As Army Chief Warrant Officer Jeff Patterson watched from the shoreline of Lake Clark, his wife waded out. Suddenly he was in the water, too.
Olga Patterson had already waded out with our chaplains into Lake Clark, shivering and smiling in the waist-deep, glacier-fed waters during a particularly cold season at Samaritan Lodge Alaska. It had only been a few weeks or so since the snow had stopped falling on the surrounding peaks.
Shivering, praying, and rejoicing, Olga Patterson was shocked as Jeff stepped into the cold water to receive Jesus Christ and join his wife in baptism.
She probably couldn’t have picked colder water.
Olga had been a believer for some time but had never been baptized. With all the new beginnings she and her husband, Army Chief Warrant Officer Jeff Patterson, had committed to that week, she wanted to finally experience the baptism she’d been putting off for so long.
“It just seemed like the right time,” she recalls thinking.
Olga recommitted her life to Christ in Alaska, and the couple had agreed together to build new practices into their relationship based on what they’d learned that week.
Out in the water on Friday, Olga started to cry. But she was also smiling, looking toward the shore.
Olga had prayed for Jeff, who’d been resistant but “faith overcame my objections.”
“Hang on a second!” It was Jeff’s voice. “I’m gonna go.”
Jeff worked through the crowd and waded into the water where Chaplain Lou Anda met him.
“This is for believers,” Lou said, puzzled, but hopeful. “Have you received Jesus Christ?”
“I want to,” Jeff said.
Jeff said he doesn’t remember hearing or seeing anything in the moments that followed his steps toward the water and toward Lou’s questions.
At the end of a week of intense learning and growing, Jeff stopped resisting and embraced Jesus Christ.
“I had to do it. It felt like my feet were in front of me and not behind me,” Jeff said. “It was just me and him right there. I was totally zoned in.”
Only one other time does Jeff recall such an overwhelming spiritual moment.
“I was in a coma for 10 days in 2019,” he recalls. “Even in the midst of that coma I was dreaming. It seemed there was a war for my soul.”
Two Decades of Warfare
Jeff joined the Army in 1994, partly out of a desire to continue his family’s heritage of military service. Over the span of his career, he served in various roles as part of the Air Defense Artillery—first as a scout, covertly zeroing in on enemy targets, and then on the technology side of things shooting down ballistic missiles from the sky.
Operation Heal Our Patriots excursions take couples to remote places few people have visited.
During his early deployments, he met Olga in Korea, where she’d moved from Kyrgyzstan for a job.
“I knew within a month that I was going to marry her,” he said.
They moved stateside and married as Jeff continued his military career, traveling the world and mastering sophisticated air defense systems.
“And I was home with the kids,” Olga said.
As always, each of his months-long training or combat deployments offered excitement and patriotic purpose, but also hardship, as life and family carried on without him.
The remote excursions also provide unique opportunities for couples to connect with each other, with other couples, and with God in His beautiful creation. There’s also apparently opportunity to prank the guides.
He said that each time he returned stateside, it felt like he was relearning the basic routines and joys of his family’s daily life.
“You come home and realize your spouse has been running the show,” Jeff said. “She’s taking care of the kids. Taking care of the house. Taking care of everything while you’re away on deployment or at training. You come home and have to re-enter reality and rebuild your relationship.”
Over the course of those two decades on active duty, the Pattersons slipped into this routine of absence and rebuilding, not realizing some of the unresolved imbalances in their relationship that had built up over the years. They thought things were pretty good, not knowing the important pieces that were missing from their relationship.
The marriage enrichment classes helped the Pattersons fill in, with Gospel wisdom, some of the puzzle that their marriage had become.
Jeff recalls the conversation he had with his nephew, Navy Petty Officer DB Bennett, a former Navy Corpsman. DB and his wife, Cree, came to Alaska last year with Operation Heal Our Patriots and worked through their own marital issues. Jeff remembers the distinct change that had come over his nephew’s marriage.
In a recent call with Samaritan’s Purse, DB recounted his conversations with his uncle as Jeff and Olga considered applying for Operation Heal Our Patriots.
“We talk all the time and he would drop hints like ‘after 20 years of marriage there were some disconnects,’” DB recalled Jeff telling him. “It was just such an amazing experience, and I wanted them to experience it, too. Jeff and Olga actually helped watch our kids while we were in Alaska last year.”
DB said he and Cree were “kind of at our wits end” last year.
Jeff’s nephew, Petty Officer DB Bennett and his wife, Cree, came to Alaska last year and were instrumental in encouraging Jeff and Olga to go as well.
In Alaska, DB embraced forgiveness from God again, he and Cree recommitted their marriage to God, and they both decided to recommit their lives to Jesus Christ.
“I spoke with one of the chaplains the night before we were leaving,” DB said. “We talked about forgiveness. He told me ‘God has already forgiven you. You need to forgive yourself.’ I’m not a cryer. I didn’t cry. Actually, I bawled my eyes out to that man.”
When DB learned that Jeff and Olga had been accepted to go to Alaska this year through the Samaritan’s Purse project, he felt a little strange encouraging one of his childhood heroes, now one of his best friends, to “go in with an open mind to God.”
Jeff helped his nephew, DB, with unfinished business during the bracelet ceremony–providing a beautiful place of honor for the memory of fallen friends.
DB also asked Jeff to help him with some unfinished business. After more than 12 years of wearing two metal bracelets honoring fellow Navy corpsmen killed in battle, he was ready to give them a new home that honors their sacrifice.
“I told Jeff about that beautiful bracelet ceremony, and asked if he could take them up there and have them be a part of that ceremony,” DB said. “I even talked to the mom of one of those fallen men. She said ‘I’m glad my son gets to be honored in such a beautiful place.’”
Each year, veterans can choose to honor the memory of a fallen service member, affixing their bracelet to the flag pole in a special ceremony.
Jeff provided them with their new place of honor during the bracelet ceremony at Samaritan Lodge Alaska. He affixed the bracelets to the flag post in Alaska of Navy Corpsman Aaron Ullom and Navy Corpsman Brian Lundy—both killed while trying to render aid to wounded Marines.
Their New Chapter
There was a lot to leave behind in Alaska for Jeff and Olga, and there was a lot they were taking home with them. But until those final few moments of the week, Jeff was hesitant and resistant toward the idea of God and religion.
The week that started with Jeff and Olga shocked and amazed by a patriotic welcome, turned into a week that surprised them with joy and new life.
“I went to church when I was a kid,” he said. “I always knew there was a higher being, but I knew nothing about it. We had one television channel growing up and it was PBS. We watched science. Church wasn’t a tradition for us.”
As Jeff suddenly found himself in the water talking to the chaplains, asking God to forgive him “for how he had sinned at God and against his own life,” Olga couldn’t believe what was happening.
“It hit me like a rock,” she said. “I couldn’t stop crying. This is a big step for us.”
Jeff said it also hit him suddenly, shocking his mind to get his body moving toward the water.
The cold water was also a shock during the Wednesday night Polar Plunge.
“I realized that it’s possible to believe in things I can’t see. I had faith, and it overpowered my mind. There was no pre-thought. There was no plan. I just went. I was completely dressed to stay warm. I had my pants on, my regular shoes that I wore, and I just went into the water. I had to do it,” Jeff said. “Nothing mattered. I felt lifted. I felt light.”
Knowledge and mastery have long been the drivers of Jeff’s life, and now he says he’s found himself in a whole new realm of knowledge.
“I have a lot of learning to do,” he said. “All I know about Jesus for now is that I want more of Him.”
The Pattersons are on a new journey with Jesus Christ and with each other.
