Flythe Family News

America the Beautiful

2012-01-23T06:05:00.001+07:00

For those who didn't know or didn't get a chance to see us, we just got back from a quick, three week trip to the land of the free and the home of the brave. If we didn't get a chance to see you, I apologize. We really didn't mean to avoid anyone. At the same time, for a city with a metro population close to a million people, Raleigh still feels like a small town. Almost everywhere we went we saw people we hadn't seen in years. It was truly a refreshing and fun time. And yes, it was totally worth the almost 48 straight hours of travel time on the front and back end. I think the more we do this trip the more used to it we get, and the easier it is. There's even something kind of fun about it, although after sitting on a 777 for 9 straight hours, hoping you're almost there, and then looking at your watch and realizing you still have 5 more hours to go....yeah that's not so fun. Especially when one of your kids has peed in her pants and your almost-two-year-old doesn't want to sit down. But it was totally worth it!

I'm not much of a writer, so I'll just share our trip in photos. One thing I really noticed is that the light in NC in the winter time is so much nicer and less harsh than Indonesia. The sun never gets very high, which makes for much better photos. The sun is SO bright here, my eyes start to water if I'm outside and not wearing sunglasses for long.

Our little Ella is such a performer. She loves to sing and dance, and I love these photos because she is in the middle of one of her little performances where she breaks out in song & dance. This really typifies who our little Ella is. It also kind of reminds me of the characters in Charlie Brown whenever they sing:

Goodbye America, we'll miss you. I hope you will continue to be the land of opportunity and a beacon of freedom and justice.

Christmas Medivac Flight

2011-12-26T09:53:00.001+07:00

My phone rang on Christmas Eve, just as we were finishing up dinner with friends. We had just eaten bacon-wrapped chicken, crab dip, cheeseball and crackers, meatballs, and were moving on to dessert. It's not everyday that you eat like that around here! Later that night I and my buddies Chris and Tom would be outside setting up the trampoline we had bought the kids for Christmas, and I was pretty excited about it. But on the phone was Steve, our program manager, telling me there was Pendeta (Pastor) Hendri, who had had a stroke earlier that afternoon, and needed to be picked up the next morning. Several of our pilots weren't available, and I guess me being pretty low on the seniority pole, meant I was being called on to do it. On the one hand, I wanted to do the flight, and help Hendri (who is a former MAF airstrip agent) get to the hospital in Tarakan. But on the other hand, I selfishly wanted to just spend Christmas like I had planned it out in my head, with my family at home. Didn't he know we weren't flying on Christmas? Why did he have to go and have a stroke on Christmas Eve? The battle between my flesh and spirit raged in my heart.

The next morning when we woke up Heather was sick, making the battle going on inside my heart even more difficult. Was there seriously nobody else who could do this flight? Unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit. Whoever loves his life loses it, and whoever hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life. (John 12:24-25) I knew this was about me dying to self, and I prayed to that effect. That's right, even so-called "missionaries," when awesome opportunities arise to help another servant of God in need, sometimes don't want to help. I wanted to help, but come on, this was Christmas!

Thankfully as I submitted myself to God and got flying, He changed my heart, and as I knew it would be, it was actually a lot of fun and humbling to be able to help someone so beloved by the community and church there. I normally jump at the opportunity to do medivac flights like these, so I was ultimately happy that I was called on to do this, Christmas day or not.

When I arrived in Mahak Baru, which is an hour-and-a-half from Tarakan, it looked like the whole village had come out to see Pendeta Hendri off:

I am thankful for people like Pendeta Hendri, who are laboring for the Gospel of Christ deep in the heart of Borneo. He is someone MAF has known for years, and it truly is a privilege to be able to be a small part of helping build God's Kingdom. I am also thankful that God continues to refine and shape my heart, even as my selfish flesh wages war against the Spirit working in me. Please pray for his recovery, and that this stroke would not have any long term effects on him.

