Moving to Kalimantan!

Hi all!  We recently shared in our September MAF prayer letter about our upcoming move from Papua to Kalimantan to serve with MAF's team there.  I wanted to write this blog entry for those of you would like to know a little bit more about why MAF has offered us a transfer to Kalimantan, and what that means.  Because this is a bit lengthy, I thought I might break it up with a few photos I've taken of this beautiful land we live in.

Some "Honai" huts near a village we landed in.

To tackle this I thought it may be good to sort of tell the story of how this came about.  You may know already that last October,  un-expectedly my preparation for flying with MAF here in Papua Indonesia was ended by our management.  This came as a big blow, as Heather and I had been preparing for this for six years!  The nitty gritty details about that decision are beyond what I want to tackle in this blog post,  and I have shared that with many of you in e-mail form back when it happened.

Something I want to point out about that decision that is now more clear now, is that it was situational.  The MAF checkout that we do here in Papua can be one of the most challenging, if not the most challenging in the world.  Factors in that include Papua's incredible mountainous terrain and weather, and the fact that newbies are starting in bigger and more complex turbine aircraft, that are a step faster and more complex than the Cessnas that MAF pilots start out at in many places.

As I take a step back from this story for a second, this experience is a way that the Lord has shown himself personally to me, both in the hardship and in the joy.  Last October, in the two days leading up to the news that my flying was over (news that I was not anticipating) God had laid a few verses from the Bible on my heart in remarkable fashion.  They were verses that I had already read many times before, and it was as if they "leapt off the pages" at me and caused me to contemplate them.  I remember thinking "That's strange, I've seen that verse many times before, why is it coming alive to me so much right now?"  One of those verses is from James chapter 1 and it says

"Consider it pure joy, brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, for you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance.  Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything."


I remember then thinking "Hmm, good to know, I'm not going through any hardships right now, but I'll have to remember that."  Also I had always had an issue with understanding that verse, because I always thought by saying "consider it pure joy"  it was telling you to prop on a smile as you go through hardships.  Little did I know that two days down the road I would begin a serious hardship (my flight checkout being discontinued)  and God was going to teach me that pure joy had nothing to do with propping a smile on your face, but had everything to do with experiencing His caring hand as I walked through it.

Remarkable view from the top of this airstrip.  I wish the camera could catch how big the mountain/rock wall at the far end of the strip is.

So zooming back in on the story, my flight checkout was ended and I was given the option to stay in Papua and work full time in Aircraft Maintenance.  Seeing as we had seen the Lord's hand in big ways leading us to MAF and Papua, it was a matter of course to begin serving as a maintenance tech and see if it was a good fit.  I thought this very well could be the Lord's way of re-directing me to a maintenance career with MAF. We had a year-and-a-half before our first four year "term" was complete, and it created some space to work in the hangar and see if this seemed like a good fit as a way to go on serving with MAF long term.

Flying over the amazing Membramo River, that winds its ways from Papua's highlands through the swampy lowlands on the way to the ocean.

The mission that MAF is a part of is really what initially drew us to serve with them, not the flying.  MAF is such an amazing help to so many different initiatives to minister to remote people, many of whom still have not been told the good news of forgiveness in Jesus.  We have been touched by MAF's ministry here in Papua, as we've seen everything from new pioneering missionaries and the people in their villages helped, to schools set up in interior villages, to all sorts of medical needs met saving many lives among interior people.  We've seen that this ministry is for real, and it is saving lives!  I knew maintenance was an in-dispensable part of MAF's ministry, so I was on board with giving it a shot.

Over the last year as I worked in the hangar there were times I would find myself thinking about flying again.  Its not that I am a person who loves flying so much that I think about it day and night, but I definitely missed the pilot role, and struggled inwardly with the decision that was made.  These things came to the forefront when Heather and I went on a couple trips for vacation, flying with our MAF pilots here in Papua. 

 On one of those trips I mentioned above, we flew by the fabled "equatorial glacier" that resides on Papua's tallest mountain (the only equatorial glacier in the world apparently).  We were flying at 14,000 feet and these peaks still tower over us!

On each trip I had the opportunity to sit up front next to our pilot who was flying the airplane.  Each time I was reminded how much I enjoyed that role, and how much of a natural fit for me it seemed than maintenance.  Those thoughts drove me to prayer, because I knew if the Lord wanted me in maintenance, I was going to have to put away those kinds of thoughts.  It also caused me to begin asking God if he would want me back in flight, or if that was even a good idea in the first place for me to try to fly again.  After a while of this type of internal struggle, I realized it was time for me to approach our management that made the decision last year to discuss these types of things, namely if flying would even be wise thing for me to pursue again after what came about last year.

I think this village is called "Okhika" if memory serves.  You can't see the down-sloping runway past the airplane parking area.  There's a small Bible school in Okhika for villagers in the nearby region/language.

This is where the Lord's personal touch comes in again for me.  One day in the hangar I got into a conversation with a visitor who was passing through our hangar.  That person was very passionate about encouraging people to do what they love or what they feel like they are good at.  He said that people can "force it" and get by doing something that they are not gifted or natural at or don't enjoy, but that isn't the best.  After we talked about this for a little bit, I walked away from my brief conversation with him really resonating with what he said.  But then I couldn't help but think  "But what does that mean for me, Lord?  I had that (flying), but that was taken away. I enjoyed that.  I felt like I was pretty decent at it.  So what now Lord?  Do I need to go back to the drawing board?"

It wasn't more than ten or fifteen minutes later that Heather and I had a meeting planned to talk to our management about details for our 6 month home assignment on the horizon.  They had more planned for that meeting than we had known.  They had been throwing around ideas of ways to get me back into flying and they presented them to us then.  When I heard those words come out of their mouths I almost fell off of my chair! I hadn't said a word to them about this.  I was still trying to work up the courage to bring it up with them. They beat me to it!  I felt as if the Lord was winking at me that day saying   "I am working behind the scenes and going ahead of you."

Some village kids

So it was a three month process to hash it out as we explored some different options, and we settled on us moving to Kalimantan, a different province here in Indonesia.  There I will get to start in the smaller, simpler, and slower Cessna 206. There they also do not have quite the mountain extremes that we have here in Papua. There are a number of differences between the Kalimantan and Papua programs that make this a more reasonable fit for me as a pilot.  Kalimantan for sure has its difficulties, as each MAF program around the world does, but the same guys who have flown many hours with me and made the decision to end my Papua checkout have led this process and expressed confidence that Kalimantan will be a good fit for me as a pilot.

We are so thankful that we will still be in Indonesia, where we have been working on understanding the language and the culture for the last three years.  No doubt the culture in Kalimantan will have some big differences, but knowing the language and some of the customs sure will help.  We are going to have a hard time saying goodbye to all our friends here in Papua.  Not just heather and I, but the kids also.  They have so many little friends here that they will miss!

Because this blog entry is long enough, I will take time to share details about Kalimantan another day.  We want to say thank you to all you who support and pray for Heather and the kids and I and this ministry.  We're very thankful and excited for what the Lord has done, and where He is leading!