So now I am currently half way through one month of being a bachelor. Why you ask? Heather and the kids took the opportunity to travel back to Missouri and spend some time with family! In order to make it worthwhile, staying three or four weeks is a must. I did not go back with them, because to do so would use all of my yearly vacation up in one fell swoop....not a good thing here where planning occasional times of rest is a must! So back here in Papua Indonesia I have been living vicariously through my sister in-law's facebook posts....pictures of Heather and the kids. Here's a little video Holly posted of Ian saying everybody's names while running around.....Ian calls Holly "Hiya".....
And here's some of the pictures she's posted of Heather, Elise and Ian hanging out with family!
Thanks Holly for keeping the pics coming. It's funny to me to see them wearing warm clothes...and so special to see them hanging out with family back there. Fortunately we have the technology of Skype to still say hi to each other just about every day. The kids still give me their routine hug, kiss and headbutt (yeah I know wierd) on skype before saying goodbye....but it's not quite the same!
Ipad users click here to see album...
While Heather and the kids have been enjoying family, parks, chipotle, target, etc, I have found myself with a lot of free time. Which is good....because the last two weeks have been the busiest flight training days I have had yet. I happened to bring my camera along last week, and here's a few pictures from some of the people/places I encountered (along with some other stuff Ive been up to).
Ipad users click here to see album
Among the highlights from last week....were taking two cute little kids to meet their grandparents for the first time who live in an interior village. We also ran a "shuttle" from one village to another to take people who want to go to a church conference there...ten miles as the crow flies...but over a very large mountain ridge that makes our fifteen minute flight in the Kodiak worth its weight in gold!
While we were doing the shuttle run, I had some priceless moments of "learning by doing" where my instructor Tim, probably to his own amusement, took a step back and let me handle the tickets, weighing, and random requests by passengers by myself, in a backwoods form of Indonesian. Like I said, learning by doing! It was a great learning experience, and a fantastic opportunity to serve the people that we flew across the ridge to the village where the church conference was.
Another highlight was receiving one of the best looking bunches of banannas I have ever seen as a gift from a lady at an interior airstrip/village called Okhika. As I talked to the airstrip agent there (a local guy trained to help us) I learned they have a bible school near that airstrip. I asked him what it was called..."Sekolah Alkitab Bahasah Daerah"....which means "Bible School of the Local Language". Here in Papua there are so many separate tribal languages (over 200) and each nook and cranny of the island has its own. This bible school trains pastors for the language of the little valley that it is located in with, who knows maybe five thousand people or less living there and speaking that language. How cool!
I have been asking for prayer for all sorts of good learning scenarios to happen during my training.....some of you all out there are praying for that...because it has been very good. We have faced all sorts of great learning opportunities. For example a few days ago we encountered a real systems failure! Our electrical generator went bad on us (we have lots of redundancy in these planes so we have another source of electrical power called an alternator...and we just used that as we flew home.) It was a very non-dangerous and manageable situation, especially given our fair weather, but it was a great learning as we handled the situation for real. It was something we talk about and study on the ground, but it was great experience to go through the procedures in the air to deal with it, including turning off non essential components to lighten the electrical load while flying home. Much better to do the first time with an instructor pilot on board than by yourself! So whoever is praying out there, thanks but don't pray too hard because we don't want too many more systems failures!
And here's some of the pictures she's posted of Heather, Elise and Ian hanging out with family!
Thanks Holly for keeping the pics coming. It's funny to me to see them wearing warm clothes...and so special to see them hanging out with family back there. Fortunately we have the technology of Skype to still say hi to each other just about every day. The kids still give me their routine hug, kiss and headbutt (yeah I know wierd) on skype before saying goodbye....but it's not quite the same!
Ipad users click here to see album...
While Heather and the kids have been enjoying family, parks, chipotle, target, etc, I have found myself with a lot of free time. Which is good....because the last two weeks have been the busiest flight training days I have had yet. I happened to bring my camera along last week, and here's a few pictures from some of the people/places I encountered (along with some other stuff Ive been up to).
Ipad users click here to see album
Among the highlights from last week....were taking two cute little kids to meet their grandparents for the first time who live in an interior village. We also ran a "shuttle" from one village to another to take people who want to go to a church conference there...ten miles as the crow flies...but over a very large mountain ridge that makes our fifteen minute flight in the Kodiak worth its weight in gold!
While we were doing the shuttle run, I had some priceless moments of "learning by doing" where my instructor Tim, probably to his own amusement, took a step back and let me handle the tickets, weighing, and random requests by passengers by myself, in a backwoods form of Indonesian. Like I said, learning by doing! It was a great learning experience, and a fantastic opportunity to serve the people that we flew across the ridge to the village where the church conference was.
Another highlight was receiving one of the best looking bunches of banannas I have ever seen as a gift from a lady at an interior airstrip/village called Okhika. As I talked to the airstrip agent there (a local guy trained to help us) I learned they have a bible school near that airstrip. I asked him what it was called..."Sekolah Alkitab Bahasah Daerah"....which means "Bible School of the Local Language". Here in Papua there are so many separate tribal languages (over 200) and each nook and cranny of the island has its own. This bible school trains pastors for the language of the little valley that it is located in with, who knows maybe five thousand people or less living there and speaking that language. How cool!
I have been asking for prayer for all sorts of good learning scenarios to happen during my training.....some of you all out there are praying for that...because it has been very good. We have faced all sorts of great learning opportunities. For example a few days ago we encountered a real systems failure! Our electrical generator went bad on us (we have lots of redundancy in these planes so we have another source of electrical power called an alternator...and we just used that as we flew home.) It was a very non-dangerous and manageable situation, especially given our fair weather, but it was a great learning as we handled the situation for real. It was something we talk about and study on the ground, but it was great experience to go through the procedures in the air to deal with it, including turning off non essential components to lighten the electrical load while flying home. Much better to do the first time with an instructor pilot on board than by yourself! So whoever is praying out there, thanks but don't pray too hard because we don't want too many more systems failures!
