Morning Wings

Bat Eviction & Bethany Extras

2012-01-17T11:46:00.000-04:00

A Stocking Full of Missionaries

2012-01-17T11:22:00.000-04:00

Don (SM in Siparuta), DJ, Mario (short-term, Mexico), Jodi, Lena (SM in Siparuta), Joel (short-term, Puerto Rico)

Joy, Julianna, James, & Jenna Ash

Jenna & Julianna

Mischievous Kitten

Missionaries that work at Davis Memorial Hospital - Sabbath Christmas Potluck

Yummy food :P

Christmas at the Davis Memorial Hospital

2012-01-17T11:11:00.001-04:00

The sisters proudly smile with their craft at the Hospital's Christmas party for Aids Children.

Robbing parts from the "donor" ambulance.

Fixing the broken flex plate and the cracked drive shaft on the SDA Hospital Ambulance.

Container Cleanup

2012-01-17T10:49:00.001-04:00

The GAMAS shipping container used for storage at the local airport needed some patchwork for its leaky roof and a bit of TLC.

Here is the "before" picture.

The container was emptied of its contents which were taken to the container by the hospital where we were staying - a two day process.

Lena, a student missionary in Georgetown for the break carries water in buckets to our worksite.

Joel, a short term volunteer from Puerto Rico, DJ, and Don, a student missionary from the States spending Christmas break in Georgetown begin working on the roof.

DJ and Mario, a short term volunteer from Mexico install the "whirly-bird" for air ventilation in hopes that the container will dry up and the frogs will not find such a suitable environment to live in.

Jodi scrubs the mildew and grease off the walls in an empty container.

The close to finished product!

December Update

2011-12-22T12:38:00.002-04:00

I wish I could write an update that said: Normal. Life is normal. We eat, go to work, exercise, read and sleep...and everyday is the same.

But alas, it is not so. Welcome to the last 2 1/2 months...

October often found us at the local airport doing the annual inspection and repairs for the Cessna 182 that GAMAS operates here in Guyana. For many suns and a few moons, DJ (and sometimes I) were inspecting, recording, researching, ordering parts, receiving, repairing, exchanging, assembling, writing, and finally gluing. And if you're not sure what all that means, maybe someday you'll become an airplane mechanic's wife too and have to figure it all out. At last, though sleepy-eyed and less than bushy-tailed, we finished just minutes before heading to the international airport to catch our flight to the States.

Other October activities included working on the van... yes the same van that is pictured in the previous post with a note saying that it was almost done. The engine has been completely torn apart three times, and halfway torn apart another 7 or 8 times. Poor thing hasn't been to the doctor in about 5 years and it was re-tired the last time it went. Doctor plans to prescribe re-tirement again as baldness comes with age. So the van's still being worked on. Welcome to the mission field. Why so long, you ask? Well, what do you expect from a bird doctor trying to diagnose a hippopotamus with a heart problem?

Scattered between van fix-its and airplane fix-its were Guyanese visa fix-its. We had to resolve previous visa confusion, overhaul the letterhead to be used, mend the letter content, patch up relationships, and come up with a solution that makes us and the government happy.

November brought a little bit of change. We received a tough email near the beginning of the month that DJ's grandmother had just passed away. The next few days were filled with preparations to go home for the memorial service. A kind relative wanted all the family to be able to be there and graciously helped with tickets. We busily finished the necessary projects here in Guyana and headed North. We are truly grateful for the chance to be with family and loved ones during this time.

Though we seemed to bring plenty of work with us, we often scampered into the snow-dusted woods for quiet walks and scrambled up nearby mountains to capture breathtaking views. The New England forests and the crisp, cool air brought us a much needed rejuvenation after several months in the humid, trash-filled city of Georgetown. Applesauce, family meals, and visits with church members cherry-topped our visit and were as delightful to the heart as a batch of homemade preserves.

After nine days in New England, we traversed across Canada bound for Yooperland with the intent of visiting Miss Knott, her dear pickle-ball playing, flash-drive flushing students, and her dear Mr. Gibbs. An all too brief visit and then back in the car. Eight hours to Andrews, a car shuffle, and another 10 to Collegedale.

The next 12 days brought more travel and bustle. I did the routine chores, ran errands, visited friends, and made several trips to town gathering precious goods to take South for us and the other missionaries, like almonds, yeast flakes, kids Christmas presents, and nursing scrubs. DJ worked with Jeff Sutton doing "Jeff and DJ airplane things" (which include, but are not limited to: Routine checks on the Aerostar, maintenance on the white 172, organizational meetings, yacking on the telephone, researching future options for GMI's fleet, and coming home late for lunch - but not too often ;). Those two cronies also decided that the three of us should take a trip out to Oklahoma to look at an airplane (for Guyana). Thirty-five hours and 1,700 miles later we arrived back in Collegedale.

Before we knew it was 3 a.m. and we were sweating again, riding in a taxi driving lighting speeds down the left side of the road. A 'Welcome home' sign was taped on the front door of the missionaries' apartment.

The last two weeks have found us busy once again with the duties of mission life and work. The airplane needed a little maintenance, the hippopotamous heart continues to be a dilemma for the bird doctor, one of our volunteers needed lice treatment and a haircut, clothes get dirty and our tummies continue to ask for food. So we have plenty to do in one way or another. Two new members were added to the missionaries' apartment while we were gone: a kitten named Tiger and a CD/DVD Replicator. Under the direction of James Ash (pastor/pilot) and with copy permission, hundreds of thin, circular shaped objects have slid through this replicator and been distributed to local Adventist pastors and Bible workers throughout Guyana.

It's too hot and rainy here to think much about Christmas, so please enjoy the holiday cheer for us :) Don't forget to tell the weatherman we'd like some snow!

- Jodi

Promises and praises

2011-09-29T11:42:00.000-04:00

A Bible promise claimed many times since we've been here in Guyana is Habakkuk 3:17-19.

Though the fig tree does not bud and there are no grapes on the vines,
Though the olive crop fails and the fields produce no food,
Though there are no sheep in the pen and no cattle in the stalls,
Yet I will rejoice in the Lord,
I will be joyful in God my Savior.
The Sovereign Lord is my strength;...

In looking daily for reasons to praise Him, we've noted a few of them to share. May these examples encourage you to look daily for reasons to rejoice and be joyful.

A good working airplane and the ability to use automotive gasoline, which is less than half the price of AvGas.

The first Adventist secondary school in the deep Guyanese interior began on Sept. 19, 2011. This is only the 4th Adventist secondary school in Guyana, 2 others of which are run by GMI mission projects.

A temporary roof is on the GAMAS container at the local airport to begin solving water leaking problems.

Volunteers arrive! A Russian family (2 children pictured), a girl from Germany, a guy from the States, a lady from Canada, and soon to come...the Brooks family.

Oranges from our neighbor, handed to Jodi "to help her skin" when really, we just needed some fruit.

GAMAS' Toyota Hiace "bus" is very close to running... after many hours of undoing local mechanic's work and redoing it properly.

Trips to the zoo. A Guyanese "Tiger" (ocelot).

The chance to leave the city for a week and spend time eating soursop and doing airplane maintenance at the GAMAS hangar in Bethany, a 20 minute flight from Town.

So at the end of every day we should look back and remember what the Lord has done for us in that day, count our blessings, and be reminded again of His great love for us.

Maule Miracle

2011-09-05T12:07:00.000-04:00

The Baby Moses of Guyana Adventist Medical Aviation Services (GAMAS).This spring one of the GAMAS airplanes had an unfortunate bath in the waters of the Kamarang River at one of the villages in the interior of Guyana. A wet runway and a sudden tail wind on the last part of the decent to land resulted in a Maule aircraft and the pilot/passengers 10+ feet down over the river bank and into the river. Thankfully, no one was hurt and the villagers came out and helped turn the plane around and pull it out of the water. The plane then became part of the runway scenery for the next few months, waiting for a mechanic.

We believe that this Maule project was part of the reason that God wanted us to spend some time in Guyana. Gary Roberts came from his GMI project in Africa to help, and his 6 years of experience as a pilot/mechanic in Guyana were invaluable. Cliff Brooks also came to help and investigate the idea of being a long term missionary with GAMAS. His prior mission experience showed and we enjoyed his help for the last two weeks of the job. DJ, Gary, and Cliff spent many long days in their little "shop" that they set up with the GAMAS C182 wing and some hammocks and boards. With parts that came down with Gary from the States, borrowed instruments, and some patchwork, the little airplane soon began to revive. New struts, a partial engine teardown, new magnetos, a patched cowling, a new nose wheel support structure, and clean wheel barings made it a mighty fine looking gent.

***(left) A break for lunch with the family by the river.

*******
To get to Paruima, the little village in the beautiful Guyanese interior where the Maule airplane was located, we flew 1.5 hours over lots of broccoli heads. Paruima is a special village due to its heritage (more below). Radio communication is the only form of modern communication technology found in the village and we used it a lot to talk to the other GAMAS projects and to the airplane when it was flying. Many villages in the interior such as this one are only accessible by aircraft and by foot.
Transportation within the village happens by foot or by boat. Here's a picture of one of many trips up/down the river that we made in the dugout canoe that often serves as a pick-up truck. The villagers do a lot of subsistence farming. We were priviledged to share in the blessings of the land, including an abundance of bananas, bokchoy, and green onions.Here is a picture of the Adventist church in this village. It's set up on a hill in the middle of the village where almost everyone can see it. The village of Paruima has a very interesting history that has resulted in most of the villagers following the Adventist faith. They became known as the "Davis Indians" about 100 years ago because of a missionary, Elder Davis. A few years later, they fled from Venezuela into Guyana because of religious persecution. Their story can be read at http://medicalaviation.org/site/venezuela/the-davis-indian-story . Missionaries that came after Elder Davis wrote books about the Indians that are very good including "The Davis Indians," "Destination: Green Hell," and "Jewels from Green Hell" by Betty Cott.
*******
So while DJ, Gary, and co. worked on the airplane and made a few flights in the 182 for parts or checkouts, etc., the ladies stayed on the Davis Indian Industrial College campus working on various cleaning projects. Many hours were spent washing mosquito nets and sheets in the river, organizing medical supplies, and working in the library.

The library was of particular interest and importance because of its chaotic state. All the books had been removed from their shelves in order to spray for termites. While at first the job seemed easy enough - put the books back on their proper shelves - it turned into a two and a half week project. It was actually quite fun.

*******
And back to the Maule mission... After 3 weeks of work we ferried the airplane out of Paruima back to Georgetown - Gary flying the Maule, and the rest of us in the 182. God is good. There were no problems with the airplane during the entire flight.

The plan was then to fly the Maule to the States to sell it as this airplane is not very good for the needs in Guyana. It does not haul very much weight with the quantity of fuel needed to make trips into the interior. We are now looking for another Cessna 182 which has similar fuel consumption to the Maule but hauls much larger loads. However, God had his hand in this Maule project and saved us the trouble of flying it to the States. The day that Gary and his family were going to leave for the States flying the Maule, through a series of God-planned events, a prospective buyer here in Georgetown showed interest in the plane. Less than a week later, the paperwork was signed and the plane was moved a few hangars down at the local airport. We are so thankful and were again reminded that we are working for the Lord and that He has special plans for GAMAS and His children in Guyana. Thank you for your prayers and support in our mission projects.

Trip from Bolivia to Guyana

2011-08-26T08:46:00.000-04:00

One week after our arrival in Bolivia, we began to feel strongly that God was calling us to take a few months and go help the projects out in Guyana. We plan to return to Bolivia whenever God is finished with us in Guyana, but we are not sure when that will be. The last few days in Bolivia were filled with a scurry of paperwork, waiting at the Immigration office to get our passports, processing our Brazilian visas, and preparing for the trip. God paved the way for us and we were ready to go within 3 days.

Our trip from Bolivia to Guyana went something like this...

Bus from Santa Cruz, Bolivia to Trinidad, Bolivia (overnight Wednesday). Taxi to airport in Trinidad, commercial flight to Guayaramerin, Bolivia (Thursday morning). Arrived in the North part of the country and met up with Tara Swanepoole who runs the school in Guayara. She helped us stamp out of Bolivia/into Brazil and cross the border. We then took a 4 hour taxi ride to Porto Velho, Brazil, arriving at about 10 pm. We bummed around the airport there for a while, DJ ordering a Sub sandwich in Portuguese, and napping in a corner. We checked in Friday morning at 3 am and were boarding by about 4:30 am. We flew to Manaus where Cleber, a missionary who has been working with the Luzeiro Amazon medical launch picked us up. We then spent a lovely Friday and Sabbath at the Lightbearers Mission Station on the Amazon. It was really wonderful! Saturday night we headed back into town where we caught a bus headed to Boa Vista. The bus stopped at about 11 pm and sat on the road for 3 hours, waiting for another bus to come. I guess the air conditioning didn't work...don't really understand Portuguese! We unloaded and switched buses and continued on. At about 7 am Sunday morning we made another stop and for some reason switched buses again. We finally arrived in Boa Vista at about 2 pm and were delighted to see familiar faces in the bus terminal - David and Becky Gates. They had just arrived from Venezuela. We traveled together in a taxi to Bom Fin (the border with Guyana), stamped out of Brazil/into Guyana and caught a taxi into Lethem, a small border town, where with met Gary Roberts with the Twin Comanche. God helped everything work out so that we could leave that night. We took off 3 minutes before sunset (a Guyanese regulation prohibits the use of unlit runways after sunset, but allows twin engine aircraft to fly at night). Phew! We made it to Georgetown and to bed by 11 pm Sunday night.

We're very thankful that God gave us safe travels and really enjoyed the trip!

2011-07-25T07:29:00.000-04:00

Here´s a picture of the Aerostar that DJ worked on during the time that we were in Tennessee. He got checked out to fly it last week. He hasn´t piloted a plane in Bolivia for over two years so it was good to get back in the cockpit speaking Spanish.

When we arrived in Santa Cruz, we found machines in need of some TLC. The Backhoe had two flat tires and a dead battery. We took care of those and installed a new mechanical fuel pump. The Bobcat got and oil change and the dumptruck got a wash, new axle seals and a clean diesel filter.

More travels around the States

2011-07-25T06:51:00.000-04:00

We have been doing more traveling in the last 3 months than I can imagine. We´re not sure how it all happened, but with family graduations to be at and mission projects to do, we´ve set foot in about 35 to 40 of the 50 United States.

Our latest adventures have taken us to Northern New England where we visited our home church in St. Johnsbury, VT and visited DJ´s side of the family.

We went on a kayak camping trip in Maine with the Knott family and enjoyed a few days of serenity away from the business of life. We had fun hiking Mt. Avery, paddling down the lake, and spending time with family.

We also flew up to Michigan Campmeeting with Jeff, Fawna and their kids in the 182 that you see in the picture above. We did mission demos for the kids in Primary and Juniors. They especially liked the bag drop demonstration that DJ and Jeff did. During the middle of campmeeting week, Jeff, DJ, and I flew down to Andrews for DJ and Jeff to get some additional bush flying training and renew their certifications with Mr. Lloyd. God held off the rain every time they went out to fly. We returned to campmeeting for the last weekend and then flew back to Tennessee.

We are now back in Bolivia for a few days or weeks preparing to head North to Guyana for a few months to help with a project up there before returning to Bolivia. Keep posted.

6 weeks, 6 days, 6 hours

2011-06-13T15:32:00.000-04:00

6 weeks, 6 days, and 6 hours ago DJ and I were sitting on an airliner somewhere over the jungles of Brazil headed North to Miami, FL. We had spent exactly 3 months in Bolivia and were headed back to the States for a series of family graduations and for the annual inspection, repairs, and a weight loss campaign on GMI's Piper Aerostar Twin.

