them. One sister said that she thanked God for saving her soul, and that she was glad He doesn’t look on the color of the skin but looks right down into a person’s heart. Something began to move in my heart, and I felt condemned for the sins I had committed against God. I was surely under conviction! I felt such a hunger for what I heard, and I wanted the preacher to stop preaching so I could pray and call on God to have mercy and take the sin out of my heart.

At the altar call, I went forward and knelt at the long bench that I had wondered about. With a cry in my heart, I asked God to forgive me of my sins. God heard my prayer and forgave me. I faced the people of the congregation and told them I had found Jesus! I wanted to keep talking about Jesus; it was so wonderful what the Lord had done for me. I remembered the words that Jesus said to His disciple, Thomas, “Blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed” (John 20:29). From that day to this I am happy.

After I had completed six years of schooling in Seattle, I wanted to go back to Alaska to see my old dad and mother before they died. When I arrived home, I said to my dad, “I have found Jesus, the Son of the living God, and He has made me happy.” I told my dad to call on God and ask Him to have mercy and take the sin out of his heart as He had done for me. I told him I wanted him to go to Heaven.

My dad did pray. From his heart he called on God, and the Lord saved his soul. It made me so happy. He said, “I am ready to go like you, Sonny; I have found Jesus too. You put such a hunger in my heart to find God, although I am an old man eighty years old.” From that day, he never stopped talking about Jesus, until he was called Home—no more worry about food or anything else. God saved my mom also before He took her. Oh, how I thank God that I had the privilege to tell both of my parents about salvation!

Whenever I need the Lord to help me, He always answers my prayer. At Barrow (now called Utqiagvik), Alaska, we have no trees; it is just bare land covered with snow and ice for many months of the year. In the spring, after the snow melts, we always look for driftwood and blubber for our fuel. In the fall of the year, a big blow starts. One fall, when a storm was over, there was a lot of coal on the beach. We went down and sacked it up, and some people packed it on their backs and put it on top of the bluff right away. I put mine on the sand because I didn’t want to work so hard and tire my body. I thought I would take it home before the next storm, but before I could do that, another one had already started to blow. I took a few sacks to the top of the bank, but it was getting too stormy. I prayed, and asked God, “Protect my coal; and don’t let the waves bother it.” Then I went home.

The wind blew hard, and I thought perhaps the coal would be gone. But then I said, “I have prayed; God has never failed me.” As soon as the wind had gone down, some of the men went to the beach and looked at my pile of coal that was still there. They said among themselves, “That is too much of a miracle!” They wondered why the waves of the sea went around that pile of coal, and said, “This coal must belong to a praying man!” It made me praise the Lord because even the waves obeyed Jesus.

Another time, I traveled with my wife and my little daughter, who was not quite a year old, to hunt at a place about seventy-five miles east of Barrow. We stayed in an old sod igloo that someone had made many years before. In the morning, after our devotions, I heard a still, small Voice saying, “Paul, you had better leave your rifle with your wife.” I said “No! My dad always told me not to leave my rifle home.” I heard the Voice again, “Something will come today!”

I left the rifle with my wife and had only been gone about ten minutes when the Voice spoke again, “Paul, turn back quick! QUICK!” I turned the dogs around and headed home. When I got there, my wife was slow to come out of the igloo. I saw cartridges scattered on the snow, and I thought surely a bear had hurt her. When she finally came out, she said, “Araa, nanut” (meaning, “disgusting polar bears”). A mother polar bear with her cubs had tried to get into the igloo, and my wife had used the rifle for protection.

The Lord has done so much for me, and when I needed Him most He never failed me. He has rescued me from accidents and healed me from affliction, and I could tell of many other miracles, but time will not allow me. I feel like traveling on.

Paul Patkotak attended the Apostolic Faith Church in Seattle, Washington, until he completed his schooling there. On August 6, 1913, while attending the Apostolic Faith camp meeting at the Fulton campground in Portland, Oregon, he was among the many who were baptized in the Willamette River, and his testimony was first published in The Apostolic Faith later that year.

From 1913 on, Brother Paul prayed for revival among the Eskimo people. For a time, he traveled from place to place in Alaska to tell his fellow Alaskans of God’s love. He would also broadcast tape-recorded sermons on a small transmitter set, and those who tuned in would hear the message of salvation pointing them to Jesus. Over the years, Brother Paul received our church papers and thousands of copies of our tracts and handed them out wherever he could. He and his wife provided a Christian home for their children, and several times he was able to return to Portland and attend our camp meetings. One of his granddaughters referred to 2 Timothy 4:7, “I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith,” and told us that was his victory in the end. On November 25, 1980, Brother Paul peacefully and quietly went Home to be with Jesus.