St. Jacob of Alaska: His Legacy, His Trials, and His Example for Today

St. Jacob of Alaska has left us a wealth of information in his journals. We have translations of his journals, with entries almost every day spanning nearly forty years of missionary efforts. It is clear in many sections of his journals that part of the purpose of journaling was to record vital statistics to pass on to superiors in the Church and in the Russian-American Company.

Though not often mentioned, there is also a feeling that he thinks of these journals as, what we might call, clinical notes: partially processing what is happening, partially recording information that might be useful to himself or others who come back to these same places, and partially studying his own mission efforts so that he may improve upon his methods over time.

As such, these “missionary clinical notes” provide us with a wealth of information for our own missionary endeavors. Studying his processes and thinking provides us with lessons that would apply to any number of situations, even though the specific circumstances may be drastically different than the Alaskan wilds.

Over the next few entries, I will share more from what I gathered in reading his journals.