We spent portions of our first day back in the basement waiting out the tornadoes which were forming in the Tennessee area. The next day as we headed out the door to drive to Michigan, my dad informed us that a few of our friends' houses had been hit by a tornado that touched down about 6 miles from our house the evening before. We are very thankful that our friends are okay and since then we've been over to help them in the long cleaning/clearing process.

Our first weekend back in the States, we spent at Andrews University in Michigan. Though I had finished my degree in Elementary Education in December, I wanted to attend the education department's special pinning ceremony and march for graduation. Also graduating were DJ's younger sister, Emily (English, secondary education) and my cousin, Sara (animal science, pre-vet). We had a lovely long weekend at Andrews visiting with friends and family and spending some time with our old church family at the Eau Claire Spanish Church.

From there we drove back to Tennessee so that DJ could begin the Aerostar annual. DJ and Jeff Sutton spent about a week on it and then split ways for other trips. Jeff went to Belize for a week to work on a GMI project that he is helping get started there and DJ and I drove out to Colorado for DJ's older sister, Rachel's, graduation from CSU with her Doctorate of Veterinary Medicine. We had a great time with family, hiking in the Rockies, and seeing a little bit of Rachel's life. We stayed with my aunt and uncle nearby and enjoyed seeing them again too.

After the flurry of another graduation weekend was over, DJ flew up to Spokane, WA, where Stephen Lingenfelter, a fellow mission volunteer mechanic, picked him up and drove him to Coeur d'Alene, ID. There DJ spent a few days removing a long-range fuel tank system from a mission Cessna 182 that had headed to Mongolia, but had been unable to go. We understand that the Chinese government set high restrictions and would not allow the plane to fly over the country to get to Mongolia. The 182 and the accompanying missionaries, Beaver & Rebecca Eller, are in the States waiting/working on the process of obtaining permission while getting further medical training. The Ellers had offered to lend their project's airplane for a few months to the GMI project in Guyana because the Guyana project is currently down a plane. The 182 would be used in place of the other plane in its daily duties as well as to transport mechanics to the jungle to remedy the situation with the other plane. The plan was to bring the 182 down to Collegedale, TN to have it available to go down to Guyana. DJ flew the plane to Wyoming, where I had driven to meet him and dropped off a car, and together we continued flying to TN.
We thought about making a stop by Andrews for DJ to get some additional flight training but bad weather kept us from making it there. Instead, we headed back to TN because we wanted to be there for Jodi's brother, Ivan's, 8th grade graduation. One particular highlight of this flight from ID to TN was the stop we made in Illinois to re-fuel. We arrived at the airport after the FBO had close and were unable to reach anyone to help us pump gas (not a self-serve pump). Through an error on the fuel guages ... We didn't have enough fuel to make it to the nearby airport which had fuel and still have DJ's required minimum reserve. God sent us a wonderful Christian family who took us to their house, picked up their gas can, drove us to a bunch of different gas stations looking for non-ethanol car gas (this particular airplane can handle this type of gas), and drove us back to the airport where we were able to put in enough fuel to make it to the next airport safely.

We arrived in TN the next afternoon, went to Ivan's evening graduation, and got me unpacked and re-packed in order to take off the next morning with my parents and brother on their road trip to California. We were headed to CA to go to my sister, Noelle's, graduation from Loma Linda's dental hygiene program.

The next week I spent with my family driving West, looking at dinosaur tracks in Texas, 'caving' at Carlsbad in New Mexico, visiting my grandparents in Arizona, and finally arriving in California. We spent the weekend attending Noelle's pinning ceremony and graduation events and seeing family who I hadn't seen in many years.

The following week I spent driving East with my family, visiting Zion & Bryce, dropping my dad and brother off in Wyoming to dig dinosaur bones, picking up our car, and driving to TN with my mom, super excited to see DJ.

Meanwhile, DJ was and continues to be very busy working in TN on various aiplane projects, the biggest of which is the Aerostar. DJ, Jeff Sutton, and Steve Wilson worked together on the annual as well as on the airplane's "weight loss campaign." The goal of the campaign? you ask: To increase the amount of weight the airplane can legally carry. Long days were spent removing wires, pieces of broken equipment, antennas that no longer belonged to anything, and the left-overs from the air conditioning and propeller de-ice systems. The guys still talk excitedly about the box of removed junk that now weighs nearly 60 lbs. They also are re-weighing the airplane and doing the paperwork for installing extended wing-tips.

DJ has also spent lots of time working with other GMI missionaries in finding solutions to the plane situation in Guyana.

We are now both in Tennessee looking forward to whatever may come next. We have a few weeks left before the Aerostar is completely finished. At this point we are not sure how soon we'll return to Bolivia, but we know that at the latest, it will be by the middle of July. In the meantime, we are doing the projects that we have at hand and waiting to see what God has in mind next.

Thanks for your support and prayers!

Jodi (& DJ)

Fun in the Mud

2011-05-17T17:15:00.000-04:00

A few weeks ago we decided to do something different for Sabbath and took a trip up to the little village of Espejillos (es peh he yos) where Dr. Kim and his family have set up their mission school. This little town is about a 15 minute car ride from the property where we're at and then from there it is about 11 miles from the road back into the Kim's place. Steve, DJ, and I thought it would be great to walk the 11 miles in on the beautiful junglish road. Jeff decided to take his family on his Honda 250 dirt bike/motorcycle. So we all drove up to the turn off to Espejillos and left the car there.

***
The next thing that we had to do was cross the river. Here is a picture of the Sutton family getting ready to cross the river. When we went across in the morning the deepest part of the river was only up to our knees. Everyone who lives in Espejillos has to cross this river to get into town or go back home. As you can see in the second picture of Jeff riding his bike across, one vehicle was already stuck. (Fortunately the Bolivians mine sand and rock out of the river and have plenty of large machines available to help people get unstuck...at a small cost).

Once across the river, Jeff took off on the motorcycle with his family and Steve, DJ and Jodi started their walk through the beautiful Bolivian hills. About 6 miles in, Dr. Kim and Jeff drove up in the Kim's landcruiser and gave us a ride in the rest of the way.
***
We spent that WONDERFUL Sabbath day enjoying the nature and fellowship with good friends. Unfortunately our camera had broken and we didn't have another one with us at the time, but just imagine this: On the Kim's property there are two waterfalls, the first set of them are about 10 to 20 feet tall. Then there's the big one at about 50 ft. tall. Each of these falls has been carved into the limestone rock creating smooth channels and ending in cute little pools of water, each with its own unique shape. They figure that about 60 gallons a second tumbles over the falls. The bottom pool flows into a quaint stream with lots of big rocks and water plants growing in it. At the top of the falls the creek widens and is said to go to a 5 spring source. Steve, DJ, and Jodi walked up the stream a little ways...that is until Steve and DJ got tired of being "spider men." There were hundreds and hundreds of these large 2" bodied spiders with thick yellow stringed webs all across the creek. The beautiful blue butterflies flying by made the trek up the creek extra enjoyable.
***
All too soon, the afternoon was pressing on and we felt it time to go. We figured we'd have to walk out and the sun goes down about 6:15ish. It was around 3:30 and we had flashlights, but we didn't want to be out that long after dark. (By the way, it's not very dangerous in Bolivia, and there was not a safety issue with being out after dark) Truthfully.
***
As we prepared to leave, Mrs. Kim offered to drive us out. It had rained just a little bit while we were there during the day and Jeff didn't want to take his family back out on the motorcycle, so they were going to go with Mrs. Kim and we just got lucky :)
***
Mrs. Kim drove us about 3 miles down the slick, clay road at which point we came to the end of a long line of cars. We got out to see what was going on. Had there been a road slide? An accident? Well, come to find out, the road was just in rather poor condition. We decided that we'd walk over the bad hill and then Jeff would shuttle us on his bike to the river. So we said goodbye to Mrs. Kim and put the two littlest kids on our backs and headed out walking. The next few pictures don't even do justice to the condition of the road. There must have been 30 or 40 cars lined up, unable to proceed. Now, that's a lot, considering the size of the village :).
***

Steve having fun (below).A few cars that slid!

The clay stuck to the bottoms of our shoes and made even walking difficult. But at least we were moving...unlike the 50 or 100 people that would most likely have to spend the night there with their vehicles. We were reminded of our many dear friends who are serving as missionaries in the Philippines and who have to do this kind of thing weekly, if not daily!
***
The sun sank lower and lower in the sky as we plotted along one foot after another. Jeff was having a hard enough time controlling the bike and stopping to clean out the mud that he was in no place to play shuttle man. So we walked along, enjoying the fun of the mud, taking pictures and videos with Jeff & Fawna's camera, and trying to keep the kids happy. We walked until the sun went down before the road was sandy enough and dry enough for Jeff to begin shuttling people. First he took Sierra and Steve (who had fallen earlier and injured his hip and knee), then he took Fawna and the two little ones, and lastly he came back for us. By that time, we only rode on the bike for a mile!

***
We finally arrived at the river to another challenge... the water had risen. The deepest part now reach a good way up our thighs. We made it across ok, linking elbows, but then there was Jeff on the bike. We prayed hard as he began to cross in the shallow water. When he reached the faster flowing, deeper channel, all we could do was hold our breaths and pray. The water came up to the seat on the bike and somehow managed not to enter the air intake as the bike kept going, revved up really high. We all couldn't imagine how the bike would stay up under the circumstances. In seconds, however, Jeff raced up out of the water and up onto the sand flat. I can't wait to get to heaven and hear about how many angels were there pushing the bike up!
***
Once on the sand flat, Fawna and the kids got a ride in the back of a kind family's pickup truck to the car. Steve, DJ, and Jodi sprited across the rest of the sand flat and got to the car shortly after Fawna and Jeff had. About a minute later, Fawna realized that she had left their backpack in the pickup. Sierra started crying frantically for her teddy bear and Savana was hungry. Jeff and Fawna left the kids with us and rode off after the truck to try to catch them. We all prayed that they would get the backpack back. Not that it had a lot of valuables in it, but kid's teddy bears are hard to replace. A few minutes later, Jeff and Fawna came back with the backpack. The people in the truck had realized that they had the backpack, stopped and were on their way back to give us the backpack. So finally we were in the car and arrived home at about 8:00.
***
Such a fun Sabbath day!

Housing

2011-05-17T15:37:00.000-04:00

Both the RedAdvenir Team and the Aviation Team have been squeezing into housing. Up until now, the large RedAdvenir building has housed many of the team members. One month ago the station was officially moved out of their town location and into the new building. As construction continues and they move towards broadcasting again, the RedAdvenir building needs to be less of a hotel and more of what it's meant to be. Since housing is at the forefront of our thoughts, let me share with you some pictures of our housing situation and our plans for growth. These photos are of the current housing on the new property where the RedAdvenir building is.
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"Hotel" RedAdvenir (from the back)
***
Richard & Katie Carrera's house. Richard is the director of RedAdvenir, originally from Trinidad. He is married to Katia, daughter of Becky and David Gates. They have two children, 6 and 5.
***
The "guard house." This has been used by many families and now is the center cooking location for all the single volunteers and houses some of the girls that work for RedAdvenir.
***
And then there's Jeff & Fawna's new house that we've been building (see previous blog, the Sunflower house). They just moved in from across town where they had been renting a house.
***
Now the rest of the aviation crew...
The first few months that we were in Bolivia, DJ and Jodi stayed with Jeff & Fawna across town. The last few weeks we moved out to the property to reduce transportation time and costs, as well as to help get the last of the Sutton's house on the property ready for them to move in.
***
This is Jodi's little kitchenette on the porch of a little building with 3 tiny rooms. These rooms were used for storage and to keep some of the aviation guys' stuff in. This fresh-air kitchenette is very nice but quite breezy. We ended up moving the stove inside one of the little rooms because of the wind.
(i.e. it took 2 hours to pressure cook a pot of lentils!)
And then there's the lovely container which has been made into a little trailer home. There is a bed in the way back, a bathroom in the middle with a shower and toilet and a curtain door, and a little kitchen in the front. However, it gets really hot inside during the day, and there is currently no stove or fridge in there. This container has housed volunteer missionaries for about 2 years now. DJ and Jodi stayed in here for about 2 weeks and then moved out for another missionary couple, Scott and Min Sterling, to use it for the next few months. (We were headed to the States for a month or two so our next option...see below...only lasted a week :).
And so we spent our last week sleeping in our cute little tent in one of what we refer to as the "chicken coupes"...apparently the previous owner had intended these two buildings for use as chicken coupes but had never actually had chickens there.
Here's Daniel Adam's little tent house.
In the picture below you can see where Steve Wilson and Herman Gonzalez have set up camp in the other chicken coupe. Fun stories are shared at breakfast when the previous night was windy. Some conversations go like this...
Steve: So I kept waking up because the wind was blowing the mosquito net into my face.
I think I'll turn my bed around 180 degrees.
Herman: Last night I woke up freezing cold! There was this big gust of wind that had apparently blown my mosquito net out from around my mattress. It was flapping in the breeze above my head parallel to me when I was lying down. Then to my dismay, I had no sleeping bag on top of me. I looked over across the chicken coupe and there it was against the other wall.
Steve: Yeah, I give up with this mosquito net thing. I think I'll just handle the mosquitoes biting for the first hour I'm in bed. The tend to lessen as the night goes on anyways...

Then there's the lovely bathroom. Trust me, it's come a long way. When we first arrived, there was no plumbing to this bathroom. Since then, Richard Carrera has had voluteers help run water lines in, hook up a shower, paint the walls, and kill the wasps nests inside. This lovely bathroom serves 5 of us on a good day.

The plan from here:
Richard is working on building dorms and possibly another house or two which should be finished within a year or so. Maybe two years.
The aviation dept.'s next house will be for Steve Wilson and his bride to be, Helen Ross. Much of the aviation property suitable for building houses on is like the picture above. Steve has gone to great lengths with the Skidsteer Bobcat and cleared some land to look for a nice place to start building. We hope to build at least 2 more houses in the near future.And how many volunteers are living at the property?
RedAdvenir: 2 Families (8), 6 volunteers
Aviation: 1 Family (5), 2 couples, 3 more guys
Plus all the visitors, family members, and volunteers from other projects that need a place to stay on a more temporary basis. This number can be upwards of 10-12 people at a time.
TOTAL: 26 permanent, + visitors

We are thankful for what God has already provided and are excited to see how He changes this little piece of property into a center where His work is spread all over Bolivia and into other parts of South America.

Tool "Shed"

2011-05-17T15:27:00.000-04:00

The new and improved tool and equipment container. A recent project involved converting this small shipping container into a tool shed for all the tools and building materials. DJ spent many days building shelves out of leftover L-metal. Steve helped with the crossbeams and making an 'attic.' Then we moved all the tools from the two tool rooms in TV station to this container and reorganized them to fit in this small space. In the first picture there are two doors/frames to go in Jeff's house in the picture, but everything else is in somewhat of an order.

A Finished House!

2011-05-17T14:17:00.000-04:00

Our house project that we have been helping work on for the last three months has come to a close. The last drywall has been hung, the last tile laid, the yard cleaned up, and the family moved in. Here are some pictures of the lovely Sutton house in La Guardia, Santa Cruz. This marks a milestone for the aviation department as the first house on our section of land.

The upstairs: used as storage, extra space for company who needs a place
to stay for the night, and as an office.

Here is a small picture of the handrail that DJ and I worked on. The wood had to be sanded, routed, and measured, cut, drilled together, and finally varnished. This was quite the project and took many hours/days for the unskilled carpenters to complete.

Here is a picture of the living room from upstairs.

This is the bathroom, "Bolivian style." Most of this tile was laid and all of the bathroom appliances were installed by the aviation crew.

