One Woman’s Call to the Arctic: The Valeria Sherard State Missions Offering of Alaska
How does a small-town, southern woman end up serving God almost as far north as she could go? The answer is Valeria Sherard’s story.
Valeria Sherard (Va-LAIR-uh SHARE-id) was born in rural Mississippi in 1923. With a farmer father and schoolteacher mother, she grew up loving the outdoors and books. Her upbringing was punctuated by services at the local Baptist church and included family prayertime every evening. She became a Christian at age 12 and was baptized in a mill pond.
Valeria knew God was speaking to her about missions during her first year of college, but it wasn’t until about seven years later and the time of her father’s death that she pursued God’s call. Rather than return to a fifth year of teaching social science in a Mississippi secondary school, she responded to God’s call to missions by entering New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary, earning a master of religious education degree in 1952.
The Home Mission Board (now North American Mission Board) asked her to serve as a summer missionary in Anchorage, Alaska, at Faith Baptist Church. It was one of only 12 Southern Baptist churches and missions in the entire territory. At just more than 11,000 residents, Anchorage was the largest town.
Her initial response: no. For one thing, she feared airplane travel. But after praying about it, she changed her mind. She was expected to serve ten weeks; a longer term was deemed unsuitable for a single woman in Alaska, which was considered wild territory and wouldn’t become the 49th state until 1959.
During summer 1952, God confirmed His direction on Valeria’s life when a pastor asked her to serve with Chugach (CHOO-gatch) Association in Anchorage. “We will not let you starve,” he assured her. Before her time in Alaska ended, Valeria had been named the director of missions for that association.
The Walking Missionary
Valeria became known as “the walking missionary” as she traveled between the small, struggling Baptist churches and missions. (When Calvary Baptist Church presented her with a car in 1954, she learned to drive.)
For three years, she did visitation, worked with camps and Vacation Bible School (VBS), and taught Bible courses. Under her guidance, outreach to young people thrived. She earned $75 per month.
Serving at the Native mission in Anchorage opened Valeria’s eyes to the Indigenous peoples of Alaska, and she sensed God was refining her calling. She waited for Him to open a door.
In 1954, she was asked to help lead VBS in the western Iñupiat village of Kotzebue. The following summer, given a leave of absence from Chugach Association, she was appointed a summer missionary by the Home Mission Board in Selawik, another western village.
When Valeria wasn’t cooking meals for the men who were building the new mission in Selawik, she visited the people, learning their customs and language. Her accommodations — a one-room cabin with a questionable lock on the door and wolves howling in the distance — made her fearful, but she took comfort in the words of Isaiah 41:10.
Misunderstandings and cultural blunders, as well as Native distrust of anyone or anything Baptist, were fodder for discouragement. But after a year passed, someone made the first profession of faith.
The Area Missionary
Late in summer 1955, Valeria was appointed as a convention missionary and Home Mission Board missionary to Selawik when the Home Mission Board chose to disregard its old rule that Alaska was an unsuitable place for a single woman to serve long term.
After three years, she moved to Kiana, her base for the next 17 years, where she ministered to the Indigenous peoples of Alaska. Traveling by plane and sometimes pulled by snow machine in a dogsled, she encouraged believers and shared Christ in Arctic villages like Selawik, Kiana, Kobuk, Shungnak, and Ambler.
Although tone deaf, she learned to play a pump organ. She did visitation, implemented missions discipleship, distributed tracts and Bibles, and taught Bible lessons Sunday mornings, Sunday evenings, and Wednesday nights. She desired to see a Christ-centered mission in the heart of every Alaskan village. She became dearly loved and trusted by the Indigenous people who knew her.
In 1975, Valeria moved to Fairbanks where she had to adjust to telephones, traffic, and electric cooking stoves. Her new title was “area missionary” to the Native population, whom she continued to love by seeking them out in order to share Christ and meet needs.
Moving to Anchorage in 1985, she served at the United States Public Native Health Hospital. She was a great comfort to many patients and their families whom she knew from their home villages.
Although she retired in 1990 after 35 years as a career missionary, Valeria continued to volunteer at the hospital until she began to show signs of Alzheimer’s disease in 1999. She moved back home to Mississippi and lived there until her death in 2007 at age 83.
When the Alaska Baptist Convention chose a name for its state missions offering in 1977, the decision was unanimous. They chose Valeria because of her love for God and the people who first called Alaska home. She served with this assurance: “Problems may seem big, but my God is bigger! With Him, nothing is impossible.”
Meghan Bowker is the editor of Missions Mosaic. She lives in southcentral Alaska and leads a Women on Mission group.
