Today's batch of photos!

God's Hand of Protection

It's the moment every pilot of a single engine airplane fears. You are flying along and all is normal, when suddenly you begin to have engine problems. Every pilot trains for this situation repeatedly. We are taught to always keep an eye out for an emergency landing field, and have in mind at any moment where you would put the airplane if the engine were to quit. We practice the procedures over and over of how to fly an emergency landing pattern to a field while troubleshooting what might be the problem. And we hope and pray that someday if it ever happened to us, we would have what it takes to successfully land the airplane. Just yesterday Heather and I got word that this scenario happened to our friend Rick in Botswana, and he successfully landed the plane with no injuries! Rick was a student at my school. He was already a pilot working for Flying Mission in Africa, and he came to Michigan after marrying his bride Tracy to get training as an aircraft mechanic. When he completed his one year of maintenance training last summer, Rick and Tracy went back to Africa and Rick went back to flying for Flying Mission. Rick tells the story in two You-Tube videos I will post below. We are thrilled that he is OK! Rick tells in the you-tube videos that after the initial search plane found them and communicated with them, they sent out two trucks that got stuck trying to reach them. Then they sent four trucks that didn't reach them until the next day. This is par for the course in Africa I hear and is a good illustration of why mission airplanes are such a blessing there!




I post these videos tentatively, because I know many family members cringe at the thought of anything like this ever happening to me. In mission aviation we do everything we can to prepare and be safe, and then we trust the Lord for our safety. It's clear that He provided safety for Rick last week. We never know what each day holds for us, but the safest place to be is at the center of what the He wants.

"Photo Shoot"

The other day Heather and I had some "professional" photos taken of Elise at Meijer. Afterwards I thought we could totally do that kind of stuff! (maybe not quite as good) I figured its all about the background and the lighting (oh and catching the kid in a good mood....or asleep!!) so a couple days ago we pulled out the nice blanket our friends Darryl and Sarah made us to use as a backdrop and made use of some sunlight coming through our balcony window that was dimmed and softened a little bit by the overcast cloud layer. And today we had the same cloud layer, so we took a few more and our friends Jeffrey and Bethany were over with their son Zeke, so we took a few of him. Here's the results!

GO CARDINALS!!

Wow! What a strange feeling. The Cardinals are going to the Superbowl! I never thought that would happen. When people ask me if I am an NFL fan, my response has always been, "No, because I am an Arizona Cardinals fan." I would never choose another team to root for, I would always be loyal to the Cardinals. But it is hard to be excited about it at all when your team goes 4 and 12 every year. So this has been a long time coming. How exciting!!

Somebody else in our house is happy about the Cardinals big victory....check it out:



Heather's mom got those photos over the last couple days. Elise has really been smiling at us and making a lot of cute faces and sounds lately. And of course it was in response to the Cardinals holding off the Eagles for the big victory tonight (what a game, it was a thriller!). We are going to have to see if we can get her a little Cardinals jersey for the Superbowl. Maybe a little hard to find here in Michigan, but we'll see!