La cocina

And finally the outside of the house, a beautiful "sunflower."

Funnies of the Sutton Kids

2011-04-14T10:33:00.000-04:00

Nana Eller and anyone else who would like a smile and maybe a laugh, have a look at these pictures of the kids. Andean likes being outside, getting into things, eating dirt, and doing boy things.

While the girls, especially Sierra are terrified of the chickens and run screaming through the yard to scare the neighbors' chickens away, Andean loves to chase after them in his own way. He is quiet and super inquisitive.

Andean's almost walking! This was a picture from a couple of weeks ago. Can't quite tell if Andy is happy or about to fuss! Probably a little bit of both.

Sierra helping make peanut butter :P.

The girls were playing "Baby Moses" in the bathtub with blankets and wanted Andean to join them. The adventure continued with sailing around the world on a high adventure :)

Bits and Pieces

2011-04-14T08:32:00.000-04:00

Back to blogging again! Internet is slightly more challenging in third world countries and reception is random. Here are some fun pictures that we've been meaning to put up for a while. They are just a few glimpses of our daily life, along with some highlights.

*****

Yes, the backpack below has a rather sad, and yet hillarious story! Inside the backpack were our "precious treasures" of lunch, sunscreen, seasoned salt, earplugs and DJ's tools. Well, we left the backpack sitting on the ground outside the TV station while picking up some tools before heading out to the construction site in the back of the property. While we were inside collecting the tools, a sheepish-looking, unnamed volunteer came up to us and asked if we'd like to look inside our backpack to see if everything was okay, because he had just accidentally backed the Bobcat up and put a wheel right over our backpack. "I thought it strange," he said, "but I figured it was just a hump in the sand!" We all had a good laugh, particularly when we opened up the pack a found what you see below. While it looks like a disaster, it cleaned up pretty well. The bread, avacadoes, and tomatoes that we had for lunch were pretty squished so we kindly asked to eat lunch with the guy who ran over the backpack. Of course he was more than willing to share lunch with us :). There is plenty of sunscreen left, the earplugs were fine, we can survive without seasoned salt for a little while, and the only tool of DJ's that was damaged was his multimeter. "Shucks," DJ said. "It's not that the tool itself is expensive, but Andrews maintenance shop had just calibrated it, which costs like 80 bucks!" Fortunately, calibration is not essential :). Our camera survived the whole ordeal.

*****

DJ is fixing part of the dumptruck, missionary style. Please keep the dumptruck in your prayers. It is a "shared" item in that it doesn't totally belong the the TV station/aviation program. Jeff Sutton put a lot of work into getting the truck, patching the bed of an old truck together with the cab of this new truck and getting it shipped down to Bolivia. However, another missionary who is not directly associated with the TV station/aviation program has put the money into all of it. He is needing more funds for his project in the next town over so he wants to sell the dumptruck. Being able to borrow the truck is a big asset for the TV/aviation programs and losing that privilege would make life a bit harder, but we know that God's plans are best and we pray that He guides this whole situation.

*****

We're in the process of rearranging and organizing the container into an aviation-only container. Below is a picture of us moving the blue container that houses the aviation department's belongings such as tools, equipment, spare aiplane parts, a barrel of oil, etc. This was the process that we used to move the container out to the runway. Helen was driving the dumptruck, DJ was on the forklift, Steve was pushing with the Bobcat, and Jodi was directing traffic. Every few minutes the dumptruck torque-converter would get warm, so we'd have to stop, let it cool off, turn off the forklift to conserve the little fuel that we had on board, and then go again, moving a little farther ahead. The container is now parked out at the runway beside the place where we hope to build a hangar when God provides one.

The current airplane situation is that we are waiting for permission to fly the planes back into the jungle strips and start a branch medivac program in the highlands. Maintenance-wise we are praying that God will provide the aviation program with a hangar that can be built beside the runway at the new property. A generous donor has already funded the beginning of the process by helping get a well put in and electricity run out to that end of the property. Right now most of the planes are sitting outside the open hangar of some kind Baptist missionaries at a small airport called Kilometer 7 which is about 6 or 7 miles away from the property. They have been very kind to share their space with us, but it is challenging to get to the airport from the property with tools and equipment, and it's hard to feel like you're always mooching off of someone else's space. We are excited about the plans God has to obtain govt. permission to approve the runway at the new property, get permissions from customs to let the American registered airplanes fly, and to build a hangar which would further establish the aviation base in Santa Cruz.

*****

Here is a little friendly bat that almost got stepped on in our room. He flew out from under the bed and was very cute!

Jodi has some little helpers in the kitchen :)

*****

DJ and Jodi had the opportunity to preach at the small church in Los Batos where we go. This was a first for both of us. DJ preached and Jodi translated from English to Spanish. We thank God for this opportunity to share and practice a new part of mission work that we haven't had much experience in.

*****

Hoping all is well with each of you. You're in our thoughts and prayers.

Estuco

2011-03-27T16:42:00.000-04:00

We've had a lot of fun getting dirty and learning new things the last week. Putting stucco on the ceiling has been "the latest and the greatest." Actually, DJ says his muscles haven't hurt so bad in a long time. Enjoy the pictures!

Steve and Helen begin the mixing process.

DJ grunts as he smears another swipe on the ceiling. Jeff levels off what's been smeared on. Happy with their progress... Until the next day when they came back to find that the stucco hadn't dried because the mix was too wet. All that is on the ceiling in this picture had to be scraped off and the process started all over.
We'll just say that mixer Steve got real good at mixing up the "perfect" mix. First he'd ask "Ready? Do you want a small, medium or large batch? ____ Thicker or thinner?" And so he'd go and make his next batter up. We should've given him a chef's hat. About two minutes later we'd begin to hear the following, signifying the stage at which the mix was at:

Melted Baby Ice-cream.

Creamy Soup.

Butter.

Cream Cheese.

Quick! One more scoopful before it becomes chalk!

...and did I mention that it smells like rotting eggs?

Dirty DJ!
After DJ & Jeff put on layer after layer of stucco, straining to make it smooth and even, Jodi and Helen put the finishing touches on the ceiling to give it a "high class" look.

The stucco process resulted in a "gran desastre" on the walls and floor...

...but also a beautiful ceiling!

... and some dirty workers :D

Making Tofu

2011-03-27T15:31:00.000-04:00

I kind of miss going down the street a mile and buying a 19 oz. box of tofu for $1.59. Actually, I really miss it. Tofu is one of my favorite foods. In Bolivia, if you don't eat meat, there aren't a whole lot of protein sources besides beans/legumes. ...And there are only so many things that you can make with beans. In fact, I'm kind of tired of eating beans. So then come the days when we try new things :) Like making tofu from soybeans. A few weeks ago the people of Bolivia (and of other South American countries) celebrated this ridiculous (in my opinion) Holiday, Carnaval. Basically it's like Mardi Gras where everyone parties for about 5 days/nights. Another thing that goes along with it is that everyone, especially the kids like to throw paint and water balloons at other people. It's not usually dangerous to go out and around the city during the day, it's just not preferable. Every once in a while you'll get a mean person who will throw a rock instead of a water balloon and shatter a windshield or throw water balloons filled with urine or bleach water instead of just plain water. So when Carnaval came around, we decided to stay home for a few days instead of driving out to the property to continue work on the house. One afternoon, when DJ and Steve were busy fixing motorcycles and working on airplane paperwork, Helen and I decided to make tofu. It turned into an all afternoon and part of the evening ordeal. I thought that you might enjoy seeing the process, so here are some pictures :)

First the soybeans must be blenderized at a ratio of 1 cup soaked soybeans to 2 cups water.

What was blenderized then has to pass through a screen of some sort. We used a pillowcase :)

The leftover fibrous part can be used, but is often just thrown out. The milk that remains must then be cooked. Helen began to squeeze a pile of lemons between stirring the milk and running the blender. I was on the squeezing part (see picture 2).

Once the milk comes to a boil, it gets turned off.

Next we added the big cup of lemon juice and epson salts.

And it started to curdle.

And curdle some more until it looked like this picture below.

We then solicited Steve's help to pour the large pot into our pillowcase strainer set up.

Lastly the water was squeezed out of the tofu and the tofu was pressed.

A picture of the final product was neglected to be taken as the night was coming on and the photographers were busy washing dishes. The result was the blue strainer bowl full of tofu and some happy, but tired tofu makers.

Beautiful Wildlife

2011-03-19T20:22:00.000-04:00

Bolivia has so many neat creatures and birds. Here are just a few that remind us of the Creator, His creativity and His individuality. God loves to make things beautiful and then He shows us of His love through His wonderful creation.

(We didn't take the bird pictures!)

We saw a few of these Atacari at the park one Sabbath.

There was a Capped Heron sitting by a little stream at the side of the road one morning

when we were walking to church.

This bird is called a chachalaca and is hard to see, but hard to miss hearing. They make a "terrible" or rather loud racket.

Here we have a cute little frog, cousins of the many that we find in our room, bathroom, and every little corner!

We saw this cool alligator looking bug one evening. He was about 2 1/2 in. long.

Beautiful Butterflies

A fairly large tarantula :)

2011-03-07T11:14:00.000-04:00

Well for the past few weeks we have been busy as beavers learning about how a house goes together in Bolivia. We have been very grateful for the large collection of tools available to us, left here after the construction of the new TV station building for Red Advenir. This house project could nearly be happening in Texas or Georgia by the feel of it. There are only a few things that remind us we are working in Bolivia....like plywood and ready made septic tanks being unavailable. Here are a few pictures to show what happens here.

The whole family watching as Jeff brings his homemade, and rather patchwork septic tank form around to the back of the house. You can´t buy plywood in Bolivia so these pieces have been used and reused with the minimum number of cuts possible. The forklift deserves a word too. It has been a great blessing both in work accomplished and character building....When we arrived it had been sitting because nobody could get it to run. The gasoline here is very old and varnished by the time you can buy it at the gas station, so rotten or dirty gas causes about half of the mechanical trouble here. Jeff suspected the carb so I took it apart and found it surprisingly clean and in good order except the plastic venturi was broken. We put it back together and discovered it will start on full choke and run halfheartedly on half choke with lots of babying and good head pressure from a full gas tank. Jeff is hoping to get parts on his next trip to the states. We joke that a forklift ¨type rating¨is needed to drive the beast. An extra foot would be helpful too do the fact that it won´t idle.

We approach the hole cautiously. The forklift is rather heavy and if the walls caved under its weight we would be very stuck. It can hardly pull itself through a large mud puddle. The backhoe that dug the hole is being used at the TV station so our friendly forklift is the only thing for the job.

Jodi and I helped guide the form into the hole. The next day we stubbed pipes into the form and poured concrete all around the form to create a tank. After that was done we dug a drainfield with the backhoe and a laser level. It is sooo nice to have tools. It is rainy season and the back yard where we were working is all clay, making for quite a mess when wet. Laying the perf pipe (homemade perforations) between almost continuous rainshowers took a while, meanwhile we framed up some metal stud walls for the bedrooms. Finally we were ready to backfill the drainfield. By then the back yard was a swimming pool. And our drainfield was starting to silt in. We started to backfill with clay and though better of it. The way the clay was trapping water on the surface we figured it would seal off the drainfield too and prevent and septic liquids from evaporated or filtered at all. We came to the conclusion that we needed sand but not before the backhoe had to do so serious one armed swimming to get out of the clay pit in the back yard. Thankfully there was sand nearby for free and we had the use of a dump truck to get it.

A few days later I poured a floor in the tank and after it cured Jodi built a center dividing wall with block.

The lid was poured on a flat (mostly) piece of ground and left to cure a week. Here I am working to make mostly flat into flat. As you can see we always have plenty of help...

Here is another look at the finished roof from inside. The steel was scrounged from the construction of the TV station and the roofing material was well under $1000. Labor-free of course. We are learning lots of skills by being involved in this project. We are also learning how much work it takes to create infrastructure for a project.

Roofing

2011-02-24T12:42:00.000-04:00

Before the roofing begins.

After completion of the roof.

Now for some pictures during the roofing process : )

Helen (left) Jodi (right)

Jesse (a short-term volunteer) & DJ working on the eaves.

Jeff (top) & Jesse (bottom)

Putting up the steel beams.

Steve & DJ smile

Herman

Moving steel beams. The runway is in the background going away from Jeff´s house.

Missionaries

2011-02-24T12:11:00.001-04:00

DJ & Jodi enjoying a beautiful Sabbath afternoon.

Helen & Steve, now engaged! :D

Sierra and Fawna making bread.

Barbies with ¨modest¨attire! Haha! The dresses were a pair of old socks... Can you tell?

Andean learning to drive ... and loving it!

Jodi with Savana & Sierra Sutton

10 Highlights from the First 10 Days.

2011-02-07T16:42:00.000-04:00

1. Visa Progress: 1 year residency is being

processed. Police report IP, blood test done, papers purchased, notarized, etcerized. Never knew that there were so many steps!

2. Sick Report: Haven´t caught a single bug!

3. Food: Had the chance to make bread and soymilk from scratch. Been treated

with food by at least 5 missionary families. Can´t leave out that one of those meals was delicious pizza made by Steve & Helen and baked in a round clay oven :).

4. Church: Visited 2 churches, the most opposite churches in this area. 1 is very poor and exists mostly because of faithful missionaries that come. Jodi agreed to play the flute for a trumpet/flute special music at a 2nd church, which we found out is the richest church in town.

5. Most obnoxious time: Taking a shower with a bazillion mosquitos ... at least 20 in every direction.

6. Transportation: Although we´ve been blessed with many rides from the other missionary families into the TV station in the city and out to the property with the new TV station, we´ve taken a fair number of trips on public transportation. These trips include micros (meecrows, small bus), trufis (true-fees, small car or van),

specified taxis (that go around certain rings of the city and out the radials), and a ride in the back of a pick-up truck. The key has been to figure out which bus goes where as they´re numbered and a map of the lines they run is nowhere to be found for sale (trust me, we spent many hours one morning hunting one down). It takes about 1.5 to 2 hours to get from Jeff & Fawna´s, where we´re staying, to the TV station property by public transportation.

The New Red ADvenir Station

Jeff & Fawna´s House

7. Painting: We spent a few days out at the property helping Richard and Katie Carrera finish up their house that they are fixing up.

DJ sitting in front of the ¨maidsquarters¨at Jeff & Fawna´s where we´re staying.

8. Moving Days: Everyone´s moving! Katie & Richard moved to their ¨new¨ (to them) house on the property. Jeff & Fawna and the Gates arrived a day earlier than we had planned, so there was a late night when DJ & Jodi moved from upstairs to the maidsquarters to leave space for

the rest of them. Then Sone´and Derek moved the next day to the property and are living in the container. Now that Katie & Richard are finished moving, Sone´and Derek will move to Katie & Richard´s old house on the property. . . .

And still to come: Jeff & Fawna need to move out of their house in the next 3 weeks and we might move from this, our room, to the container at the property? We´ll see!

9. Power-washed and changed the oil and filters on the bobcat. Yes, both of us.

10. Woke up this week to lots of red dots on the knees and elbows ... realizing that one can´t sleep too close to the mosquito net as those blood-sucking creatures bite right through it - kind of hard not to though when you have to sleep two on a twin size bed!

Cows on the runway at the property.

Bienvenidos a Bolivia

2011-01-28T14:52:00.001-04:00

We got here Thursday morning at about 9:00 am after an overnight flight. We had no problems with customs. They only opened two suitcases and didn´t find anything amiss. Steve and Helen, other missionaries, picked us up at the airport and carted us around for the day. We made it to the market, exchanged money, went to the TV station and met people there, started work on our 1 year residencies, took official government photographs, ate some little mangoes, came to the house where we will be staying for a little while, and eventually crashed under a mosquito net, exhausted. We´re staying with a family from South Africa at a lovely little place outside of town.

