Alvin Capener, Part 3  

Well, here we are again.  TGIF?

TGIF.   Hmmm.... Wonder where that expression ever started?  I use that "Thank God it's..." for Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday AND Sunday.  If "This is the day that the Lord has made; we will be glad and rejoice in it," then the phrase applies to every day.  Right?

Yup.  That's what I thought.

We really are going to finish this series today on my father.  What started out as an expression of honor for my father on Father's Day turned into a whole lot more than I'd originally planned, but since I've never really written this whole thing out before, guess I got carried away.  This was not intended to be a complete biography of Dad, but rather to highlight his walk of faith and perseverance, and to show the heritage of faith he invested in me.

Before we begin today's discussion -- or more accurately, finish the discussion we began last Monday -- you need to know that Earthlink has been acquired by Embarq (which used to be Sprint Business).  Effective July 1, 2007, our email address will change to [email protected].  I will remind you of the change a couple more times.  One more change you will soon see as well: www.AnotherCoffeeBreak.com will be up and running early in July.  This new site will have the entire archive of Coffee Breaks available.  There will be a link to River Worship Center as well; we will have MP3 music files of our spontaneous worship available for you to sample and CD's for purchase.  We're going through birth pangs, folks, and growing, so if we have some hiccups along the way, bear with us.

Still doin' the Kona Coffee today.  Yessirree, Bob!  Good Stuff.  Pour yourself a cup if'n ya haven't already.

We left off on Wednesday with our delegation of worthies back at the house trying to console Mom because of Dad's "disappearance" at sea, and doing their best to convince her to begin making preparations for a funeral or memorial service.

Mom's response to them made them sure she had just gone off the deep end, was in denial and incapable of facing "facts."

"I'm sorry, Gentlemen, but we just have to wait a little longer.  He'll be here.  You'll see.  The Lord is with him."

Long about 5:00 PM that Saturday afternoon, someone spotted a dot on the horizon.  Binoculars showed that it was a boat -- or at least a part of a boat -- moving very slowly towards the coastline.  Word spread quickly throughout the community, and it wasn't long before a very large part of Ilwaco's citizenry were perched in every available viewing spot, watching this boat slowly make for the docks.

What folks finally saw left them in total disbelief.  It was Dad, all right.  It's not a wonder the first views made observers wonder if the boat was really intact.  He was standing at the wheelhouse, but he was standing in fish.  The holds were full.  There wasn't one square inch of deck space to put another fish.  He had thrown fish into the cabin.  There were fish covering the floor of the cabin, fish under his bunk, fish on his bunk.

That the boat hadn't capsized was a miracle of astounding proportions.  The decks were 4 inches above the water.  The boat was so heavily laden with fish that most of its floatation was gone.  It was one of those fish stories to beat all fish stories!  Remember Peter, James and John, and their astounding catch of fish after Jesus told them to "cast your nets on the other side"?  They caught so many fish they had to call for help.  Neither of their boats nor their nets would hold it all, and Luke (5:2-4) tells us that they began to sink because of the weight.

That Dad's boat stayed afloat was spectacular testimony to those Ilwaco fishermen -- many of whom were unbelievers and atheists.  In the days to come, however, the community -- and indeed, the entire fishing community along the western coasts of the United States, Canada and Mexico -- were going to hear just how spectacular this seven-week fishing season had been for this "Landlubber-Preacher-Fisherman."

Jim had to call for help to carefully move the boat up to Raymond where the fish could be unloaded for processing.  Early the next week, Dad went to see him to get a tally of the fish caught.  He was pretty sure he'd made the $1,000 he'd hoped for, but he really had no idea where the totals were.

"Capener," Jim said, "In seven weeks, you've personally taken 39,000 pounds of Albacore Tuna.  To you, this catch is worth -- and here's the check to pay for it -- $6,300.00!"  A reporter for the Associated Press got hold of the story and began to do some research.  The next newspaper headline read, "LANDLUBBER-PREACHER-FISHERMAN SETS ALL TIME WORLD RECORD."  That was more than 60 years ago, and it still stands today as the all-time record for catching Albacore with that size boat and "gear."

         Part of the Albacore "catch" at the cannery in Raymond, WA.                         The boat that almost sank under the weight of the fish.

The funny part of it was that there was no "gear."  It was just lines strung over the side of the boat.  Every last one of those 39,000 pounds of fish were taken by hand!

You've gotten it, haven't you?  Not only had the Lord provided the thousand dollars to pay off the church debt, He had provided the $5,000 for the move to Alaska, the building of the new church in Nome -- and, according to my Mother, $300 for her for "stuff."   Hohohohoho...............  And some folks think God doesn't care about the little things!

