Kenneth Wright French

Kenneth Wright French’s story began in the small town of Virginia, Missouri. The first child of farm couple Harry and Anna French, from an early age Kenneth showed the strong traits of character that guided his life. The tenacious way he held to his high ideals may have caused some to think of him as stubborn, but in truth, this formed the fiber of his being. He was serious-minded and conscientious.

Kenneth began his spiritual journey at the age of ten. Having made his confession of faith, arm in arm with other children from their church, he walked into the river to be baptized.

In the early 1920s a desire to move farther west gripped a new breed of pioneers, including Harry and Anna French. With their six children, they traveled westward by train. Their journey ended in Roswell, Idaho, where they soon settled back into farm life. Kenneth was fourteen years old at the time.

Kenneth French first heard the Pentecostal message in the summer of 1924 when Mattie Crawford held a tent revival in nearby Caldwell. Many members of the Roswell Baptist Church, including teenagers Kenneth French and Louise Fretwell, attended the meetings and embraced the Apostolic message. Eventually, those who accepted the Apostolic truth were driven from the Baptist church and began holding services in a hall in Roswell.

The years between 1924 and 1936 were years of change for Kenneth and Louise. They brought a wedding, two baby daughters, the Great Depression, and, eventually, a move to Oregon. A third daughter was born after they moved to Alaska, and they adopted a son in Alaska.

The years brought spiritual changes as well. Although Kenneth had been baptized in Jesus’ name during the Caldwell revival, he had not been Spirit filled. Discouraged, he eventually stopped seeking. But with revival fires now burning in Parma, Idaho, things were astir. In the early morning hours following a revival service, Kenneth received the Holy Spirit at home with Louise praying beside him.

Just a few months later, French became disturbed by thoughts that the Lord was calling him to become a foreign missionary. His heart rebelled at the idea, and he spent many hours wrestling with this calling. “Lord, I want to serve You, and I’m willing to pastor a church or do whatever I can here,” he prayed. “Please, Lord, I don’t want to go to some distant land I don’t like and to a people of strange customs. Let me serve You here.”

Life became miserable as Kenneth continued to struggle with his calling. One night, while praying alone at the little church in Parma, his will broke so he could finally say, “Lord, I will go anywhere and do anything you want me to do.” Immediately, as if projected on a large screen, a map of Alaska appeared before him. He had no doubt what this meant. Such an explicit calling later became an encouragement to him when times became difficult and Satan tried to discourage him.

On May 14, 1940, Kenneth and Louise French, with their two young daughters, stepped from the deck of the freighter S.S. Tongass upon its arrival in Sitka, Alaska. Although their journey on the Tongass took only eight days, the spiritual journey that led them to Alaska had taken many years. With few possessions and thirty-nine dollars in their pocket, the Frenches had finally arrived in the place of their calling.

As the first Oneness Pentecostal missionaries, the Frenches spent the next several years establishing the first Pentecostal church in the Alaska territory. They also began ministering to students at Mount Edgecumbe School, a government boarding school located across Sitka Harbor on Japonski Island. Touched by the poverty and desperate conditions in which some children lived, the Frenches also established the Pentecostal Children’s Home for needy and deserted children.

Kenneth French longed for a way to evangelize the many towns and islands along the southeast Alaska coast. In 1947, with funds provided by the UPC youth department, he purchased a fifty-two-foot boat, the Madura. The Foreign Missions department provided a monthly fuel allocation. He ministered to the villages and canneries along the coast for ten years until the gospel boat became too old to use.

Sitka was the first of many places the Frenches ministered, first as foreign missionaries and, after statehood, as home missionaries. As the district developed and grew, he edited the district paper, The Alaska Witness, served as a presbyter, and later as an honorary board member. He also was a friend and mentor to many.

Kenneth French left behind a great legacy of faith. Highly esteemed throughout Alaska, he is recognized as their father in the gospel. A true sacrificial servant of the Lord, even as his health failed, he longed to take the gospel “just one more place