A city in the highlands near La Paz.

El Alto, the city on the edge of the plateau near La Paz.

The Yunga Mountains, on the way down from La Paz.

Our first look at the Lowlands, also known as the "Beni."

Off we go!

2011-01-28T14:25:00.000-04:00

We just took off from the Miami airport on American 922 bound for Santa Cruz, Bolivia with a stop in La Paz as I write this. The last few days might be likened to taco salad, though we much prefer life to be a neat and tidy haystack. God has been good to us, giving us encouragement and peace. And He has listened to and answered the prayers of those of you who have been praying for us. Thank you!!

Quick Recap...

We moved out of our apartment in Michigan a week ago today and traveled to Tennessee a week ago Thursday. It was a very l-o-n-g trip (18hrs.) due to bad roads but God kept us safe and awake.

Our visas arrived last Friday, fixed and ready for travel.

Mailed off our marriage certificate...we found out Friday that it has to be translated, notarized, certified, and legalized (each step done at a different place) in order to get our 1 year residency/visas. Thankfully, Tara Swanepole, another GMI missionary in Bolivia, is in the States and is helping get those steps underway before she and her husband go back to Bolivia in mid-February.

We spent some time with Jeff Sutton, the Bolivia projects coordinator. He was in Collegedale and helped us with banking things. DJ also helped him with some maintenance on his Aerostar plane.

Then there were taxes to file... Who files taxes in January? ... Anyways, after tracking down all the necessary documents and revisiting the tax forms many times, we filed them this afternoon at 2:15 pm, 15 minutes before we left for the airport. Relief.

And we mustn´t leave out packing. The big question was DJ´s toolbox. DJ was advised not to take it, but could really benefit by having it down there. We still weren´t sure how we´d pack it. Wednesday morning when we were packing, DJ checked online and found out that we couldn´t take overweight suitcases (>50lbs) or boxes to Santa Cruz. The toolbox was both overweight and would need to be packed in a box. So it will remain in Tennessee.

The rest of our belongings were successfully packed into 4 suitcases, 2 carry-ons, and 2 backpacks. Although we had tried to weigh the suitcases at home, each one was over 50 lbs. by a pound or two when we checked them at the airport. God led us to the right check in clerk though, and he let ALL of them go with no charge or hassle! The next prayer is for customs in Bolivia. We are reminded that all we have is the Lord´s and that He knows what we will need. We trust that He will continue to be faithful as he has been and help us get through customs without lining the pockets of the customs agens unknowingly through ¨required¨ fees.

Visas

2011-01-17T17:29:00.000-04:00

The last few days have been a scurry of goodbyes, packing, cleaning, and finishing up projects. With our trip to Bolivia less than two weeks away, the list seems to go like this: add two, scratch one, add two, and scratch another one. Nevertheless, God will find a way to make it all work out in His timing.

God's perfect timing is a good match for a lesson in patience. Our visas are a great example! In order to obtain a specific purpose visa, one must have a plane ticket and allow 2 to 3 weeks for processing. In early January we had been waiting for some donated money that was being sent to us for purchasing tickets. At the "3-weeks-until-leaving" date, the money still hadn't arrived. We tried to figure out what was happening and learned that the money was finally on its way (as of that day). We did a money shuffle (parents are wonderful :) and bought tickets. The next day we got the final pieces of our visa paperwork together and mailed the passports and papers off. We were happily surprised when they arrived back in a week! . . . upon opening the passports a small problem was found. DJ's passport had "Jodi Knott" written on the visa along with his picture and Jodi's passport had "David Knott" written beside her picture. Hmm, and it was stamped right in the passport! We couldn't help but chuckle. So they were sent back to the consulate and are being reprocessed. Lovely lessons in patience. . .

God has given us peace and lots of good friends and supportive family members to help us remember that when God wills for something to happen, we must leave it in His hands and trust Him with the results.

Bolivia, here we come!

2011-01-17T16:13:00.000-04:00

God's call was clear: to take the gospel to the people of Bolivia through volunteer mission service.

In November we applied and were accepted to Gospel Ministries International. God has worked it out so that we will be able to leave at the end of January. We believe that God has a work for us to do in the highlands of Bolivia (also called the Bolivian "altiplano"). We plan to spend the first few months in the lowlands, however, helping further establish an aviation maintenance facility at GMI's recently constructed RedAdvenir media center just outside of Santa Cruz, Bolivia. Our goal from there is to relocate to the highlands near Lake Titicaca and La Paz to begin medical, educational, and humanitarian ministries.

Please pray for us as we prepare to go. We'll try and keep this blog updated as best as we can!

2009-12-14T17:04:00.000-04:00

A beautiful day full of sunshine and clouds dawned on the tenth of August. We want to thank God for making it *perfect* for us.

Photos:

Courtesy of Matt Barclay

Seeing each other for the first time today.

THE CEREMONY

Noel Wilton delivered a beautiful Homily on the merging Blue Nile and White Nile Rivers in Africa also encouraging us to anchor ourselves on Jesus, our firmest foundation.

"I do"

"I now declare you husband and wife"

Building our House of Faith

Signing the Marriage License

Sealed!

THE RECEPTION

A snapshot from our absolutely gorgeous and delicious carrot cake.

The Groom's cake

Our friend and caterer John Byrdak

Andrews Airpark Buddies

DJ & Jodi with Monica & Joshua Wold

The FIVES: Andrea, Diana, Kamrin, Jodi, and Alissa
(missing Rachel who was with her new little family)

Brad & Kara Kirk, the Bride & Groom, Brandon Gable

Greetings to Daniel Beddell

The CAKE...

Why be dainty when you're allowed to be messy?

The Snyders with G'pa & G'ma Streeter

The Knott Family

Siblings are wonderful!

Our Parents: Keith & Beth Snyder - David & Mary Knott

The Knott Clan (DJ's dad's side)

The LaClair Family (DJ's mom's side)

Family on Jodi's Mom's side

Aunt Jeannine, Raven, Zane (Jodi's cousin) and the Snyders

Grandparents

MORE PICTURES

Thanks Jim & Michelle Kendall for the beautiful heart-shaped wreath of flowers!

The sillyness of wedding traditions makes them fun :)

Best friends!

Sweethearts for life

And thus we begin our new life together. We know not the paths which we shall tread, but we know this: God brought us together and has guided us this far, thus we can trust that He will lead us on the paths of His choosing as we make our way to our Heavenly home.

May Medical Adventures

2009-06-10T13:42:00.000-04:00

This adventure began like most of the others, in the ARO-AIS office filing a flight plan. Four of us headed north in the Mooney. Lincoln (a student pilot), George, a Bolivian dentist named Daniel, and myself. We stopped in Trinidad to make a quick ferry trip to San Joaquin. There have been evangelistic meetings going on there and we took money for food and two more volunteers to help with the project. While we were there I got of picture of the ¨tower¨ certainly the most humble of any I have yet seen....the controler walks outside and takes a look before he clears you for takeoff.

We switched airplanes in Guayaramerin and flew the C182 out to the village of Blanca Flor on the Beni River. We didn´t have a medical doctor with the team this time so we worked with our friend Dr. Cesar Perez, director of health for the Pando region. We stay with him in the little field hospital. Unfortunately he still had other duties so we spent a bit a time waiting....
On Sabbath we flew to Riberalta to go to church and stayed the night.
more coming later

The market

2009-05-25T14:04:00.000-04:00

Backseater

2009-05-24T23:30:00.001-04:00

After I landed the Mooney in Santa Cruz and unloaded the television equipment I was faced with a problem of transportation. There was only one of me and two airplanes in Santa Cruz, niether of which belonged there. Soon I got a medivac call and had an excuse to dig the C182 out the back of Hangar 84 were David had left her. She was sitting sleepily in the back corner of the hangar, dusty, neglected and in debt. I paid the minimum redemption price, put oil in her engine, air in her legs and feet and off to the gas pumps we went. We fought terrific headwinds all the way north some 350 nautical miles. I indulged my ever present urge to push the power forward and use 70% of the 230 horses up front. The indulgence came without gratifcation though, against the 45mph headwind we could only make a pitiful 85mph. I usually cruise at or below 50% power so I am used to slow speeds in the 182 but this was by far the slowest I´ve seen. It was a beautiful day and I had a full four hours to enjoy it before my first stop at Blanca Flor to pick up the doctor. The doctor wasn´t there so loaded up a nurse and reluctantly agreed to let her intern come along. The medivac turned out to be a woman with post-childbirth bleeding in Galilea about 20 minutes farther north. We landed and the nurse gave the patient an IV right away while the crowd gathered. I ended up with 7 people wanting to fill the 3 available seats. It was a hard decision but I decided to take the patient, her husband and toddler along with the nurse. The intern was quite disgruntled at being left behind and there were others requesting a trip to the hospital. Those are the hardest times to be a volunteer pilot. I wished I had come earlier so I could have made two trips but the sun was setting and I only had time for one. I managed to escape with a bunch of ¨maybes¨ and we took off for Riberalta. One thing that everyone must learn who uses small airplanes for transportation is that, marvelous as they may seem they are not a sure means of transport, especially if you happen to be at the bottom of the heap in importance. As far as I was concerned, the intern was just along for the ride and the ride didn´t go all the way. I have had to leave my friends places when they were along to learn and I ran out of seats but I feel bad every time. Still I felt better than if I had let them all cram in....The other villagers who said they were sick were walking around looking healthy enough so I set the requirement for the malaria tech to pronouce them worth of a medivac before I would make a second trip. In Riberalta I made a quick call to George, my manager and he backed up my decision. No word came from the malaria tech so I continued home to Guyaramerin.
Finally I was faced with a trip by land to Santa Cruz. The whole time I have been in Bolivia I have never been on an extended road trip and experienced the other side of Bolivian travel. For a day or two it was looking like I might be able to make part of the trip by motorcycle but I ran out of time. There were two donors in Santa Cruz waiting for a ride around to the various projects that they were supporting. George said I had to be in Santa Cruz by Friday and it was Wednesday. That left only one option; go by air to Trinidad and take the short overnight bus trip to Santa Cruz. It was strange but I really enjoyed backseating to Santa Cruz.
The first leg to Santa Cruz was with Aerocon, the local airline in a Fairchild Metro W4 19 seat turboprop. I chose a seat right behind the cockpit and I had a chance to watch the pilots moving the controls and reading the checklists in heavily accented English. The trip that takes me 1.8 hours in the Mooney took just over and hour and by 7pm I was on a motorcycle taxi pulling into the terminal. The normal mob of sales people decended and I tried to think fast. I had expected to be charged over $10 for a sleeper bus so I was thinking of taking one of the cheap normal (read uncomfortable) buses for around $5. Somewhere amidst the crowd I hear ¨forty Bolivianos to Santa Cruz, sleeper bus leaving at 8pm.¨ That was certainly too good a deal bu I figured even if it wasn´t a sleeper it would be in my price range. I gave a slight nod and four of the many hands grasping my arms tightened their grip and started pulling me through the crowd. When we reached the little office cubical I scrutinized my captors carefully. From previous experiences watching my friends buy tickets I expected the prices and the times to all be ¨stretching the truth¨or all out lies. The head captor sat down in her chair and whipped out a seating chart, stabbed at a block with her pencil and asked for my name. I did my best to look seasoned and ungringo like as I suspicously questioned her. When was the bus leaving? How much did it cost? With a receite? When was it leaving? Are you sure? Show me the bus? and so on. My fears turned out to be ungrounded. She really honestly sold me a seat on a sleeper to Santa Cruz, leaving at 8pm for 40Bs...just like she had said. I was impressed, and I slept well. I arrived in Santa Cruz to a shocking 60F in the early morning and crawled in the back of the big truck at the Channel to get a couple more hours of sleep under a good thick blanket before the day began.

Mooney Miles

2009-05-24T22:12:00.000-04:00

After my adventures walking between villages in south eastern Guyana I caught a flight back to Georgetown with Gary Lewis, one of the GMI pilots in Guyana. From Georgetown I continued on to Puerta Rico. I had to go into the big international airport at San Juan because I was going to landing at 7pm, the closing time for customs at the smaller airports. It was my first time clearing US customs by myself and I was quite nervous. It didn't help when the tower called me on final and notified me that they didn't "have a visual" on my landing light. I didn't reply because I had known my light was burnt out since I left Bolivia. God certainly blessed my time there in San Juan and I was able to clear customs with no hassle and the two officers helping me were quite friendly. Actually paying the landing fee took me as long as clearing customs, but the airport authority to whom I owed the money let me use their computer to file a flight plan on the internet. I had no desire to spend the night in a big international airport, and I wanted to get as close to Tennessee as possible to assure a non-stop flight the next day. I landed at Boringuin, PR late and got the FBO to fill the Mooney as full as possible. Jeff had warned me that the people there had a language chip on their shoulder so I tried to speak only Spanish. I was quite pleased with the results. I didn't speak any English till the helpful worker said goodnight and left me to sleep in the small lounge above the hangar. The truth is, aviation terms and asking for things for my airplane are my strong point with Spanish and I can't hold a normal conversation yet. The next morning I was up and waiting for the worker to unlock the door and let me out to the airplane. After some confusion over US Dept of Agriculture requirements, which wasted 30 mins, I was on my way. Ten hours and thirty minutes later I was circling over the Collegedale airport looking for familiar cars in the parking lot. I owe a great deal of thanks to Becky Gates for loaning me her IPod. Sermons and recorded books are unbeatable for staying awake for long hours with good old Oto doing the flying (the autopilot), I even got some pics of the Kennedy Space Center. David was at Collegedale to meet me with a crew of GMI volunteers and Jodi came a few minutes later : ) I spent a wonderful weekend with the Snyders and even got in a trip to Michigan on Sunday. For the return trip to Guyana I had the company of Kyle Kennedy, GMIs head mechanic and inspector. He was on his way down to Guyana to do an inspection on Adventist World Aviation's Cessna 182. I was more than grateful for his help, in fact I wouldn't have made it without him. We stayed up pretty late Tuesday night working on the Mooney and I came down with a fever on Wednesday. We had the airplane loaded but every thought of water spurred Kyle on to more maintenance. By the time all was ready and all our packages and intructions had been received the weather had cut off the route to Miami, FL. There was nothing to do but find a way around because my permission to enter Bolivia expired Friday and we had no more time to spare. We landing in Miami, FL at 11:30pm fueled the plane and got a little more than an hour of sleep on the grass beside the plane. At 2:15 I was calling in a flight plan and we started up at 3am. I knew we were running a little late so we pushed the speed up a little. The whole day was a race against the Sun and we touched down in Georgetown, Guyana with about 5 min to spare. Later we found out that David had been watching our progress and had obtained special permission for us to land after sunset in Guyana, an unheard of thing. One piece of advise I would offer is watch out for these Lockheed flight service weather briefing people. They love to talk. I would guess we wasted 10min that day on helpful weather briefers who would not stop talking.....
I spent the night in Georgetown with the AWA mission pilot family there and I was back in the air by 10am on my way to Bolivia. Thankfully I was more rested so I was able to stay awake for the 7 hour trip. I know God was looking out for me and I felt very much at His mercy especially if I started imagining a forced landing in all the Amazon jungle I was flying over. I was very grateful to Him when I landed safely in Bolivia and even remembered my Spanish on the radio. It was Friday afternoon so I went out to the GMI school for the weekend. Monday I finished the trip by flying to Santa Cruz and delivering all the TV equipment and one passenger to RedADvenir.
International flying is stressful but for me I wasn't too bad because David was available on the phone to help me whenever I needed it. Still I have no desire to do that trip again any time soon without two engines.