But wait.  This story isn't ended.  Not by half!  Think we've seen miracles?  Well, you don't know miracles, yet.

With fishing season at an end, some of the old die-hard fishermen who'd previously thought Alvin Capener was a looney landlubber who had no business being at sea came around to see him.  "Well, Capener, you've taken our breath away!  As a fisherman, you're some kind of whiz kid!  You'll have to take your earnings from this season and buy yourself a nice, big boat and some fine tuna gear.  Next year, you'll really make a haul!"

Dad just smiled and said, "No.  You don't understand.  God has given me this miraculous catch of fish so that I can be a fisher of men.  We're leaving for Alaska in October."

Those fishermen just walked away shaking their heads.  It made no sense to them.  But the majority of the fishermen working out of the port of Ilwaco that year had done well -- extremely well -- because they had caught Albacore tuna instead of salmon, which was bringing roughly one-sixth the price of tuna.  Following the 1944 season, they went out and bought bigger boats and better tuna gear.

In 1945, most of those same fishermen were nearly bankrupted.  They hardly caught enough tuna to pay the bills, let alone make a profit.  But salmon were back in the coastal waters -- not Albacore Tuna.  What happened?  This same bright AP reporter who'd figured Dad had set an all time record with his tuna catch decided to do some further investigation.  What he found astonished him.

The shift had begun -- as previously noted -- in the late summer of 1943 from salmon to tuna.  Ilwaco had never been known as a tuna port.  It had always been noted for its salmon.  When tuna began showing up along the west coast that year, fishermen had been overjoyed because of the financial prospects and an official "tuna season" was declared for 1944.  1945 came and the tuna had mostly disappeared.  Those who actually did catch tuna had to go hundreds of miles out to sea.

In studying the records of ocean currents, this same AP reporter discovered that the entire Japanese Current had swung off course -- way off course -- bringing warmer water (and not coincidentally, Albacore Tuna) to the eastern Pacific.

You see it, don't you?  When God calls His people to do the supernatural, He sometimes alters circumstances and "nature" to set things up.  Dad was not a fisherman by trade or by experience.  For him to catch 39,000 pounds of Albacore Tuna -- and out-fish the professional fishermen in the process -- was a stupendous miracle of its own.  Had he taken 39,000 pounds of salmon, his financial take would have been one-sixth the amount -- or just over a thousand dollars.  God moved the entire Japanese Current to send the right kind of fish into those waters.

It was no big deal for the Lord to do that!  But it took the obedience of one man -- Alvin Capener -- to set it up, and everyone else prospered because of it.  Those who thought to cash in on that prosperity the next year without the blessing of the Lord, and set their sights on the money instead went broke.

So there you have it: a fish story to top all fish stories, capped with miracles of provision, a miracle of calming the violent storms, and a miracle of moving the entire Japanese Current off course.

True to form, Alvin Capener and family set sail for Alaska in October, 1944, arriving in Juneau where -- because of a measles epidemic in Nome -- Mom, my brother, Howard, and I were forced to remain for a couple of weeks.  Dad went on ahead to Nome to secure temporary quarters for the family.  On November 4, 1944, the rest of us boarded an Alaska Star Airlines Ford Tri-Motor and flew from Juneau to Anchorage to Nome.

Dad had pre-ordered and paid for the building materials to build the church in Nome, and it arrived by Alaska Steamship about the time of our arrival in Nome.  He was able to secure a piece of ground quickly, and set about to begin construction.  The full story of the construction of the church in Nome, the way that God provided an alcoholic construction crew on a dare from (then-) Air Force Colonel Marvin "Muktuk" Marston (he's a story all by himself!), the miraculous changes that began to take place in the community, and the challenges faced -- including lawsuits, the intended purpose of which was to drive the family out of Nome -- the very public vindication that God did, along with the "accidental" death of the attorney who spurred the lawsuits, all make for more stories than I can possibly recount in these short (?) Coffee Breaks.

The nine years we spent (that go-around) in Nome (I went back there to work and minister in the mid-1960's) were some of the toughest years of just plain old plowing in order to prepare the ground to produce a spiritual harvest.  After six years of serious ministry and foundation-laying with visible results to show for it, those Assembly of God brethren in the Northwest District decided they'd made a serious mistake in opposing Alvin Capener's move to Alaska.  Not only did they make a public apology for their opposition, the General Superintendent of the Assemblies of God in Springfield, Missouri, Fred Vogler, made a special trip to Nome to visit this then-farthest north, and farthest west church (Nome is farther west than Honolulu) in the world, and to let Dad know that the Assemblies would stand firmly behind him in his ministry and future endeavors.

