Sunday Skit in Alaska--Racing Pigeon and Endurance

 Our last Sunday in Alaska, our two boys and two girls, my nephew Samuel, Hunter Sayler, and Josiah Randel pitched in to help dramatize my children's Sunday School story on the theme of running the race with endurance. I got such a kick out of the props they brilliantly concocted--using everything from caulk guns to a laundry basket! 

The church there was so tiny that with our big work crew, the worshipers had to meet in a barn for service--a perfect place to tell a pigeon story!

Here are American soldiers hunkering with their "guns" and pigeon coop clothesbasket!

After reviewing a true story I had told the children earlier in the week about an Alaskan girl who entered her first sled dog race against all odds--and won (Stubborn Gal, in case you want to order this amazing story), I told another true story about a racing pigeon named Cher Ami, (that is also the name of a book which tells its story) which had been trained to carry messages in World War I. In the photo, that is Cher Ami (aka Rose under the clothesbasket coop). About this time, cameras were being whipped out from all over the place, and Matt Thompson went hurrying out to get his camera to video this skit.

This pigeon was the last hope of a besieged battalion of American soldiers who were not only surrounded and attacked by Germans but who were also being shot at accidentally by their own American airplane! Cher Ami had a message attached to its leg, but it sat on a branch and refused to fly up into the air where several other pigeons had been shot from. 

Here is paper pigeon, Cher Ami, perched on top of the "branch," which American soldier Crystal is shaking to try to get it to fly!

 Finally, Cher Ami knew the time was right, and took off-only to have one leg shot nearly off, and another bullet pierce its breast bone. That did it for Cher Ami! Wounded with a hole the size of a quarter through its breast bone, nevertheless it winged its way high above the guns and flew 25 miles in 25 minutes, safely arriving, collapsing, into its coop, where it rang the bell calling for a soldier who delivered the message to the major--resulting in 160 lives of American soldiers being saved.

"I have fought a good fight," Paul wrote, "I have finished the course, I have kept the faith."

Stubborn sled dog racer Sarah and determined pigeon Cher Ami both teach us the value of overcoming every obstacle and persevering to the end.

Home awaits us!