My week in Guyana

2009-05-15T14:53:00.001-04:00

After my adventures in Trinidad?Tobago David and I flew back to Guyana for the night. In the morning we flew the Mooney on special permission into the interior and landed at one of the larger villages. From there we got a ride with James Ash, one of the local GMI pilots over to the village of Kai-Kan. We spent Sabbath there and participated in the dedication of their new church. Kai-Kan is the village where David got his start as a volunteer about 13 or 14 years ago.
Sabbath afternoon I wanted to go hiking and I asked some of the missionaries if there were any good places around. To my surprise they informed me that they had been walking all week and they were all enjoying the break. I also learned that they had to walk but to the Davis Indian Industrial College on Sunday. I asked David what his plans where and I decided that I would rather walk than fly...We were all excited about the idea. David and Becky said that all pilots should walk to get an idea of what the natives do for transportation, the missionaries were friendly and welcoming and I was excited to get out and stretch my legs.
We left about noon on Sunday and hiked less than four hours to our first campsite. Monday was our big day with a solid eight hours of hiking. I guessed that it was about sixteen miles mostly on the savannah. Monday night and Tuesday were a little rough. Our camp on Monday night was in a beautiful location in a ravine just about a waterfall. We set up camp and it soon was apparent that the campsite was adequate for about a dozen people. Our group was over twenty. There was a nice structure of poles lashed with vines that supported a tarp and about ten hammocks for the girls. The boys constructed a shelter that comfortably held about six hammocks. After that we were on our own. We finally ended up "bunking" some of the hammocks, slinging one very low and another very high because trees were so limited in the space under the tarp. I slung mine from makeshift post on one end and a tree on the other. The tree end stuck out beyond the tarp a significant amount so I spent a bunch of time trying to rig a small piece of plastic to make up the difference. Much to my dismay it started to rain shortly after we all went to bed. I laid in my hammock vainly hoping that my little plastic would shed the rain. It didn't....I went on laying in my hammock trying to decide if I could sleep with a slow trickle running under my back. Finally, after my pants were already wet, I decided that it wouldn't do and got up to fix the problem. After about thirty minutes of fiddling I climbed in to test my set up for at least the fifth time and no water came in. I took a deep breath, pulled my blanket close against the cold, tried to ignore my soggy backside and settled in to enjoy the night. Getting wet had been second on my list of worst problems for the night. My hammock falling was the worst possible circumstance. Only about ten minutes after I settled in there was a cracking noise and my hammock settled onto the wet ground. Oh NOOOOO. I climbed out and inspected the damaged, soon I was joined by Steve Duncan, a missionary who was sharing my post. We were glad to discover that the smaller of the two post anchor set up had broken so we adjusted the large one, drove it a little deeper into the swampy ground and propped it with the broken pieces. After drying our muddy feet as best as possible we climbed into bed again. Another ten minutes went by and then CRACK! We both hit the ground with a solid bump. Our post had snapped off completely! There comes a point in any wet sleepless night of camping when I say to myself "it will be a miracle if we get any sleep tonight." These were my thoughts when the second post cracked. There wasn't even a dry place to sit so I was wondering where I would stand until the rain stopped. Steve was sure that we could come up with a solution so we started looking. I had been the one to cut and insert that post and it had taken a couple hours to make our setup. I knew I didn't want to go through that all again so I was determined to find a tree to tie to. We found one tree all the way across the shelter and by switching some ropes we were able to free up a long one to reach the tree. I waded out into the swamp and tied the rope as high as I could reach and brought the loose end back under the tarp. We were able to sling both our hammocks from this one rope and thanks to God it was a strong one. The next morning we woke up rested and almost dry, to a raging river just a few feet below our shelter.
After the night of rain the trail was very wet but we didn't have too far to go on Tuesday. The last few miles took hours though because we were back in the jungle going downhill on slippery mud almost the whole way. The mud was a whole new experience for me. I do not envy the locals who deal with it every day.

"N8201H taxi to gate 2...."

2009-05-12T16:50:00.000-04:00

Tower: "November eight two zero one Hotel, taxi via Charlie to gate two, this frequency."

Me: "Via Charlie to gate two with you.....ah, November eight two zero one Hotel requesting progressive taxi instructions."

Such was my arrival at TTPP the international airport of Trinidad/Tobago.
The tower proceeded to guide my around the back side of the terminal to gate two.
There was no marshal with bright wands to guide me so I was wondering how to park a Mooney at an airliner gate. I decided to turn half a circle so I could simple taxi away later but the tower had other ideas.

Tower: "November eight two zero one Hotel, please park on the center line."

Me: (Craning over the dash to see the lines painted on the asphalt) "Roger, eight two zero one Hotel."

I paused for a minute, then shut off the radio and went through my mental shutdown checklist: "Lights off, Radio off, Elevator trim neutral and off, Mixture, Mags, Master, take the key OUT."
I climbed stiffly out of the airplane after the 2 hour flight, it had come right on the heels of the 4 plus hour flight from Manaus, Brazil to Georgetown, Guyana that morning. I was in Trinidad to pick up David Gates and hurry him over to Guyana for a church dedication. I walked around the airplane and took a few pictures simply for the strangeness of the parking area.

A quick look around convinced me that I would need some help. There were no doors open to the terminal. I grabbed my folder of airplane documents, locked the door and went looking for a ramp worker. I found one right away and he was super helpful, taking me all the way to the Port Health office, my first stop. He asked one question that I didn't understand though "Do you have an agent?" Of course I didn't, I had no idea why I would have an agent. He also warned me that I would need a nil cargo manifest, but I brushed it off and went into the office. Immidiately that same question again "Do you have an agent?" I explained what I needed to do and the men at the desk looked confused, then one of them asked
"Did you spray the airplane?"
"No" I said, "this is a small passenger plane, not a spray plane." More confusion....
"But did you spray the airplane?" "Where are you coming from?"
"Guyana"
"Oh that is an endemic country, you need to spray the airplane."

Ding, light going on in the pilot's head....they have a regulation here about this, this is the Port Health office after all.

"OK, can I go spray it now?"
"No, you mean you didn't spray it before you opened the door?!"
"Well, no, I opened the door and came here, I didn't know about spraying."
"Oooohhh..."
"Well can I go do it now?" I said
"You are supposed to spray it with that stuff there, who is in the airplane?"
"Nobody, I came alone. Can I buy some and go spray it."
"Oh we don't sell it."
Now I was really stumped, I couldn't get my papers stamped till I did this, and somehow I was supposed to know about it and have bought the stuff somewhere else. I thought I had hit a dead end. So this is why I need an agent hmmmm....
Suddenly the whole mood of the men changed..."Hey look, I'll go spray it for you, just come this way."
Off we went to spray the airplane. When we returned they started stamping my papers. There was confusion about how many each office would need. Some for Port Health, some for Customs, some for Immigration and one for me. They all had to be stamped. I hit the next dead end, "Ah I don't think I have enough of these General Declarations..." "Could I pay you to make some copies?"
"Oh our copy machine isn't working, maybe immigration can."
"Ok then I'll go to immigration and come back, that is my last blank copy...."
THUD! the man's stamp pressed wet red ink all over my last copy.
"Ahhhh that was my last blank one.....!"
"Oh" blank looks....
"Oh we'll fix it..."

I wandered off to find immigration with masking tape trying to cover the mistake on my last blank. Finally I found the office and went to one of the desks to explain my situation. Before I knew it the masking tape was gone, replaced by real white-out and I had 10 new copies. The lady wouldn't let me pay anything. Then I couldn't get into the PH office again, their doorbell didn't work it was locked. I had to flag down a high up immigration supervisor to let me in. After an hour I had all the paper work done and I was ready to find David and file a flight plan. I was painfully aware of the fact that I didn't have a cell phone and I didn't know where he was. I started working on the flight plan problem. I guess that I would have to taxi across the runway to the GA ramp to file a flight plan but I wasn't sure. Finally an AGENT showed up and offered his services for $150 plus the $100 landing fee. I talked with him in Spanish and convinced him that I didn't really need help except to leave the building and to find David. He graciously let me use his phone only to discover David's phone was turned off. Finally he found David for me and we got everything straightened out. I had arrived at 12:30 and I think we were finally off the ground at 4pm. All we ended up paying was the $14 landing fee and thanking the agent. I have no desire to park at gate 2 ever again.

Asphalt Amazon

2009-05-12T14:37:00.000-04:00

Night catching us over the Amazon.

My next assignment was to play international taxi. RedADvenir needed equipment to put a Portuguese translation of their signal on the air. The equipment could be shipped and received six months to a year later or we could simply go pick it up in Tennessee. David's Twin Comanche is the plane most often used for these kind of international delivery trips but it was down for some heavy maintenance. Jeff was in the process of buying a Piper Aerostar twin but that wasn't ready either. The only other GMI plane with the range for big international legs was the N8201H, the Mooney 201 that I usually fly around Bolivia. I discussed the risks with David and explained that I wasn't a fan of single engine international travel after our Malibu experiences (see earlier post). He understood but he was in a pinch and paying a lot of money for the satellite access and couldn't make use of it without this equipment. I arrived in Santa Cruz on April 21 and we were in the Mooney heading north on April 22. I took David's wife along as she needed a ride to Guyana. We had applied on Tuesday for permission to leave the country with the airplane. On Thursday morning our permission still was pending. The DGAC (the equivalent of the FAA) wanted to know all the places I would be going while I was gone. They also didn't believe that I had the range to take off from Bolivia and land in Guyana without stopping. I had to call them on the phone and verify this fact. As it was we recieved permission to leave the country about one hour after it was too late to make the flight and land in Guyana before sundown. Guyana doesn't allow any single engine night flight in their airspace. We could have waited to till the next morning to leave but Becky Gates needed to be in Guyana by Friday morning for a church dedication. We decided to go halfway and land in Manaus, Brazil for a few hours to wait for day break. I was frustrated because I really didn't want to fly over the jungle at night. We left Bolivia at an hour that I thought would get us to Manaus just after sundown and just before dark. I didn't check the distance and just went on the time-enroute guess that my hangar manager gave me. It turned out to be about one more hour so we arrived about 7:30pm, well after dark. Becky helped me do the paper work and the flight plan and we were back to the airplane about 9pm. I laid my blanket under the wing in the middle of the ramp and she curled up inside the airplane for a few hours rest. We woke up early in the morning, long before sunrise and continued on to Guyana. We crossed the border just 30 min after sunrise and the trip was back on schedule. It is kinda sad to have been in the Brazil and seen nothing but the asphalt and lights of an international airport at night....

Comprometido

2009-05-12T13:15:00.000-04:00

The big news about my time in Michigan is that I felt impressed that it was the time to ask Jodi to marry me, after much prayer, and at nearly the last minute I did and she said yes : )
Right along with that I felt impressed to go back to Bolivia for two months. In all, I had about two and a half weeks with my favorite person. On April, 19 I said goodbye and started the journey back to Bolivia. It felt strange to leave her behind and head south again so soon. We know that we need God's help to make it through this separation even though it is shorter than the previous ones. Thanks for your prayers.

Beyond Frontiers

2009-05-12T10:45:00.000-04:00

In only one more week I will have been absent from this blog for two full months. If you were to ask me why I would have to say "No excuse Sir" but perhaps you will be interested in some of my experiences in the interim....

Unfortunately I don't have any pictures to offer of my experiences in the last two weeks of March because I never made it back to my home at the Richard Gates Technical School to get my camera.
I decided to jump on a flight up to the States with David Gates in a Piper Malibu that he was borrowing. We left Santa Cruz on Thursday March, 26 and flew to Guayaramerin. We left the next morning early and flew across Brazil to Georgetown, Guyana where we picked up the pilot's wife and continued on to French Martinique in the Carribean. David had speaking appointments there for the weekend during the opening ceremonies of the new GMI French Media Center. Sunday we flew down to Grenada and checked on the progress of the radio station there as well as delivering some technical supplies. Monday we were on our way north to Puerta Rico. On the way there we had problems with the turbocharger wastegate. With prayer we made it to Puerta Rico and arranged for the airplane to be worked on. The mechanics said that the wastegate was sticky and that if wouldn't be a problem if we flew low so the turbo wouldn't have to work hard. We stayed the night in the FBO and left early in the morning for Miami. About 100 miles from the Florida coast the engine started running rough and one cylinder temp dropped off the scale on the engine monitor. We checked all the other gauges and everything seemed normal so we limped into the closest U.S. airport on five cylinders. A friend of David's took the day off, rented a brand new turbo C182 with a G1000 and flew us to TN. After spending the night with Jodi's parents I drove a GMI car up to MI to see Jodi; arriving on April 1, exactly six months to the day since I left. I thought it was an instance of God's sense of humor and also a display of His exactness because I had a very strong impression a year ago that He wanted me to go to Bolivia for six months : )

Frontiers

2009-03-19T19:47:00.000-04:00

If I just wrote N8201H Mooney 20J that would about sum up my life in the last few weeks. Unfortunately I dont have any pictures to post. The Mooney and I have been buddies for a lot of hours in the last month.

Sunday and Monday this week (March 14 & 15) Jeremy and I worked on the Mooney and stayed at the school in Guayara. It had been 80 hours since oil change and we didnt have any oil but I decided to do everything except actually change the oil. We cleaned plugs, timed the mags, topped the battery with distilled water, topped off the brake reservoir, lubricated controls, dressed the prop, replaced a hose clamp and washed the airplane throughly. Monday morning Jeremy took the bus to Rurrenabaque and I was left on my own giving the Mooney TLC. Monday evening I recieved news of a 12 year old boy who had complications from an intestinal surgery and the surgeon has gone home to Santa Cruz. The parents came and explained the situation to Chichito and we agreed to evacuate the boy and his mother the next morning. I stayed the night at the hangar to be ready for an early departure. The boy should up in a taxi, not an ambulance and for a minute I thought we had made a mistake. When I saw him I changed my mind. He looked more than half dead. I wish I had pictures but maybe your imagination will do....I could have easily put a thumb and finger around his forearms because he was so skinny. His mother said he hadnt eaten anything in a week but I am sure he wasnt eating well before either. His mouth was hanging open all the time and had blood in it. His face was so swollen that he could barely open his eyes at all. We got him in the airplane and headed for Santa Cruz. I kept looking back to see if he was breathing. The hospital didnt even send a nurse on the flight. When we arrived George and Steve met me at the airport with a car and bundled him off to the hospital but not before giving me another assignment and some apples for lunch. One of the AirBP workers at the airport had a sister with Hemoraghic Dengue and was asking us to pick her up if he payed for the gas. I fueled up and headed south again. Guayaramerin to Santa Cruz is almost 500 statute miles, my new destination was about 285 miles further south on the frontier with Argentina. I was excited about the flight because I got the chance to fly over the foothills of the Andes which parralleled my course. When I reached my destination the ambulance was waiting and I was back in the air in less than 20 minutes. At first the weather looked terrible but I prayed and choose to deviate around the worst of it and abandon my IFR route in favor of a lower altitude and a course farther east away from the mountains. After we got past the first major system the weather became progressively better until we were slipping along under clear skies in smooth air. There were storms in the mountains and as the sun got low it lit up the curtains of rain and turned them from silver to gold. It was by far the most beautiful flight I have made in a while and I spent a lot of time looking out the pilot´s window towards the mountains. The other option was to see my patient vomiting blood into a bag. I think she will be alright with proper care. The next day I saw her brother at the gas pumps and he said she was doing ok. Thank God for the Mooney, otherwise seeing both frontiers in one day would be nearly impossible. I was able to tell the patients brother that I burned 32.5 gallons of gas over the round trip of 575 miles. He was more than happy to pay for the gas.