Thank you Father for this affliction

2011-12-21T12:14:00.000+07:00

About a month ago the kids and I were on our way to my friend's house, who is also a midwife, so we could hear the baby's heartbeat. Ella was so excited because this time she would actually be able to come along and hear the sounds of the miracle growing inside mommy's tummy. When we arrived at my friend's house the kids played for a bit while we chatted and then it was time to hear the heartbeat. I remember it so well. As she put the jelly on my stomach I was a bit nervous about what we were going to hear or not hear. After what seemed like forever I asked, "Does it normally take this long to hear the baby's heartbeat"? She responded, "Not normally at 15 weeks, but let me try again." The kids were waiting anxiously as my friend tried again to hear the heartbeat. And then it hit me. I felt it in my gut and knew she wasn't going to find a heartbeat. A tear trickled down my face as I looked over at the kids half playing, half watching and waiting to hear the news that we'd found the sounds of life. After another few minutes of trying my sweet friend still couldn't find the heartbeat.

Because she only had a heart monitor and couldn't actually see the baby's heart beating with her own eyes she suggested I go get an ultrasound at the hospital and I did. I called Tripp, he left work and we headed to the hospital. I was seen pretty quickly and the doctor confirmed our fears. There were no signs of life in my womb. As I got up from the table I was flooded with so many emotions - disbelief, shock, anger. When we got into the car I just started sobbing. I couldn't believe this was really happening to me. God was taking someone else from me again. That was my first thought and as I sat there feeling alone and like no one could ever understand me, Tripp says, "How can I bear this burden with you and how can we preach the gospel to ourselves at this moment?" To me that was like balm to my hurting soul. Tripp shared different verses with me and ministered to my heart in the perfect way.

The last two years of my life since my mom passed away have been extremely hard at best. The hardships that come from losing someone you're close to and love so much are sometimes unbearable. There is a constant fear of losing someone else in my life. If I don't hear from Tripp by 5pm on the days that he flies, my mind immediately goes to thoughts of losing him, or maybe he's been in an accident and I'm just seconds away from receiving a phone call. I know that sounds crazy but it's true and God is working on my heart not to live in fear but to live in trust of the one who has created me and called me and my family to this place to serve Him. I'm fearful that God will take Drew, Ella or Roman from me. A few months ago Ella was hit by a motorcycle as we were crossing the street. I was hysterical having witnessed it all and knew this was the moment that God was going to take another person that I loved so dearly, but he spared her. I could go on about all the things that have caused me to be fearful and doubt the love of God, but I won't. I want to share about how God has used these times in my life to change me, mold me, and form me into a child who says, "Thank you Father for this affliction!"

Soon after my mom passed away God brought me to the passage in John 12:24-26. The words had a whole new meaning to me because up until that point I had refused to die. There were things that I was holding onto so tightly, things that I thought God would never take away from me, but he did. And He is teaching me to be thankful for the afflictions and the hardships. One thing that I'm trying to instill in my children is a sense of stewardship with whatever it is that God has given them. Whether it be with clothes, books, toys, their time, and now I'm trying to teach them to be good stewards of the hard times. This is something we are learning together, mother and child, to turn to God with thankful hearts when things go wrong, or when the world seems like it is going to crumble down on top of you. One day as I was gathering the clothes off the line I looked up to the sky and just cried out to God to not let all this hurt that I've gone through be in vain. I don't want to let one opportunity of pain and heartache go by without it being used to bring glory to my God and to bear fruit in my life. That is my heartfelt cry to the Lord and I know He hears me.

So as I come to the end of a hard year and look ahead to a new one my prayer is that God will empower me to see Him as love and all that He does as expressions of that love. He really does want the best for me and He loves me more than I could ever know.