Ironically, it wouldn't be the last time Dad would face opposition from denominational leaders as he continued to move at the direction of the Holy Spirit to establish more and more churches throughout the arctic.  His stock answer in trade became, "Brethren, you didn't call me.  God did, and I'm bound to obey His Word and His voice before I listen to anyone else."

In the spring of 1953, following a vision from the Lord, Alvin Capener boarded an Air Force C-124 for a reconnaissance trip to Barrow for the purpose of moving our family there and building a new church.  As he walked through the community, meeting folks -- including then-Presbyterian missionary, Bill Wartes -- the need for ministry was apparent.  As soon as he returned, he announced that the family would be packing and making preparations for a move to Barrow -- then a community of some 1300 - 1400 Inupiat Eskimos.

As he was meditating on the building of a new church in Barrow, the Holy Spirit gave him the complete design for the building, and its cost: $10,000.  That seemed an unusual cost figure.  No one was building churches for anything close to that figure in the mid-1950's.  If you could get it done for $25 - $50,000, you were a financial wizard -- and doing it literally at the top of the world (where Barrow sits for 86 days a year with the earth tilted towards the sun) was not part of the cost factoring.

That necessitated travel throughout the "lower 48" to share the vision with other churches and bodies of believers and raising of funds.  In the summer of 1955, Dad had enough monies on hand to order the supplies and put them on the North Star freighter for scheduled arrival in Barrow in late August or early September (depending on the condition of the polar ice pack).  Two brothers in the Lord -- Howard Andersen (a Swedish missionary-evangelist), and Lewis Welker (a Houston oilman) -- flew to Barrow to help with the construction while Mom, Howard and I traveled for another eight months or so amongst churches in Washington, Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, and Wisconsin and Michigan to raise the remaining needed funds.

We arrived in Barrow in the Spring of 1956 in time to help complete the interior finishing work, electrical, plumbing (that's another story!), and prepare for the church's official opening.  Dad sat down one day after the church was finished to tally up the actual costs of construction.  When he assembled all of the bills and receipts and totaled them, the dollar figure was $10,014.  It was testimony to the accuracy of the Word that Dad had been given before we ever left Nome.

From the moment the doors of the church opened, the place was packed to capacity.  Throughout 1956 and 1957, we saw a repeat of the book of Acts as the Holy Spirit was poured out among Eskimo people who began to hear about the spectacular signs and wonders throughout the north.  Some Eskimo families traveled hundreds of miles by dog team from other villages and settlements to see for themselves what God was doing, and to hear the Gospel in a way they couldn't escape.  The transformation in their lives spread throughout the arctic like wildfire.  The stories of those changed lives, the miracles of healing, deliverance from demonic influence, and the work of the Holy Spirit that spread across the entire arctic from western Alaska throughout northern Canada, Greenland, Iceland, not to mention the Nordic countries, Russia and Siberia would keep me going for days and days.

(I recommend an earlier Coffee Break for your reading titled, Paul the Apostle.  You can find it in the archives at http://groups.msn.com/RegnersRangers/general.msnw.  It's the story of an Inupiat Eskimo originally from Wrangel Island, north of Siberia, whom God had transformed years before, but who was rejected by the people and wound up spending forty years in prayer and intercession.  The ministry and the prayers and intercession of Paul Patkotak were directly responsible for our family's move to Alaska and the arctic, and the resulting outpouring of the Holy Spirit.)

The life, the testimony, and the proofs that followed more than 42 years of Dad's ministry (more than 55 with Mom at the time of her death) in the north were a continuous, living demonstration of God's faithfulness.  In that time, Dad built seven churches in different communities, and ministered to people from virtually every part of the globe.  The foundations that he laid in my life were without measure.

At his funeral, people came from all over the world to pay their respects to Alvin Capener, a man whose life and faithfulness to God had resulted in their own relationship with Jesus Christ.  He was honored as a pioneer, an apostle, one whose life was given entirely in the service of the King of Kings, one whose fruit endured -- and continues to endure to this day.

Weeks before Dad went to be with the Lord (on Good Friday in 1986) he apologized to me for not being able to leave me (and my brother) with a great inheritance.  I answered him like this: "Dad, you have nothing to apologize for.  You've given me an inheritance that cannot be measured in silver or gold.  You've given me an inheritance in God, a rich heritage that I will -- by the grace of God -- pass on to my children and grandchildren.  It is priceless, and I'll take that inheritance any day over perishable things."

Grace has not been given to us so that we can make it the accomplice of evil.  Grace has been given to us for our deliverance from evil.

Bless you.
 

Regner A. Capener
CAPENER MINISTRIES
RIVER WORSHIP CENTER
700 South 6th Street
Sunnyside, Washington 98944
(509) 837-4657

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