Celebrating the consequences of unanticipated opportunity

Never underestimate the uncanny consequences of an unanticipated opportunity.

It was 30 years ago this month. A 35-year-old pastor of a growing church in Northern California responded to a radio station's emergency call for help. The church-owned station on the Bering Sea was facing a financial and staff crisis.

KICY's signal was a critical source of news, information and entertainment to a dozen native-Alaskan villages. Its overnight Russian programming also had become a valuable link to Siberia.

Since the pastor had worked at a radio station in high school and college, he approached his congregation with the opportunity. They enthusiastically commissioned him, his wife and two young daughters to spend seven weeks in the old gold rush town.

What took place would have a profound impact on this pastor's ministry for years to come. Although the events of that summer took place three decades ago, I know this story very well. I was that young minister.

The 17 hours of traveling from Oakland to Nome was quite harrowing. But it was nothing compared to the challenge of getting used to 23 hours of daylight, coping without a television, facing the sticker shock of barged-in groceries and being trained in the operations of the AM-FM studios.

The learning curve was steep, but the payoff was unimaginably rewarding. Those who have lived in a remote location for any length of time know how quickly friendships form.

They would concur with me that a sense of community more than compensates for the lack of conveniences. Sharing something unique (no matter how difficult) links you for life.

In addition, there is the indescribable joy of knowing you were doing your part in helping something indispensable survive.

For me, personally, there were other payoffs for having left our home for Nome for a summer. While there, a 30-year-old long-distance swimmer from Southern California by the name of Lynne Cox successfully swam between Alaska and Russia. The cold-water swim helped warm relations between the two countries.

I covered this historic swim for CBS News and interviewed Lynne Cox for other media outlets. That unplanned serendipity would open doors for me as freelance news stringer for many years, while Lynne Cox remains a friend.

Because of those seven weeks spinning records, anchoring news broadcasts and getting to know the people of Nome, I came to personally appreciate the deep impact KICY radio has on its listeners.

Fifteen years later, I was commissioned to write the history of KICY. The book contract was all because of an unanticipated opportunity in the summer of 1987.

My research for writing The Ptarmigan Telegraph revealed more than the story of a bush radio station. It exposed me to yet another example of how unplanned opportunities pay big dividends.

I learned about a pastor in Sweden who was imprisoned by Russian authorities in the 1880s for attempting to establish Evangelical churches in the Orthodox nation. While Alfred Nobel, the Swedish industrialist, was eventually able to get Axel Karlsson out of prison, Karlsson could not get the thought of planting churches in Russia out of his heart.

Giving up on the idea of going into Russia through the front door, Karlsson decided to attempt entry through the back door. He sailed to New York, traveled by train to San Francisco and secured passage by ship to Alaska. From there, he would sail to the Russian Far East. That was his plan.

But as Karlsson was in the process of preparing to cross the Bering Sea, he found success in sharing his faith with the Alaska Natives. He planted a series of churches on the Seward Peninsula. By the time he died in 1910, the Swedish missionary was a celebrated hero. But his dream of reaching Russia was buried with him. Or so he thought.

Fifty years later, on Easter Sunday 1960, KICY radio went on the air. And today its directional signal blankets the Russian Far East with more than just music and headlines. KICY is the source of "good news" to countless listeners. Karlsson's dream was realized at last.

Just another example of my premise: Never underestimate the uncanny consequences of an unanticipated opportunity. I'm guessing you have personal examples, too.

• The Rev. Greg Asimakoupoulos is a former Naperville resident who writes regularly about faith and family.