Winter is a bear, but springtime is real nice up here! Its been seventy degree days almost every day. It is a nice contrast to the very cold winter! Last weekend we went to a barbecue here at our apartments with about twenty other people, mostly classmates of mine with their respective wives and kids. Very fun. We had two grills set up, and played games like tennis, soccer and football. Heather's sister Holly has been with us for about two weeks. It has been really fun so far. We have been keeping pretty active with her, finding things to do outside.
A couple weeks back there was an annual conference here in Grand Rapids for the International Association of Missionary Aviation. It just so happened to be here this year. Personnell from our school offered to host the conference. The conference was three days, and our class attended one of the days. It was very good because there were representitives from many mission aviation agencies there. I got to talk to several guys with experience in mission aviation. I also got to meet MAF's recruiting director in person. I have talked to him on the phone before but it was great to finally meet. I also ate lunch with another MAF pilot and got to hear about his life and experiences. It was very encouraging and motivating to talk to these guys.
The keynote speaker of the conference was a guy named Ron Hutchcraft. Ron is most well known for his bible teaching on the radio. He gave a very powerful message. The center of his message was that as aviators serving in missions, we should never let our serving the Lord get in the way of or substitute for our relationship with the Lord himself. Our time with him, before him should be the number one priority. When we are close to him, we experience joy no matter what our external circumstances are. When we are not committed to this, things are gradually, slowly but surely starting to come off the track. And life will turn into a grind. I know I have definitely experienced both sides of Ron's message. Jesus said "I have come that you may have life, and have it abundantly" and he wasn't talking just about the future. He was talking about right now. Ron made it clear that this is a message for every follower of Christ, no matter what your vocation is.

Last week in class we were learning how to set up fuel systems. We went out to the school's Cessna 210 to practice adjusting the fuel system. So we started it a few times and ran it up. A classmate of mine took some video. The main thing about the 210 is that it is so incredibly loud. I could safely say it was the loudest thing I have ever been around.. (tied with riding in my stepbrothers car in highschool with his 15 inch speakers)...and I had big sound blocking earmuffs on and it felt like I didn't have any hearing protection at all. If you don't have sound on your computer this video will be pretty boring.



The 210 is very similar to the Cessna 206, which is the type of plane I will probably fly in the mission field. Though they are a "small" single engine plane, they have a very high carrying capacity (when compared to little planes like the ones I train in) and they can take off and land in short spaces.