Kelly and Joe's wedding getting close!

I made a pilgrimage with some of my classmates out to the Oshkosh air show this past weekend. For the unfamiliar that is the world's biggest airshow. It was amazing! It is hard to describe with words so I am going to see what I can do to get a little video up here soon of what goes on at Oshkosh. Below are some engagement photos of my twin Kelly and her fiance Joe. The wedding is in October and we are getting excited!

Wow...the days are already getting shorter! Holly has been here for two months. There are like twenty some days left of maintenance school. I am amazed at how quick time flies. In the famous words of JP Harris....life is like a roll of toilet paper. The closer you get to the end, the faster it goes! Here at school we have been working to wrap up work on our engines. My teammates Matt and Jeffrey and I are working at assembling all the parts. There is much care and time involved in the process.
Our school is facilitating a "school field trip" to the Oshkosh airshow in two weekends. For the unfamiliar that is the world's biggest airshow and most airplane junkies dream of going someday if they haven't. It will be very educational as well as a chance to talk to some of the aviation missions. Many of them set up booths at the airshow. There will be dozens of educational seminars which I am excited about.
We've been busy this past week with Heather's stepmom Jean and younger sister Madison visiting. They were here over the fourth. We had a lot of fun with them. Here's an album with some pics of their visit (as well as a few others).



We had a visitor at school from JAARS this week. JAARS is the aviation department for the Wycliffe Bible Translators who are trying to get the bible translated into every language on earth. He flew with some of our students to give them input on how they are doing in preparation for mission flying. I do not have enough experience to fly with him yet. That's what I will be working on after August 10 when the maintenance course is over. But it was very neat to talk to him about his 30 years of mission flying experience. There are some very tough decisions that face missionary pilots. There can be life or death medical situations happening when flying weather is marginal, making some very tough go or no go decisions. Safety and decision making are crucial for mission pilots.

Community

My school gives students the neat opportunity to share a devotional presentation with the class. Last week I took the opportunity to present on the topic of community. We have a neat community among our students here and their families. I opened it up for some students to comment on what they thought was important about living in community with each other and what that entailed. Then I shared a few things I thought was important about it. The main point I made is that each person is created with a need to be known deeply by other people, not just on the surface. We are made with a need for intimacy....or "in-to-me-see." There is something powerful that happens when we spend time with eachother and get real with eachother about the things that really goes on in our lives "behind the curtains." When we are loved and accepted even after people know how we really are, an amazing sense of healing, comfort and unity comes. God definitely intended this to happen in our marriages, but he also calls us to these sorts of relationships with others. I put together a video presentation for the class with some bible verses about this that are commonly known as the "one another verses." They are set to the backdrop of some fabulous photos that my classmate Matthias took. Many of those photos were taken around the school. There are some pictures of some of my classmates that appear a few times. A little "web version" of the video appears below.

Heather, Holly and I loaded into the "family station wagon" and headed out to this little town called Sagatuck for Sunday afternoon. It's a very interesting place. It is on a little inlet from Lake Michigan so there's plenty of yachts parked everywhere. It is one of those places that is loaded with really unique and sort of strange shops. We hiked a "mountain" there (basically an enormous staircase that took about ten minutes to climb). And finished off the day hanging out on the beach. Here's some photos....they include Holly flying with some of the guys from my school. And a snapping turtle we saw while camping two weekends ago. Not to mention "African Night" that my Kenyan friend (also the pilot on Holly's flight) hosted. He provided an amazing spread of Kenyan cuisine for us. And did it all from memory. We tried our best to "dress African." My attempt consisted of bringing a beadsheet and making a bow and arrow out of some sticks. Heather and Holly wore "surongs" (sp?).



We also got to see our friends Liz and Jared last weekend who just moved to Ann Arbor from Columbia. Their little boy Elias is several months old. It was a fun trip. We went out in Ann Arbor for a while. Then we came back and Jared and I hung out with Elias while we watched one of those Discovery Channel Alaskan crab fishing marathons, while the ladies went out for a while.