By Ryan Lang, American Red Cross  

When Andronik Kashatok and his family were evacuated from their home in the village of Kipnuk on the west coast of Alaska, he lost everything. He lost his home. He lost his personal belongings. He lost photos and other mementos his family had collected over three generations. He lost everything when Typhoon Halong struck Kipnuk, Kwigillingok, and other parts of the region. “There is no Kipnuk,” Andronik said, shaking his head when asked if he’d be able to return home.    

Hundreds of residents, including Andronik and his mother and father, were airlifted from Kipnuk and the surrounding areas, to Bethel. From there, they were flown to Anchorage, where they were placed in an American Red Cross shelter.  

It was a new reality for Andronik and his family, one they were not accustomed to. But despite the hardship and the loss, there was one thing he held onto – his faith. “God works in mysterious ways,” Andronik said. And it wasn’t long after he and his family were settled at the shelter that Andronik realized just how mysterious.

Rosita Bryant-Wilburn is a minister at Mount Pleasant Baptist Church in Fairbanks, Alaska. She’s been with the Red Cross for about three years as a spiritual care volunteer. “When I first got here, I heard that someone was looking for a Yup’ik Bible,” Rosita said. “There was also, in our system, a referral for a shelter resident who requested spiritual care.”  

Rosita didn’t connect the dots between the two requests, as neither stood out as unique, given the circumstances. “I had been looking for this resident who requested spiritual care,” Rosita said. “I knew he was staying at a shelter, but every time I went to see him, he wasn’t at his cot.” That didn’t deter Rosita, who told the resident’s family members and other volunteers to let him know she had been there to see him.  

“Everyone kept telling me that someone was looking for me,” Andronik recalled. He jokingly said that he thought he’d done something wrong, not realizing that Rosita was the spiritual care volunteer that he had put in a request to meet. And then, they did.  

“He was finally at his cot,” Rosita said, “and he started talking about his Yup’ik Bible, and I said, ‘You’re the one!’” She found him, but she didn’t have the Bible. “At that time, I only had a copy of the Book of John that someone had printed,” Rosita said, “so I gave him that, and he was so excited.” 

But her work was not done. Finding this printing of the bible in the Yup’ik language wasn’t as simple as stopping by a bookstore. 

“Then I spoke with another volunteer who mentioned Andronik’s request to a Yup’ik translator who was set up at the shelter,” Rosita said. From there, the translator posted to Facebook, asking if anyone had a copy of a Yup’ik Bible. Through her research, Rosita found that there was only one store, hundreds of miles away from the shelter, that sold bibles in the Yup’ik language. “Within a couple of hours someone donated this copy,” Rosita said, as she carefully removed the book from her purse. For three days, Rosita carried the Bible with her, wherever she went, keeping it safe for Andronik. She knew it was important to him. “I am walking around with this Bible until I put it in his hands,” Rosita said, “because he’s been looking for this.” 

Fast forward to Monday, October 27, 2025, at the Alaska Airlines Center, where Rosita met Andronik and handed him the copy of the Yup’ik Bible. The joy overwhelmed him, as he took the book from Rosita. And as he opened it, a smile spread across his face. “I know this family,” Andronik said, pointing to the names scrawled on the inside cover of the Yup’ik Bible. It turns out that the copy Rosita received from the Yup’ik translator was, at one time, owned by another family from Kipnuk.  

“It’s God’s work,” he said, clutching the book that made its journey from Kipnuk to Anchorage, just like Andronik. And just like Andronik, the Bible made its way from the village of western Alaska to the shelter in Anchorage with the help of Red Cross volunteers, like Rosita, who remain committed to the mission of alleviating human suffering in the face of disaster. 

Looking at Andronik as they shared this moment together, Rosita said it was “a little light in all this darkness that you’re going through.” But to Andronik, it was more than a little light - it was hope.