Adventures with the medical team (Pictures)

2009-02-11T10:59:00.000-04:00

Riding the bus to town to go flying.

Indigenous people

The real jungle

George in a fit of thirst. This photo was placed by his bedside the next day as he suffered the infamous Mal de Gringo.

Checking out an unfamiliar airstrip. The thing on the right is a road.
After landing at Conquista(the kids can be a handful)
Sunset at Riberalta after a day of flying

Betumba

Singing songs with the kids at Blanca Flor. We taught them Lord I Lift Your Name On High in both languages .

And Our God Is An Awesome God in Spanish. Jeremy and his Ukelele were a big hit.

Sick men at Forteleza

ADRA Bolivia in Riberalta

David Gates´ faithful Twin Commanche
The team from left to right: Me, Jeremy (Swiss), George (Romainian), Fredrico (Argentinian), Fernando (Brazilian)

Sight

2009-02-11T09:34:00.000-04:00

The first week of February we had a team visiting from North Carolina. David Markoff is an eye surgeon who lives and NC and comes to Bolivia every year to do surgeries in a clinic near Santa Cruz. He attended Collegedale Academy with David Gates and through that contact he had the opportunity to make a quick tour of northern Bolivia this year. After visiting Rurrenabaque (see previous post), the team came to Guayaramerin with plans to visit some remote villages. They spent their first night at the Richard Gates school were I live when I am not flying and the next morning they screened El Yata, our neighboring village. Thursday morning we left early and headed to Blanca Flor VFR with low clouds and rain. About halfway there the weather suddenly closed in and I had to make a quick decision between filing IFR or landing. I looked down at the GPS and noticed I was within a mile or two of a really nice runway I had marked during a previous overflight. I turned towards it and arrived overhead within about 30 secs. I immidiately noticed that there was a soccer goal on the runway and that it was wet grass with little chance of braking. I made a quick pattern and discovered I was too high and fast for the combination of the soccer goal shortening the available runway and the grass being wet. I made a second approach at minimum speed and set the airplane down as close to the end as I could. It was raining so hard I only had a fuzzy picture of the runway. The airplane was right at gross because I had planned on landing in Blanca Flor which has a 3500ft hard gravel runway. I got on the brakes and was decelerating decently when suddenly the airplane started slowing down really fast. I was afraid that I had hit a mud hole and we were about to get stuck so I brought the yoke full aft and added a bunch of power. Then I looked out the window and saw what was going on. There was water spraying everywhere, we were hydroplaning across a large puddle. Thankfully the ground was hard so there was no danger of getting stuck. I think I only used 300 meters because the puddle killed all my speed. We taxied up into the middle of the village past the soccer goal which had been speedily removed, and shut down in the pouring rain. We were met by an American who spoke English. He invited us in to his house and proceeded to tell us about the place we had just landed at. It is an Indigenous village and his family has been there 25 years. The people don´t speak Spanish so he has translated the New Testament and Genesis into their language. We were all very impressed and happy to have made a contact. Soon the weather cleared and we continued on to Blanca Flor where the doctor found plenty of work. More than 50 people recieved glasses and when away very happy. When we ran out of time and patients we headed back to Riberalta, bought gas and took off for Santa Cruz for a night landing at one of the five lighted airports in the country. The next morning I went back to move the airplane over to El Trompillo airport where there is avgas but the weather was bad and I had to sit and wait for 2 hours. By the time I flew to Trompillo, bought gas and took the bus back to the TV station it was noon and I was running out of time. I needed a fire extinguisher to comply with Bolivian regulations and there was none to be found. I decided to postpone my flight till Sunday rather than fly to Rurrenabaque without it. I have already been ramp checked there three times and let go on the promise that I would by a fire extinguisher the next time I went to Santa Cruz (you can´t buy them anywhere else).
Sunday, with a borrowed extinguisher I took a load of missionary luggage and a volunteer to Rurrenabaque then hopped down to Trinidad to pick up more luggage for Guayaramerin. Monday I was back in the Mooney bringing two men from El Yata down to Santa Cruz for Dr. Markoff to do cataract surgery for them. Sight is a wonderful thing. Jesus didn´t have electricity, expensive instruments, huge suitcases of eyeglasses and an airplane for transportation, imagine how exciting for him to give sight with just a word or a touch. Praise God for that and praise God for doctors who can and will do something to help people see better even now.

GUMPS, GUMPS, UMPS and and Kites

2009-02-04T11:33:00.000-04:00

Friday was January 30 and I had the Mooney back. Praise God! When it is airworthy I love it and when it isn´t, I tolerate it.
The plans are going forward to expand the orphanage/primary school in Rurrenabaque to include a secondary program. On Friday I took a Bolivian family to check the place out, they are both teachers at the school in GY. It is 250 miles to Rurrenabaque and we didn´t get off till 3pm because of rain and wet runways. Instead of a 2.5 hour trip in the 182 at economy cruise we made it in 2 hours burning only 7 gals an hour. I like Mooneys....but I need to remember those wheels are up until I put them down. For the last 100 hours of flying my prelanding check has been this: Gas-on both, Undercarriage-down and bolted (forever), Mixture-rich, Prop-forward, Switches-landing light on for cows and people on the runway. With the Mooney I had to remember not to brush over the Undercarriage part. You better believe I was doing my Mooney gumps a bunch of times before touchdown. Gas-on full tank, Undercarrige-down, check indicator on floor, on panel, selector handle, DOWN, Mixture-rich, Prop-forward, Switches-Boost Pump, Landing light, Strobe, ON. And repeat and repeat and Undercariage, Mixture Prop and land...
Definately worth the trouble for the extra speed and fuel efficiency.
Sunday I left Rurrenabaque at 6:30am and flew the family back to GY. Then I had a plan for 2 round trips between Trinidad and GY, about 500 miles a round trip. There were two families of Brasilians in Trinidad headed to Brasil to help with the GMI projects there. I had asked Chichito to find some passengers for me for the GY-Trinidad legs of the trips that would be empty. When I arrived in GY he said he had three passengers. A friend of his was organizing it and said something about one being sick or a nurse (the two words sound similar). I taxied to the gas pumps and loaded up with gas and waited, and waited and waited in the rain. I wouldn´t have waited long if they hadn´t told me that one of the ´passengers´had gunshot wounds. Then we heard that the ambulance had run out of gas, so it would be ´7 minutes´ which in Bolivia means about 45 min. Finally the man arrived. He was huge for a Bolivian but we got him into the Mooney with his daughter and the nurse. I flew them to Trinidad and on downwind for runway 32 I was doing my GUMPS and the tower called me on the radio and said something about continuing to Santa Cruz, I just ignored them and did another GUMPS and asked for clearance to land, which they gave. When I landed and shut the engine off there was a flurry of people around the airplane. The Brasilians were there along with the man´s family and nobody was speaking English or even trying to speak to me. I couldn´t even get out. Finally I yelled through my tiny pilot window for Daniel to come translate for me. I had offered to take the man to Santa Cruz but his daughter said the Trinidad was better for them. I wondered because Santa Cruz has the only real hospitals in the lowlands, Trinidad doesn´t have much. Anyway turns out they did want to go to Santa Cruz and had a ticket out of Trinidad, but the flight got canceled. That is what the tower had been trying to tell me. When I discovered that I ran to the office and got a new flight plan for Santa Cruz and we were off again. It was an interesting flight. We were in and out of the clouds and I was trying to dodge the worst of them for the man´s comfort. Then approach kept asking me for what kind of ambulance I wanted at the destination. In between estimates and talking on the radio I had to ask in Spanish, with no headsets what kind of ambulance the people wanted. Finally the communication was accomplished but it was a challenge. Then as I approached Santa Cruz I became aware, through listening to the position reports on the radio, of a Bolivian small plane at the same distance out and 2000 feet above me. I expected to out run him because I had the Mooney at 24/24 and we were doing about 185 mph. Instead we stayed even for about 10 miles. The controller started asking for position reports every 2 miles and it was interesting. I reported 48 miles and 7000, the Bolivian reported 48 and 9000 feet. Then we both reported 46 and then 44 and suddenly he reported one mile ahead. We were in and out of the clouds and I started looking carefully for the plane. I figured it would be a Cessna 210 because of the similar speeds. I figured he was really puttin the gas to it to get ahead of me. I unknowingly dropped to 6800 feet in my nervous scanning out the front windsheild. Suddenly I spotted him, a C210 ahead and slightly below me. I called traffic in sight and told the controler we were at the same altitude. What followed I didn´t need perfect Spanish to understand. The 210 pilot got quite a scolding for decending without permission and busting seperation. He even had the nerve to argue back. Not something you would see in the states very often. After that excitement and a lot of GUMPS I landed at El Trompillo and taxied up to the ambulance. You can pray for the man, he had six shots to the gut and didn´t have a very good chance of recovery.
The next morning I got up at four and flew a medical team to Rurrenabaque and then did the two trips with the Brasilians from Trinidad to GY. The next day I did another trip to Trinidad, two trips between Trinidad and Rurrenabaque and back to GY, all full. That made for about 20 hours in the Mooney in four days. One one of my landings at GY there were two kids flying a kite on the runway. I waited till short final and then executed a go-around. The very next takeoff a man pulled out onto the runway ahead of me and crossed it without ever seeing me. He proceeded to ride his motorcycle down the right side as I went past, just barely airborne. There is always something to keep pilots awake down here. Pray that I never forget my GUMPS.
Today is Wednesday and I am supposed to go get the 182 dirty for a couple days with a team of eye doctors. Then I´ll take them back to Santa Cruz on Thursday night.
Thanks for your prayers and support.

Dirty Airplanes

2009-02-04T10:26:00.000-04:00

Bolivians keep their airplanes very clean considering that you can count all the paved runways on one hand. Thankfully my hangar manager loves to wash airplanes...
Poor guy I really kept him busy this last week.

January 25 was the election day down here and the constitution was changed. We were not allowed to travel at all so I stayed at the school and helped with projects there. Monday morning we went to town and David Gates was there waiting for us. It is like Christmas when he comes. He always has things long awaited, and timely wisdom for problems. The school in Guayara is being flooded with new applicants and the directors are looking for solutions. It appears that they will started a secondary program at the orphanage in Rurrenabaque. That means there will be lots of missionary transportation in the next few weeks before school starts.
I spent the day giving the 182 a much needed oil change and check up. It is running great and already has flown about 100 hours in Bolivia. David brought an overhauled magneto and new fuel transducer for the Mooney. I spent the afternoon and the next morning getting it all installed and test flown.
Tuesday afternoon we sallied forth again with the Brazilean doctors and landed at Ingave. We were able to get a boat to go down the river and visit the indigenous village but there was almost nobody there. They were all out picking Brazil nuts. The doctors did treat a few people and we made it back to Ingave and then Riberalta in good time without pushing sunset. The next morning I took Ruan to Ingave and then I took the doctors to some strips that were new to me. We landed at Mara Villa and found the people very receptive. They knew about David Gates and REDADvenir and told us that thanks to God they were all healthy. We went on to a large village called Sena, and discovered that they had no imidiate needs either. After stopping back at Ingave to check on Ruan we hopped a couple minutes by air to two other villages close by. Monte Bello and Candelara. At both places were very happy to see us and excited to have the doctors come see them. We picked up Ruan in Ingave and flew back to Riberalta. It was my last day flying the doctors and I did more take-offs and landings then any other day so far. It was a good finish for their trip. I hope they´ll be back.
When I got back to Guayara I walked around cringing at the thought of Chichito seeing the 182. Unfortunately I can´t post a picture right now. I had cow manure on the pilot´s side of the tail and under the left wing. That was the clean side....The right side had cow manure in an artistic spray pattern all up the passenger door and down the side of the airplane. It is about the 3rd time I have come back with manure. The other times it has been red mud. Chichito said I deserved a spanking ;) At least the airplane isn´t accumulating dust.....
And Praise God the engine keeps running.

Adventures with the medical team

2009-01-19T18:17:00.000-04:00

One of the GMI volunteers in Bolivia has been working on connecting the services of ADRA´s river launch with GMI air support on the rivers of northern Bolivia for some time. He finally saw it come to fruition a little over a week ago when two doctors arrived from Brazil and he had N3538F and me at his disposal. We moved our base of operations to Riberalta for a few days as it is the gateway to the riverside communities that we wanted to serve.
To get started we flew into Ingavi, the little village three days by boat up the Rio Orto from Riberalta. I had already flown in there several times with teams from the school at Guayara so it wasn´t too terrifying. We we got there we found the people friendly and receptive as always. The doctors took care of the medical needs and recommended a family for evacuation to Riberalta for lab testing of both the father and mother. I made a trip out with the family and one of the doctors to buy more medicine. Some villagers found me at the airport so I had a full load on the return trip to the village as well. Then we flew back to Riberalta for the night with the team. The next day there was some villagers to take back to Ingave and a pregnant woman already having contractions to fly out with her family. The next morning I saw her husband in the market and he said we had come on just the right day, a day later would have been too late. Later that day we flew up the River Beni and made our plan of attack for all the villages with runways, that night we stayed with friends at Familia Feliz-GMI´s orphanage in Rurrenabaque. The following day we stopped at two of the places we had marked and worked until we ran out of time and medicines. The next day was Friday and George the leader of the team was sick with something we call mal de gringo, or sickness of the gringo. I am pretty sure he got it from some creek water he drank in a fit of thirst...oops. It was Friday anyway so we flew back to Guayara to spent Sabbath at the school. On the way we flew over the runway at the school and noticed that Jeremy had been busy, it was almost all cleared of bushes.
On Sunday we all had to do laundry with different degrees of desperation, I think mine was near the top...after washing our clothes in the creek we got in on the action at the airstrip and finished chopping down the brush. Now we have a clearing 1150ft X 50ft needs grading and either grass or gravel.
Before going to the school on Friday I took a boat to Brazil to fulfill my obligations to the officer of immigration in Riberalta who had stamped my passport in good faith that I would leave the country the same day. It was an adventure going to Brazil with two guys from Manaus. One is a Brazilian and the other is an Argentian living in Brazil. They were excited to take a first timer around a Brazilian town even though it wasn´t their own. You can imagine the fun times we have with language when I speak almost no Spanish, Fernando speaks Porteguese and a little more Spanish, Fredrico speaks both fluently but with a heavy Argentinian accent and George speaks Spanish, Romainian and Russian. Thankfully all three of them can pull out a little English when I get stuck and don´t understand something important.
On Monday we were back in Riberalta and I finished getting my visa extension that for some reason that God knows was totally free. It was a big blessing because I didn´t want to spend $130 of money that was needed for airplane gas on the extension. God has many ways of providing. It is also for 90 days which will take me to the end of my stay instead of the 30 days I was expecting. Thanks to God!

Rurrenabaque

2009-01-19T17:47:00.000-04:00

Getting my papers checked by Civil Aviation...for the second time in one day. At Riberalta I had already been check by Civil Aviation and Immigration

Being on call to transport missionaries around Bolivia leads to a rather nomadic existence.
A two or three day trip to Santa Cruz turned into a two and a half week stay that lasted into early January. Then there was a trip to Trinidad to check on how my friend Daniel Adams was succeeding with his preparations for a medivac aviation program in central Bolivia. While there I had the privilege of staying with a colporter team working the city of Trinidad in a school building that used to be the ADRA base in Trinidad. From there I took two missionaries back to Guayaramerin.
From Guayara we flew to Riberalta and on to Rurrenabaque surveying the Rio Beni from the air. We marked all the airstrips and communities on the GPS with the idea that we will return to them with the medical team now based in Riberalta for several weeks. As you can see, the roads are rather remarkable in Bolivia, making air transport much more than a luxury. They aren´t the only thing that surprises me here, the coachroach Daniel found was pretty big too.

