Long-Time Cutting Edge Subscriber, Jackie Sapakoff, Has Gone Home To Glory

Sunday, October 31, 2004

Dear Friends and Family,

Please forgive me for not writing sooner. Many of you have already heard: this Thursday Jackie went to be with Jesus (around 2 in the afternoon). This was only 3 weeks after returning from Israel, checking in the hospital and discovering she had been diagnosed with terminal cancer. As you can tell, everything went very quickly. Her last days and hours were incredibly peaceful and the presence of the Lord and His angels was surely there. Although I have mourned the loss of my best friend and closest companion, all of us who were around her till the end cannot help but rejoice in her promotion to glory.

Her Celebration Memorial Service will be on Wednesday, November 3rd at 10am at the West Falmouth Baptist Church, which will be followed by a lunch reception. There will be a time of sharing during the service for the ways in which Jackie touched so many of our lives in such a remarkable way. I hope to see many of you there!

Below, I have included the obituary that will be in today's Portland Press Herald paper. Also, one of the writers from the paper called me up yesterday to request an interview about Jackie's life for a feature article. I hope many of you will check that out as well (on page b7, entitled "Jacqueline Sapakoff; home was 'house of prayer for all nations'"). There is no doubt she will be greatly missed. In the weeks and months to come, I look forward to speaking with many of you about Jackie's last months, weeks, days and moments. The Lord was so real and present in the midst of it all. And He says: Precious is the death of His saints. Jackie is where she has longed to be: in the arms of her Savior!

I look at it this way: New England experienced 2 great victories in 24 hours; the Red Sox won the world series and Jackie, a great woman in God's Kingdom, went to be with the Lord!

I send you my love and the Lord's shalom during this time of loss but also great rejoicing!
Kate


Her Obituary:

Jacqueline Jean Sapakoff, Educator and Christian Prayer Warrior Revivalist

Jacqueline Jean Sapakoff of Falmouth, Maine went home to be with her Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ on October 28, 2004. Known to her enormous network of friends and acquaintances as Jackie, she was born August 9, 1932 and raised in Boonville, Missouri. Educated in local schools and at the University of Missouri at Columbia, Jackie served in various capacities as a journalist, librarian, and educator.

Moving to Maine in the early 1970’s. Jackie made her home on Winn Road in Falmouth with her husband, George A. Sapakoff, who predeceased her on November 30, 1987. She was a Special Education teacher at the North Street, Hall and Baxter Schools in Portland as well as the Spurwink School. She retired from her profession as an educator at the Baxter School in 1999, although she continued teaching her many pupils until the end of her life. She had tremendous dedication to her profession and her students, continuing her relationships with several of them until the end of her life.

As dedicated as she was to teaching, the most notable part of Jackie’s life was her love of God and her devotion to serving Him. Jackie loved the Lord her God with all her heart, soul, mind, and strength. She honored her King, the Lord Jesus Christ, with her service at the West Falmouth Baptist Church where she was a long-time deacon and her amazing involvement with practical ministry in Falmouth, in Maine, and throughout the United States and World. Her great interest and concern for the peace of Jerusalem and the Lord’s preeminence there led her to travel to Israel five times, the most recent trip immediately preceding her going home to be with the Lord.

Jackie did this by manifesting the love of God to everyone she met and seeking to involve them in her efforts to promote heartfelt revival in her community, state, and nation. A keen student of the history of religious revivals in this country and elsewhere, Jackie was fully persuaded that heartfelt self- and nation-changing revival was the greatest need our time and culture had. She was so convinced of this that she was a prime mover and organizer of the Greater Portland Tent Revival meetings at Deering Oaks Park in Portland in the late 80’s and early 90’s. When Falmouth was politically divided and spiritually troubled over many current moral questions in the late 1990’s, Jackie drew together a special interdenominational prayer effort which has met faithfully every week for the past five years. This unique fellowship, which Jackie hosted and led, has helped to stimulate earnest prayer and the beginnings of genuine revival in Falmouth and elsewhere in Maine.

The tent revival meetings conducted in Falmouth for the past three years were a direct outgrowth of this prayer effort and a real answer to the prayers of the group which Jackie has led. These were the first meetings of this kind held in Falmouth in over eighty years. They have already had a role in changing the spiritual atmosphere of the community. Jackie also organized Falmouth’s observance of the National Day of Prayer at Community Park for the past three years.

Ever a quiet and unassuming person, Jackie never put herself forward, but always gave the glory to God and pointed others toward a vibrant faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. She will be profoundly missed by her many friends, but Falmouth and Maine have seldom, if ever, had such a truly dedicated prayer warrior and revivalist as Jacqueline Sapakoff. May Christians who remain in this life be inspired by her wonderful example, and may those who are seeking spiritually be inspired by her testimony to seek the Lord Jesus Christ’s salvation.


All donations can be made to: West Falmouth Baptist Church, 18 Mountain Rd., Falmouth, ME 040

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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