O Love Beyond Compare,
Thou art good when thou givest, when thou takest away, when the sun shines upon me, when night gathers over me.
Thou hast loved me before the foundation of the world, and in love didst redeem my soul; thou dost love me still, in
spite of my hard heart, ingratitude, distrust.
Thy goodness has been with me during another year, leading me through a twisting wilderness, in retreat helping me
to advance, when beaten back making sure headway.
Thy goodness will be with me in the year ahead; I hoist sail and draw up anchor, with thee as the blessed Pilot of my
future as of my past.

Taken from The Valley of Vision

December 10th

2011-12-11T19:21:00.003+07:00

Here's our day in pictures:

9:00
Roman and his accessories

10:00
wrestling

11:00
Christmas shopping - not necessarily at this store:)

12:00
Lunch

1:00
Listening to Christmas music. These guys are really good.

2:00
crafting

3:00
playing a counting game on pbskids.org

4:00
making welcome home/we love you signs for daddy. he works on saturdays.

5:00
helping mommy in the kitchen

6:00
playing outside

Hari Ulang Tahun ke 5 Drew!

2011-11-14T19:32:00.004+07:00

Yesterday we celebrated Drew's 5th birthday. For his birthday he got a lego airplane, some books on how to draw airplanes (among other things like trains and cars), and a kit for making cool and unusual paper airplanes. And, if you can't tell in the picture below, he got an airplane cake, made by his lovely mother. Do you see a theme going here? If you think the theme is airplanes, you're WRONG!! Ok maybe that's part of it too. :-) But what Drew really loves to do is build/design/make things (OK yes, it's usually to build/design/draw airplanes). I guess it's in his blood. His great-grandfather Jim (aka James T. Flythe the original) grew up wanting to build ships, and ended up making a career in construction. Ditto for his grandpa, Jimmy (aka James T. Flythe II), who still runs Flythe Construction. And even his dad (James T. Flythe III, that's me) graduated in engineering even if he never actually worked as an engineer. He has one uncle who actually is a practicing civil engineer and the other is also in the family construction business. So I think for James T. Flythe IV (Drew), he's destined to build things one day. Despite the fact that I'm a pilot, if you ask him what he wants to do when he grows up, he'll tell you he wants to "build airplanes," not fly them. Yesterday, when he was building his lego airplane per the instruction book, and Heather offered to put a piece together, he quickly replied, "No! You have to follow the instructions!" I think it's pretty obvious where he stands on the DISC scale.

Several months ago I took Drew on a hike, just the two of us, to some hills on the south part of the island. He loved it, and has been asking to go back. So yesterday, for his birthday, I took him and Ella both, so they could "see God's creation." Ella was ready to go home not long into the hike, in case you couldn't tell by this picture:

She does, however, make a pretty decent photographer:

Roman, meanwhile, has been busy terrorizing, destroying, and getting into pretty much everything he can get his hands on. He also likes to wear Ella's sandals:

New Airstrips
This past week I got to get a checkout into two of our more advanced airstrips, Long Alango and Pujungan. These are both very heavily used airstrips that our Kodiak still can't go into, because of length, narrowness, a tight turnaround, or a combination of all three. They're working on these airstrips so the Kodiak can get in, but for now, they are 206 only places. If you've seen the All Over the World: Borneo video, you will recognize this man, the pastor of the church in Long Alango:

Right when I got out of the plane, even though I'd never met him, I was like, "Pak Yahyah!" He seemed surprised I knew who he was, but I told him he was famous now.

For the technically or aviation inclined, who might find this interesting: Long Alango is 385 meters long (that's 1263 feet for you Yanks) and has very little slope, making it slippery and dangerous when wet. For me, it's the shortest airstrip I've been checked out in so far. Well, at least among the flat airstrips - we have shorter ones that are sloped, but we generally consider the short, flat airstrips the most challenging, because of the risk of going off the end if it's slippery. It's kind of funny, because among us pilots we'll have conversations about the type of grass, or the soil, or the substrate, or how the water drains off the strip, etc. Maybe I should've gotten a minor in Turfgrass Science while I was at NC State! Alango also has an especially fun approach from the north, since it's "blind," meaning you can't see the airstrip until you're very short final. You follow the river until it looks like you're trying to land in the river, then the airstrip all of a sudden appears on your left. I've even heard stories from other pilots of passengers screaming in the back on final into Alango!