One Day-Many Ways

2008-12-26T16:59:00.000-04:00

My afternoon of rainbows (see previous post) turned into an evening of airplane maintenance. I was anxious to change the oil on the 182. There was about 90 hours on the oil and 70 on the filter. We usually try to change the oil every 50 hours but the 182 has been so busy there was no chance before. I dropped the oil and put on a new filter while Chichito worked on putting on the new rocker box cover gasket I had bought in Santa Cruz for Cylinder #1. He was convinced he could solve the oil leak that has been plaguing us ever since I met the airplane. Much to my amazement the filter was the cleanest Ive ever seen when I cut it open. Thanks to God because this engine had been given trouble with metal shavings and low oil pressure a year or two ago. Chichito notified me that he had been in contact with the village of Ingave by shortwave radio and we were scheduled for a trip there the next day. Also he comunicated with Spanish and motions that there was a woman at a nearby ranch who needed to be flown to Guayara for a C-section early the next morning. He suggested that I return by 6 in the morning so we could go get her as soon as possible. I agreed and went home to the school for a short nights rest under my mosquito net.
Early the next morning, when it was still quite dark, God woke me up and I spent some time with Him before I went looking for a motorcycle and breakfast. Breakfast was easy, a couple more hardy multigrain poncitas that I had brought from Santa Cruz. The motorcycle was not so easy. It was still pre-6am and I had to wake somebody up to get a key. To make a long story short I woke almost everybody in the effort to find one motorcycle, with a key, without twisted handle bars, that had gas....Finally I was off to town in a hurry to what I thought was an emergency. As it turned out, it wasnt really and I was really early by Bolivian time. Chichito and I waited at least an hour before the guys who riding on the trip out showed up. For once I think we would have found our destination without the GPS. The man on board was a pilot too and we had a heading to follow and him to recognize landmarks. After an hour we arrived at a little ranch with an airstrip. I made Chichito make two low passes to make sure the strip was safe for the little tires on 38F. We picked up the pregnant lady and her little family and headed back to GY. When we arrived the crew from the school was ready to go to Ingave. I taxied over to the gas pumps and found out that someone had cut the electrical wire when cutting a tree and there was no gas. Somehow within 30 min. we had gas, God is good at testing us.

It was almost noon before we landed at the village. This time there were not so many people with complaints, but there was a man who had been bit by a poisoness snake and a 14 year-old girl who had just given birth two days before. The nurses were busy for several hours and even enlisted our help. I had the hard task of getting some hot water for a epsom salts foot bath for the bitten man. After that was done (his wife did it mostly while I supervised) I sat and kept him and his monkey company. We were all quite impressed with the tigre (jaguar) that he had kill many years ago. Cornelio the gardener and husband of one of the nurses is holding it in the picture. It must have been a fairly big one.

When the foot soak was all done I went looking for something to do and learned where Brazil nuts come from. The young men were hauling big sacks down towards the river so I asked what was in them. They said Alemendras but that didnt mean anything so they showed me, we call them Brazil nuts. They grow on tall jungle trees. The young men tramp around the jungle in December and pick up the coconut size husks. Each one has about a dozen nuts inside. They put them in sacks and haul them out of the jungle on their backs to sell. At Ingave the local river trade boat was visiting that day and buying all their nuts. A few minutes later Cornelio called us all together for a quick powwow. He had contracted the trade launch to take us down the river 30 min to the village of the indigenous people. This was the village where the boy and his father were from that Dr. Kim evacuated to Riberalta a couple weeks earlier. We decided to go even though there was barely enough time before sunset. So if you are counting, this was my third method of transportation that day. Riding the boat was really fun, especially going downriver. When we reached the villages bank we disembarked and walked about half a mile into the jungle were the village was built on the top of a little hill. Cornelio told the villagers that we had medicines and only 30 min to give them out so come quickly. They did. It was all I could do to pull the nurses away when our time was up. Thankfully I had the boat pilot to help me, he was leaving whether we got on or not. Eventually I had to grab the big bag of medical stuff and start down the trail, finally Cornelio and the nurses tore themselves loose with promises to return and came with me. On the ride back up the river I calculated the time we had left with a theoretical 630pm sunset and I figured we could just make it home flying fast, none of my usual fuel saving 100knot flying. I gave the missionaries a three minute deadline from the time the boat touched the bank to when they had to be in the airplane. We did pretty well but we had headwinds. I usually have a 20 or 30 min buffer with sundown but I let myself get stuck in this situation. It was a good lesson for me. Thankfully I had an out. About halfway home we would pass right by Riberalta and I could land there. The missionaries could take the bus home from there and I could fly to GY the next morning. As we approached Riberalta I called for a sunset time and they told me 637pm. The GPS said we would make it and I knew I would pick up a couple minutes in the decent with higher speeds so we kept on going. We landed with only 7 minutes till sundown left. Praise God!
So why am I writing all this rather self incriminating material. Well, I know that it was a miracle that we made it because later I discovered it wasnt the airplane that God needed back in GY that night, it was the nurses. One of the women at the school had a Gal-bladder attack shortly after we got back. The nurses recognized it right away and rushed her to the hospital. God always knows best, I was glad to ride in on the coattails of that miracle. By the way, the ride home in the truck and walking into the jungle village completed my list of Bolivian modes of transportation. Dirtbike, airplane, walking, truck....I guess they do ride taxis and busses a lot too. But this is not what was important about the day.
We saw a lot, we learned a bit, and we helped a little. It is so important to trust God that His will is best and be flexible if our plans dont match His. We have plans to go back and spend more time with the indigenous people but pray that it will be in His power and His WAY.

A land of rivers and rainbows.

2008-12-24T12:13:00.001-04:00

This fine December day found N3538F and I journeying north to her duties at Guayaramerin after an important trip to Santa Cruz. News had reached us about a week earlier about an unfortunate forced landing in Nicaragua that Jeff made in the Piper Malibu when he lost oil pressure at night over the ocean. Everybody on board survived the night landing near an unlit runway and we praised God for sparing their lives. Several of the people on board needed to stay in the hospital for a while so Jeff was still in Nicaragua a week later with no hope of immidiate return. He also had to deal with the insurance and salvaging the wreckage. His wife was anxious to see him so I planned a flight to Santa Cruz with her, the kids and the school director who was going home for the holidays. From Santa Cruz they could get flights out of the country. When we arrived at the airport a cell phone rang and the news put a totally different feeling over us. A volunteer family in Santa Cruz had just lost a 2.5 year old adopted son in a tragic accident. We made it to Santa Cruz just in time for the funeral.
I had a bit to think about on the flight home a few days later. I checked the airplane more carefully than before and thought about the shortness and uncertainty of life. The six people in the plane crash would have been dead had there been one spark as the left wing ripped off and 40 gallons of gasoline sprayed all around the airplane, or a moment later when the right wing hit a tree and stopped the plane releasing its own 40 gallons onto the ground near the emergency exit. There is no way but a miracle that there was no fire, even gas fumes reaching the red hot turbos could have ignited. God wanted these people alive and working for Him. And then on the other hand, why not a happy little Bolivian boy with a cleft pallette who loved to pray. Gods wisdom often seems like foolishness to us. Whether it be the best man who ever lived being murdered or the murderers living on to kill other innocent people, it all seems rediculous. But we must remember in the happy times that there is a big plan that is often beyond our comprehension, put into place by one who loves us more than we can imagine. And in the sad times...cry the tears that come as part of our citizenship in this twisted world. Think of God crying rivers over the history of this world and crying with you right now in the pain of seperation from one you love. Then through your tears look up and taste the bits of heaven that shine through like rainbows on a cloudy day.

All over Bolivia

2008-12-04T11:45:00.000-04:00

One of the most visible difficulties in Bolivia is the transportation. Roads are bad most of the year and impassable during the rainy season`s peak from January to April. Some towns in the central lowlands are reduced to islands with airplanes being the only secure link with outside world. Jeff has used his Mooney to overcome this rather significant difficulty. In one of my many hour long truck rides to town over the 30km of muddy road between the school and the town of Guayaramerin I calculated the mpg of the Mooney and a Toyota Landcruiser. Surprisingly they are nearly identical and the Mooney travels at 145mph at an economy cruise.
One of my tasks has been transporting people around the northeastern half of Bolivia. The day before Thanksgiving I made two round trips from Guayaramerin, Santa Ana, Trinidad and back with and extra stop on the last trip at San Joaquin to drop off a passenger. The goals were to transport the cook`s family from the school to their home in Santa Ana for the summer vacation to take a student home to San Joaquin and to drop the school director off in Trinidad on the first trip and pick him up on the second so he could do paperwork for the coming school year. The Mooney is a pilots airplane....At first I was cautious and apprehensive taking off with a full load and only 30 min of Mooney time in my logbook. Soon I was thoroughly enjoying the airplane in its element. I was pushing it and not trying for maximum economy because time was the limiting factor on the day. There are no lights at our home base and no landings are allowed at unlit strips after dark in Bolivia. I had fun watching the Mooney race the sun, and I also had some fun getting it slowed down. The controlers here are used to the C206 and the way the Bolivian pilots fly them so they usually don´t give a decent until ten miles out. I was flying twice as high as the Bolivians do and a Mooney doesn´t come down like a 206. Thankfully the gear speed is 150mph. Several times I droped the gear 15 miles out in order to make the field and not go zooming over. By the end of the day I had learned to start working on the decent from 40 miles out.
On the last leg of the day I was flying light with only the school director and myself, racing the sundown home. We were looking at all the 206 strips in the open grasslands near San Joaquin and noticing that they grew more scarce as we flew into the more jungle-like parts of northern Bolivia. 70 miles from home the engine started running rough and the plane acted like one cylinder was misfiring. We tried switching tanks, cooling the engine, warming the engine, rich, lean, left mag, right mag, boost pump on, climb, decend, nothing seemed to make a noticable distance. It would smooth out for no apparent reason and start again just as mysteriously. The Mooney has a good engine monitor and we noticed cylinder 4 was hotter than normal but no other signs of distress. To add to the trouble, one of the two oil temp gauges had been giving us trouble and now the fuel pressure gauge joined it and pegged out on the high end of the scale. The oil pressure gauge had always given Jeff a little trouble and was acting funny too. We were not sure we would make it home. Ruan flew while I played with stuff, trying to troubleshoot. He started a slow climb and we anxiously watched the GPS for the magic numbers that would allow us to make the rest of the trip as a glider if neccessary. The engine kept running and we arrived over Guayarmerin with thousands of feet to spare but we never figure out what was wrong. The engine was running better by the time we landed and mechanical investigation has been fruitless so far. I have checked the fuel injectors, sparkplugs, magnetos, and done the best I could to check compression with no gauge. The oil temp, oil pressure, and fuel pressure are all electric gauges and they seem fine now with only the fuel pressure acting up here and there. There are no facilities here and I left a lot of the airplane tools we have in Santa Cruz. This week I`ve been chasing down other problems I`ve discovered in my digging but nothing that points directly to engine roughness. Gas is suspect but the fuel screens are clean and when the engine went rough I switched to a tank that had been providing good gas all morning and problem did not change. It is still a mystery. Pray that either it doesn`t happen again or that God shows us the problem on the ground when we don`t have to practice gliding.

Adventures in the jungle

2008-12-04T10:46:00.000-04:00

A lot has happened since I left Santa Cruz Bolivia and flew up to the northeastern corner where GMI has their school in Guayaramerin. These pictures are taken at the village of Ingave, about 100 air miles from Guayaramerin. Dr. Kim and I went flying with the director of the school here to get acclimated to the flying conditions and oportunities and to see if there were places where Dr. Kim could provide dental care and possibly medivac services in the future. We landed at this community and the people were very welcoming and eager for us to come back. They are about a three day boat trip from the closest town and the only medical service is the ADRA boat launch that comes every three months. A week later, on Thanksgiving day we were back in force with a medical team and a dental team. The weather was bad but we made two trips with the 182 to bring everyone in. By the time the generator was working and Dr. Kim got to work on people`s teeth it was getting close to the time when the first trip back would have to leave. Rather than cut things off short the medical team choose to stay the night so there would only be one trip back. Dr. Kim went out and picked them up the next morning only to find that a father had walked 6 hours from a nearby village to bring his baby son to the airplane. The baby was running a very high fever and nearly dead. The nurse got the fever down a little and they flew the two of them out to Riberalta where there is a hospital of sorts. The nurse and her family went to visit a couple days later and the boy was doing much better. On the flying end of things the airplane has been performing great. All the airstrips here are built for the Cessna 206 so the 182 handles them fine. This particular one is about 500 meters but about 200 of that is overgrown and narrow so we are using the approximately 1000ft that are left. Even with a full load the 182 has no problem getting in and out provided the approach is made at less than 70mph. Dr. Kim has flown a 182RG a bit and he is shocked at the way this 182 performs, he is sure that his does not perform the same and maybe it doesn`t but I`m willing to bet he uses much faster speeds for approach and climb out than we are using here. I have to say I am impressed too. The 182 seems like a well balanced machine, using about the same runway for takeoff and landing.
We also went into several other comminities, one with a beautiful strip 600meters long and on the crest of the hill, and another quite marginal uphill, washed out, narrow and short. We decided to focus our efforts on Ingave and learn what we can offer these villages using this one as a model. Some are simply logging camps, some are fairly well provided for except medical services and some have very little. Most have an HF radio so medivacs are a possibility.
Dr. Kim has gone back to the states to sell his practice but we have plans to go back to Ingave the second week in December with the medical team and do some more work.

Little Pieces

2008-11-14T21:29:00.001-04:00

I sat cleaning parts and pieces this week and thought of God working on my character.
"How bout a rag for this oil slime covering you, and then maybe a little scraping with a tool and....ooops this stuff is stuck pretty hard, and what's all this grit in the crevices? Into the bucket of gas you go to soak a little."

There were many times this week I wished for even a bucket of gas to throw all my parts in but I only had diesel and rags. No 'gunk tank' no solvent sprayer no parts washer, just me the oil and the rags. It made me think of how as Christians and Christ followers we so often want God to take it easy on us.
........."What about that rag there, that looks the softest."
Instead of letting Him be efficient. Sure a bolt or even one hundred bolts can be cleaned pretty well with a rag, and it sure is nice for the bolt in the process. But is it best? Sure everyone seeings that Mr. Bolt is getting cleaned...but what will they see when it is done? A shiny like-new bolt or just a slightly less smeary one. Of course Mr. Bolt has nothing to say about whether he goes in the gunk tank or not, and if I had one he would go in and with only a short dip, he would come out much better than the best rag job could do.
Am I resisting being thrown in the gunk? Could God make much quicker and better progress on my if He threw me in? Is He having to spend time doing a rag cleaning because I refuse to accept anything less comfortable? I hope this week of cleaning and re-cleaning the little pieces to an oily little engine in dusty Santa Cruz was a stiff solution to knock off some of that, "I'm a cool pilot" crust or whatever needed cleaning. I will pray for Him to do whatever He deems most effective and for strength to take the cleaning with a smile.
Life is short; Go for the Gunk!

"How important are the little pieces?"
"To whom? To me?"
"Oh very very important!" (a possible conversation I had planned for the next visitor)

Yes very important, I spend lots of time on little pieces and losing one can cause me much sorrow. I felt like the woman in Jesus parable who lost one of her coins. I could not move forward until I found this bolt. Forward was the direction to completion of a task already long enough. It was the direction towards fun things, like dumping oil in, filling the radiator making a few final checks and turning the key. It was hopefully the direction that would result in a test run, clean up and relaxation before the Sabbath came. I couldn't go. Friday afternoon, shops closing, a unique bolt, one of two, not to be done without. So I search like that woman. I cleaned like that woman, but unlike her I did not find the wander.
I knew precisely when it had gone MIA. The little boy had retrieved it from a tumble through the engine compartment and beyond that I couldn't remember. A good kid but in a moment of brain absence could it have gone in his pocket and traveled to the outskirts of the city. I'd hate to accuse of such a thing.
Frustration, patience running out. Just one little piece, holding up everything, ruining next week's plans.

