A fan of my own blog...90%!

Today I found myself appreciating our blog in a whole new way. Today was my first full day away from Heather and Elise, and I miss them like crazy! I found myself visiting this blog to see pictures and to watch videos of Elise, appreciating those videos and pictures like never before.

I am going to be here in Spokane Washington the next two weeks learning how to operate and maintain the turbine engine mounted on MAF's Cessna Caravans and Quest Kodiaks. What type of engine, you aviation enthusiasts might ask? The Pratt and Whitney PT6. Here's two of them from the classroom today.

Exciting eh? I actually think it is. These are amazing little machines and they give a Kodiak aircraft 750 horsepower. MAF in Indonesia plans to have all Kodiaks and Caravans (pt6 airplanes) within three to five years, so this training will be very handy. So there is a special training facility here called Spokane Turbine Center, which was created a few years ago to provide training in turbine aircraft (specifically the Kodiak) for people like me who are headed to missions to use the training. The Kodiak aircraft has been a dream of the mission aviation world for the last decade, and it is really neat to be out here and see it in full swing. Today I walked out to the hangar and saw three Kodiaks. Here's two of them.

The yellow one belongs to Spokane Turbine Center, and they do flight trainiing with it.

Then there was this really cool one on "amphibs" or floats that also have wheels that pop out in case you want to land on concrete. I was amazed at how tall this one was.

What's the big deal about this airplane? Check out my post from a couple years ago if you'd like to read more.

During one of our conversations today Heather told me the news that we've reached 90 percent of our monthly support! Our one-time support is already past 100 percent. How exciting! It feels like we're really on the home stretch and....like with the Kodiak....it's neat to see the "dream come to reality." It is awesome to see the Lord provide every step along the way and now things are coming together for the next step!

Little learning machine

Yesterday out of nowhere Elise is all of a sudden going through the WHOLE abc song. I haven't heard her say but the first few letters before. Where does she get this stuff!

These next pictures are from the last few weeks...

And these next ones are of Elise's birthday on December11....

Turned 2! (several weeks ago)

Today I realized I made this post for Elise's birthday several weeks ago and left it as a draft and never actually posted it.

Elise wakes up on her birthday.



She's come a long way in two years!

"You're acting like a two year old!" used to be a compliment for Elise. Now it's par for the course. Elise turned two last Saturday (December 11) and we had a very special party with family and some friends.

By the end of the day Elise was pretty drained. She fell asleep in Mommy's arms well before bedtime.



We are so thankful for the sweet little girl God has given us. These two years she has provided us so much laughter and so many memories!


Last week (early December) Heather and I were very blessed to have a visit from our good friends Daniel and Joy. They are also with MAF, and heading to Papua Indonesia like us. They were driving back from Boise to the east coast after finishing their training and stopped by for a couple days.



Walking by the Missouri River at sunset

(update to the post)....Incidentally Daniel and I are both here for the training in Spokane while our wives are back home :^(

Where's the Line for Jesus?

The airport in my hometown of Payson Arizona has a beautiful view of "The Rim" that our town is famous for. This morning I joined our pastor and fifteen or so other men to study the Bible at the airport restaurant. We were treated to this view as the sun came up and shown on the Rim.



And this is looking in the other direction over Payson



What a beautiful town I grew up in!

I was touched by a true story that Pastor Kraig shared, and I wanted to share it with you. I don't know where or when this happened, but I do know somebody wrote a song about it.

A father walked into a mall with his little son to see Santa Clause. Of course there was a line to see Santa Clause. The little boy said to his father "Daddy, where's the line for Jesus? Santa Clause gives me presents, but Jesus died for my sins. Where's the line for Jesus Daddy?"