Here's Alango from above:

And here's the hooking approach into Pujungan:

UPDATE: I see Dave Forney also just posted on his blog about my checkout in Alango and Pujungan. Read his take on it.

November 10th

2011-11-11T19:19:00.003+07:00

Here's our day:

9:00
playing the iPad

10:00
preschool

11:00
reading to Roman - Drew really wanted to take the picture so I let him

12:00
leftovers - lemon chicken and couscous

1:00
Tripp heading back to work after lunch

2:00
crafting

3:00
Roman just waking up from his nap

4:00
drawing outside

5:00
playing outside while we wait for daddy to come home

daddy's home!!!!

6:00
our helper and Ella - every thursday the adults on our team eat together and then have Bible study. Emily watches the kids for us. She has been such a blessing to our family and loves our kids almost as much as we do.

Number 4

2011-10-26T20:00:00.003+07:00

Source: None via Marie on Pinterest

This will be us {again} in the very near future!! Baby Flythe #4 is due May 8th, 2012.

October 11th

2011-10-13T06:09:00.002+07:00

Here's our day on Tuesday in pictures:

9:00
Roman digging into my pancake breakfast

10:00
Heading out to run some errands and pick up Ella from school

11:00
Ella closing our gate. Don't you love her uniform?

12:00
D & E helping me with the dishes

1:00
My egg cooker. I love this thing. Egg salad for lunch.

2:00
This is how Roman takes a nap these days

3:00
D & E helping me prepare for teaching English at the orphanage

4:00
Singing Head, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes with the kids

5:00
Burgers for dinner

6:00
Dinner aftermath

Float Plane Operations

2011-09-26T13:02:00.001+07:00

Last week I got a chance to visit our float plane base in Central Kalimantan. My good friend Jason Pratt and his wife Robyn serve there, along with their two little girls. Because of all the smoke in Central Kalimantan, which is an annual event due to the slash and burn method of clearing the crops there, they had been here in Tarakan for the past month or so to get away from the smoke. Since Jason is all alone down there right now (well, the only pilot/mechanic), I returned to Central Kalimantan with him to help with some maintenance on the planes.

Their operations down in Palangkaraya (the capital of Central Kalimantan) are very different from our wheel planes in Tarakan. I wanted to highlight some of the things I found interesting from this "landlubber" pilot perspective.

As the only pilot/mechanic on the program (for now...the Cannon's are due back next month), he has a lot of responsibilities, many more than I do in Tarakan. Here he is leading a meeting with the Indonesian staff after being gone for a month:

There's always a chance you might drop a tool in the water, so be careful! Thankfully, with their new massive floating hangar, doing maintenance on the planes is MUCH easier these days. Before, they had to do maintenance while the airplane was tied up to a simple dock. Still, a float plane is really half boat, half airplane.

They get numerous flight requests for sick patients, and one popped up the morning we got back. With the visibility in smoke still pretty bad (it was only a mile that morning), we almost didn't get to do the flight. Thankfully, it improved enough we could take this 10 year old girl to a better hospital in nearby Banjarmasin. She had been involved in a motorcycle accident, and her injuries were pretty severe:

Even taking off on the long, wide, river in front of the floating MAF hangar presents challenges I'm not used to: there are floating logs and debris all over the place, boats zipping up and down the river, and of course the current of the river itself. As we began our takeoff "roll," Jason is calling out logs and boats he sees along the way. "There's a log, we'll pass right over it...there's a boat, we'll be off the water before we pass him." Our landing strips don't change that much except for the wetness...they're basically either dry or wet. The rivers these guys are landing on are constantly changing. And I didn't even get to go into any of the more challenging places.