"Have you looked here?".....
"no"( that is the junk hole, there is nothing anybody wants in there, I don't put anything in or around that hole...I've never had anything fall in there...look if you want)

out come rags, wires, old bottles for water and oil, a bottle jack, a lug wrench, dust, dirt, old plastic bags, rust....

"Here is your bolt...good thing we looked in there."

I rejoiced like the woman.

Such a little piece, yet so important to me in a large project with many, many little pieces.

I'm such a little piece too, thanks for coming looking for me Jesus.

Heavy Maintenance

2008-11-02T19:59:00.000-04:00

Here is the TV station's wheels, a friendly little Toyota diesel minivan who has seen more interesting times than most. It has a 2.3L Nissan Diesel that was obviously an adaptation from the original Toyota engine and sports a "utility" style interior with almost no seats and plywood wall panels. It has been doing it's duties at the station faithfully for the most part but was in need of some TLC just when I needed a project. I spent several days sorting out the wiring and fixing the essentials, like brake lights, wipers, start and stop switches and blinkers. After that was done we tried to start it. It started, but just barely and showed evidence of low compression. Jeff decided to give the engine a "top" overhaul. The plan was to pull off the head, and oil pan and replace the rings. We soon discovered that the cylinder walls were scored and the whole engine had to come out. This development held the promise of interesting times as we are after all, at a TV station, not an auto garage and I, with only half my collection here am the most toolled individual. Thankfully Jeff had a few metric wrenches and an electric impact driver. We also borrowed a metric socket set from the TV station's maintenance closet.
Friday we pulled the pan, head and pistons. Sunday we pulled everything else, the little van is now the proverbial "gutless wonder." Getting a ~300lb. diesel engine out from the middle of a minivan with nothing but a crowbar, some rope and two determined guys was a new experience. All through the project we have faced difficulties but there was always a way out. A personal God who cares about such details is the mechanic's best friend. Especially in a place where friends with tools are few. We managed with the tools we had and nothing has been insurmountable.

2008-10-25T21:11:00.000-04:00

So what have I been up to in Bolivia since I got here?
Well, I've been staying with Jeff and Fawna Sutton in their apartment at the Red ADVenir Adventist TV station here in downtown Santa Cruz.
My first assignment has been to learn Spanish aviation phraseology. To accomplish this task I have received a significant amount of help. I know that people are praying for me at home and God has been honoring their prayers.
I went to the Trompillo Airport on Monday morning with my backpack and no idea what I was doing. Just getting there was a new adventure. I had to get verbal instructions to the airport and a briefing on how to catch a bus. Catching the bus was no problem, getting off at the right time and place is another matter. Thankfully I had a window seat and saw the airport just before we got there. I walked in through the GA gate which required two displays of ID just to get into the terminal and wandered around wondering what to do next. I wandered over to a group of pilots and tried to ask them in Spanish if I could get up in the tower. Of course they didn't understand and rounded up a guy who spoke good English to talk to me. He had me up in the tower within 4 min. After a week in the tower I am friends with all the air traffic control guys and they have helped me a lot. One of them speaks pretty good English and can answer all my questions. I've even got a chance to help them with their English assignments.
I've managed to grab a few pictures of tower life, but the real excitement would be impossible to catch with a camera. This is without a doubt the most congested airport in Bolivia. These guys really earn their pay. They are in charge of a 10,000ft single runway of which they can only see half from the tower and there is no taxi-way for the blind half of the runway. Of course they have no radar either and they are juggling a steady stream of Cessna 152s doing touch + gos with everything up to 727s mixed in. A very interesting place to say the least.

This is the picture I've been trying to get all week. Talk about multitasking...when was the last time you answered two phones at once? It happens about once a day. The trick was having the camera ready for instant use.

Trompillo airport at peak usage. There are at least as many in the air trying to land as you see on the ground. Just before I took this picture a C-130 had to go around because one of the commuter turboprops was backtaxiing too slow. Then the pilot had to circle around, follow a 727 in on final approach and both had to wait at the end of the runway for a couple Cessna 152s to land before they could taxi to the ramp.

A full rack of flight strips. This controler has his hands full. He is juggling about 4 training airplanes in the pattern, a bunch more in the practice areas as well as air-taxi, commuter and airline arrivals.

At high volume times there are three on duty so no double-phoning is neccessary.

This is the front yard of the apartment complex that Jeff and Fawna live in. It is nice to have a little piece of nature in the middle of the city.

2008-10-19T21:18:00.000-04:00

Leaving Miami and all the security of terra firma and striking out over the water took a little faith. I thought about the water for the first couple hours and then all but our ditching procedure faded and gave way to more normal Cross Country thoughts and tasks. The biggest of these was trying to figure out if we could actually make PR with a respectable 1 hour fuel reserve or not. The head winds played with us all day. With such a long flight, even 9mph of headwind can mean the difference between one hour of fuel left, or two. You can be sure that many prayers went up from several different airplanes over the Bahamas that day. If we stopped for fuel it would mean clearing customs and being several hundred miles short of our destination. This was Monday and the boys had tickets to fly home on Thursday night. We had no spare time. The headwinds subsided throughout the day and by the time Curtis and I reached our decision point in "Mama Goose" (the 172), Guy and Mr. Kim had already come within 100 miles of the destination and were giving weather reports. Curtis and I had both felt that God would let us go all the way, and this time He did.

Curtis and I were the last to reach Aguadilla, PR. These guys landed a couple hours before us. But they were still out fueling the airplanes when we got there. I think they went and ate the pizza first. I would too I guess.

Jeff was there too...Curtis and I grabbed some of the Pizza graciously provided by someone (maybe the FBO) and went to work on the airplanes even though we were zombies. There was a couple minor discrepancies with the airplane but with another marathon flight starting at sunrise, we couldn't afford to put them off.It looks like late at night, but remember the sun sets very close to 6pm when you are near the equator.

We got up very early to nab this fantastic and highly artistic shot of two half awake boys. Yeah right!!! This is the crew of "Mama Goose" valiant and exemplary, always being the last in and the first out. Hey isn't that the opposite of brave??? Oh well, Curtis and I got about 3-4 hours of sleep and then we were in the air again. Thankfully having two pilots where only one was required allowed us to take naps during the flight. I think we were probably eyeing the pizza at this point even though it was only 6:30am. PR has some very interesting geography which we had plenty of time to admire. In fact a Cessna Caravan (not a very fast airplane itself) was advised that we were a "slow mover". With a slight headwind and a full load the airplane labored upwards at a ground speed of only 70mph for close to an hour after takeoff. When we reached 7000ft the controler cleared us direct and PR came to steep end. We headed out on our reluctant morning wings under the stratus and over a grey sea.

Ah ha! the Pizza takes a mortal blow. Old cold pizza doesn't scare pre-7am pilots.

Well a lot is left unsaid between this picture and the last. The Islands of the Carribean are quite an interesting place to fly. This picture is actually the Guyana coastline at the end of the adventure but first the Island deserve a few words.
For starters, everything USA ends in PR, including radar, radio coverage and satellite weather on your fancy borrowed GPS. If you really want to know how the air traffic controlers sound. Take and islander friend and stuff him in a can with a WWII radio. You know, the type that Roosevelt used to give fireside chats over.
This flight had its challenges. Fuel was not particularly an issue but time was. There are no single engine flights allowed in Guyana after sunset so we HAD to make it by 6:18pm no excuses. This was only going to happen if we didn't have a headwind. We kept trying to get a direct course to shorten the trip and give a little extra time but even when we got a direct clearance the next center would take it away and send us back to the airway. Another challenge was getting used to giving position reports and flying IFR without radar and often without radio contact. One of our aux pumps started seeming tired and we had to deviate around some buildups. I clearly remember my favorite part of the flight. I was asking for direct for the last time, in fact in would have only made a small difference at this point, and the course happened to lay over a stretch of water either way. The controller came back and notified me that that course would take me "over water". I laughed to myself. I could count on my fingers the minutes I had been in gliding range of anything all day.

Once again Mama Goose was a couple hours behind and the 182 with Guy and Mr. Kim gave pilot reports of the weather at the destination long before we got there. We had to dodge a couple big buildups but then started a decent and went under the rest. Making landfall in Guyana had a big effect on me. I had thought Guyana was pretty tame until I saw all those trees. In fact there was nothing else of note except a few pretty rainbows. Just millions of trees holding hands.
Culture shock really started to hit just inside the coast of Guyana when I saw a couple of huts miles from anything other than trees. It is hard to imagine real 21st. century people living out there so far from anything. It was another 1.5 hours to any semblance of civilization.

This picture is after we had cleared customs, and imigration and gotten the planes all fueled for the next day. Curtis and I made it with 10 mins of daylight to spare. God gets the credit for that. What a relief to have made and be in "friendly" country. We got everything ready for the morrow, as we were all limited to a dawn take-off and Mama Goose needed every minute of daylight to make the Bolivian border and our unlit destination. We were able to find a hotel and send Jeff to bed before midnight. Many little things just turned out great, like finding a taxi driver that would pick us up at 3am for the return trip to the airport and a guy who would sell us some extra gas cans. The little motel type place even let us stay 4 guys to a room and we saved money to lose sleep. After laying down on the clean tile floor I only had to kill one cockroach before going to sleep for my standard issue 3 hours. This picture btw is of Jeff's wife Fawna and their little girl Sierra. Sierra usually tries to feed me after long flights and I think that is what she is up to here.

We got up early again to ensure a 5:37am sunrise liftoff time. Getting through customs and getting everything packed didn't take too long so we had a few minutes for some sleepy ramp flying before we had to saddle up and blast off.

Another amusing moment happened shortly after takeoff. The control, a woman with a thin reedy voice confidently commanded Mama Goose to "Maintain 400 fpm or greater through flight level 070 (7000 ft). I almost laughed on the radio. When I got it under control I just as confidently said my favorite radio word "Unable". And then I offered my conciliation "N12864 will maintain at least 100 fpm through 7000." She surprised me right back " N12864 Maintain 1000 ft". Ok so that part of Guyana was pretty flat and we had terrain on the GPS but still there was a fog the was rapidly developing into an undercast with no clear top. If we had lost the engine we would have had about 90 seconds before hugging a tree. Oh well, orders are orders. Very soon she came back and cleared us to 7000ft utilizing "no more than 400fpm" (much more possible).
After maybe an hour the undercast dissapeared and we got a look at Guyana from 7000ft. It was not as flat as I had expected. There were waterfalls coming off these cliffs and catching the morning sun. I like what I saw and I wouldn't mind going back for a while.

The AMAZON BASIN!!! What could possibly be said to help you understand. This place is immense beyond imagination. I've seen some big deserts but in a desert a truck or quad can shorten huge distances. This on the other hand is jungle that nothing can penetrate except your own two feet. "Follow the rivers" you say and you are right. But do you realize how flat it is and what that does to a river. I've never seen such winding rivers. You will easily travel 3-4 times, maybe even more, the distance between point A and B. And there were shockingly huge areas with no watercourses at all. And of course, being tropical, hot humid and such, there were Thunderstorms. We no longer had satellite radar to steer around stuff and when it really closed in we had to punch through. Jeff caught the worst turbulence of his life and his wife caught Sierra's lunch. Other than that we came through unscathed. I did see plenty of lightening though. God took good care of us and we actually had tailwinds most of the way. Air traffic control is almost a joke through this area. There are no airports and no airplanes. They made us go to at least 10,000 feet in order to go direct and we still spent most of the day not being able to reach anyone on the radio. Thankfully there is safety in numbers and two of the three airplanes had satellite tracking devices beaming signals to folks back home. We discussed our emergency options on the radio and they weren't actually that bad. We still had life rafts and food so ditching in a river and floating along wouldn't be too bad. Plus we had the gas to do our own search and go for help to Manaus, Brazil.

We arrived in Guayaramerin, Bolivia with 30 mins to spare on sundown. There was quite a welcoming contingent at the airport since this is the place that Jeff started. We met up with some of the academy kids who were delivering wood in town and took them out to eat at the local sandwich shop. If we hadn't we would have missed out on a free ride in the back of the wood truck 18 miles to the school. The sandwich shop was pretty busy so Curtis and I popped over to the internet cafe to write home. I was hitting some culture shock but Curtis helped tone it down by showing me around and telling stories as if it was all normal. It was still quite different. I was very tired and afraid of getting sick from the food. God convinced me that He wouldn't let me get sick that night so I relaxed a little and had fun eating...guess French fries!! Then we took the hour ride to the school in the back of the big truck. I got my first taste of the jungle that very night. Curtis just had to go jump in the creek where the students bathe and wash laundry. The moon was high and close to full so I could see enough to realize we were really in the jungle.

My first taste of Bolivia

The ride to the school from town seemed very long. Thankfully we didn't have to sit on our over tired hind ends for the 18 bumpy miles. There was a great moon.

The truck/bus/everything on wheels in the light of the next dawn.

One of the houses build for volunteers that come.

The school's water tower. Water is pumped up from the creek and then flows down into a few sinks and toilets in the brick buildings.

These look fairly civilized from a distance but don't be fooled. They are simple a brick shell with open ceilings and are divided into many small rooms by brick partitions. They do have a shower in each and maybe one sink.

Breakfast at the school. Rice with some kind of sauce.

Curtis and I tramping through the jungle. We checked out the swimming hole, dam, hydraulic ramp pump and the spot where they dig for sand.

The school's new pineapple patch.

We visited the kitchen and had a nice chat with the cooks. Notice the oven.

We were almost late to catch the truck heading back to town. It was nice to check out the scenery in the light of day but riding on a load of charred wood is no fun. The charcoal dust constantly went in the eyes. In town the wood sells for nearly $100 US

And I thought Bolivians were crazy motorbike riders. Look at this, two gringos on the way to file their flight plan. Yes that IS a plate of Spaghetti in his left hand!

Winding rivers on the way to Santa Cruz. The lowlands or "Beni" are quite flat.

Curtis getting his first Bolivian cloud flying. This was our last leg, only 4.5 hours in Mama Goose. Guayara is in northeast Bolivia and Santa Cruz in is the southern central area. It is a fairly large country.
We were happy to have survived the minimal English of our last leg and super thankful to God for a trip with no troubles. The engines all ran flawlessly, we never had to divert to an alternate for gas or weather and all the legal, government stuff went as smooth as only miracles can make them. After 40 hours in the air we felt like brothers. I was happy to be done sitting in airplanes for a while. Curtis, Guy and Dr. Kim had to leave the same night and head back to Atlanta on the airlines.

2008-10-19T18:16:00.000-04:00

If I flee on morning wings, far across the gray sea...

2008-10-01T12:04:00.000-04:00

With everything new comes loss. It is my privilege to be involved in an exciting project in Bolivia, for which I am thankful to God. But with that privilege comes the loss of a great job, separation from a special girl, great friends and colleagues and the absence of everything familiar except Him. Today I am excited about the unknown, but I am sure there will comes times of trials and frustrations. Times when loss is felt keenly. Despite and throughout those, it is my prayer that this page will be a documentation of His Power and Love and Presence in one life.

"If to heaven's heights I fly You are there beside me,
Or in death's dark shadow's lie, You are still close by me,
If I flee on morning wings, far across the gray sea,
Even there Your hand will lead, Your right hand will guide me."

Fernando Ortega (from Ps. 139)