Here he's straining to see through the smoky haze. Thankfully there are no mountains to run into:

After landing at our airstrips, we simply taxi in and shut down. For a floatplane, the hardest part may be yet to come. Even though the river we landed on was wide and long, the current was very choppy, the wind strong, and the dock small. Docking here was pretty challenging but Jason handled it like a veteran. Getting this patient out was also a challenge, and made me appreciate the large double doors of the 206 (he's flying a Cessna 185, which only has a single passenger door on each side):

Jason is also a big WWII buff, and his authentic 1945 Willy's Jeep is his pride and joy. The first thing he did when we walked into his house at 10pm, after being in Tarakan for a month, was check on his baby. He let me drive it for a little bit, and I gotta say I think an airplane is easier to fly than driving that Jeep. You're sure to appreciate power brakes and rack-and-pinion steering after driving a WWII Jeep. Jason also has a bunch of Jeep buddies he hangs out with, which is a neat ministry in itself.

I've never seen a vehicle that needed its hood opened so much:

Notice he's sitting on the left side, which is opposite to every other car in Indonesia (we drive on the left side of the road here):

Their little girl Samantha, who called me "Uncle Steve" the whole time (after Steve Persenaire, our new Program Manager who just moved here after being in Palangkaraya for several years):

Jason, Robyn, and their two little girls Abby and Samantha:

With their two Cessna 185's on floats, they're able to serve several pastors doing ministry upriver, fly out numerous sick and injured patients, and serve the communities living along the many rivers in Central Kalimantan. It was pretty cool getting to see their operations!

September 10th

2011-09-11T21:53:00.002+07:00

Our day in pictures:

9:00
Homemade golf course

10:00
Writing some thank you notes

11:00
Music blasting = dance party

12:00
My long time obsession - cheddar, apple, bacon sandwich with roasted garlic and onion mayonnaise. The picture doesn't do it justice

1:00
Rest time for mama

2:00
Puzzles

3:00
Watching a classic and one of my favorites - Tom and Jerry or Jerry and Thomas as D & E like to call it.

4:00
Lately this is Roman's favorite thing to do

5:00
Pizza ready for the oven

6:00
Dinner at the Flythe house

The Fall of Roman

2011-08-30T19:57:00.002+07:00

Living in a developing country with no quick access to good medical care, like we're used to in the US, has always been a concern for us since we moved to Indonesia. MAF does carry a service that will evacuate us quickly in case of a life-threatening emergency, but the bottom line is that Tarakan is not really a place we'd want to be in case anything more than stitches were needed. So what about a traumatic event, like in an emergency? Having three small kids, I've always kind of thought that our day was going to come where some sort of trauma would occur, and one of the kids (or us) might need stitches or worse. Well, on Sunday afternoon, our day came when we were taking a bloody kid to the hospital.

I was carrying Roman on our back porch and went to step off into our back yard when my foot slipped off the porch, and Roman went flying forward, landing face first on a flat concrete step in our back yard. I immediately picked him up, turned him around, and was horrified to see his face covered with blood. What exactly was bleeding? Were all his teeth there? I took him in to the bathtub and washed off his face. All his teeth were there, and it appeared that his lip was mostly intact. I called Heather, who was spending the night at the local hotel, trying to get away and relax for a night. This night would be anything but relaxing for her! She came home, and we took Roman to the hospital, leaving Drew and Ella with Steve & Laura, our new neighbors. Steve was actually at our house when Roman went flying out of my arms.

On the way to the hospital, we talked about whether he even needed to go to the hospital. His lip and mouth actually looked OK by this point, though swollen, and there was no wound that really looked like it needed to be stitched up. Going to the hospital here is always somewhat of a challenge, because, to be quite honest, I don't always trust the doctors. But we ended up taking him in anyway. As they were checking him out the doctor noticed a cut on the roof of his mouth that was still bleeding. He called a surgeon, and they almost immediately determined that since it was still bleeding (though only slightly bleeding), they needed to stitch it up, and since it was inside his mouth, they'd need to put him under general anesthesia to do that. The doctor was worried that Roman would asphyxiate on his blood while sleeping, since it didn't seem to stop bleeding. At the same time, we were trying to get in touch with any of our English speaking doctor contacts in country. I called one, and got a text that he was in America. I ended up texting him back and forth, while Heather tried to call an Australian nurse we know of in Balikpapan. Her number wasn't working. All this time, the doctor in the ER was pressuring us and asking us about calling the surgeon in to do surgery on Roman's mouth. We were getting frustrated that we couldn't get in touch with any English speaking doctor, and honestly it just seemed crazy to put a kid to sleep just to do a few stitches in his mouth. I started thinking, "Maybe we can take the Kodiak to Balikpapan (bigger city in East Kalimantan)...it'd only take a little under two hours to get there." There are about 6-7 flights a day on the airlines to Balikpapan, but it was almost 8pm at this point and our only option would have been on an MAF plane. Finally, I got in touch with "Dr. Di," as she's called, an expat doctor living in Papua, Indonesia. She was very helpful, and gave us some instructions on how to stop the bleeding. At that point, it had stopped on its own, and we went home from the hospital, having avoided surgery on our little guy.

The next day, he looked beat up, but was healing up nicely. He did, however, wake up with a fever and runny nose. Nothing on his face looked infected, and his fever was fairly mild, so we weren't too worried about the fever.

Later Monday afternoon, I got a message from my good friend and former roommate, Daniel, who is a brilliant doctor working at a hospital in Bangladesh. He saw the pictures of Roman on Facebook, and was a little concerned about the clear fluid coming out of his nose, in combination with the fever. Though it was likely just a cold, there was a chance Roman could have a basilar skull fracture, and the fluid leaking out of his nose wasn't just snot, but was cerebral spinal fluid. He emailed another brilliant doctor friend of his (I feel so fortunate to be friends with someone like Daniel), who works at the Pediatric Emergency Department at Columbia University Medical Center in New York. After emailing back and forth with this doctor, who has worked in other developing countries around the world and understands our predicament here, he gave us some tips on how to determine whether this clear fluid running out of Roman's nose was cerebral spinal fluid (CSF), or just snot.

So this morning I went out on a mission to find glucose test strips, the kind you may have to put in urine to test for glucose. If the fluid had glucose, it was CSF; if not, just snot. Pretty simple, all I have to do is find these glucose strips. I went to the hospital where we took Roman two nights before, but they didn't have any. I went to a pharmacy, but no luck there either. I went to the main public hospital, and while waiting at the pharmacy, I got a text from one of our teammates that they had some. Finally!

Even if we believed Roman was leaking CSF out of his nose, there wasn't necessarily anything they'd do if we were in the USA, other than observe him. But, the main thing they observe people for when they have a basilar skull fracture is signs of meningitis, which is a very bad thing. So we were basically trying to determine if we needed to go to Jakarta, which is where we'd go for something serious like this. Thankfully, the fluid tested negative for glucose, which we honestly believed all along, since he was coughing and had all signs of having a bad cold. Still, it was really hard not to be worried these past 36 hours or so.

For me personally, this has been a big lesson in trusting God. Sounds simple, and is the basis for being a Christ-follower, but man was it hard for me not to worry - especially combined with the fact that I was feeling slightly guilty for dropping him. We did a LOT of praying, and almost as much as I prayed for Roman, I asked God for strength to just trust him and not worry. There were several times where my whole body just felt numb in the midst of wondering if your son is leaking brain fluid out of his nose because you dropped him on the ground. I've got to say, I've never been so happy to hear Roman coughing and having raspy breathing (which he usually gets when he's sick).

Now, I've just got to get Heather back to the hotel so she can spend a night away from here! If she trusts me with the kids, that is.

August 12th

2011-08-13T20:19:00.004+07:00

Well, August 10th came and went with no pictures. For one reason or another Tripp's camera wasn't available for me to use until yesterday, the 12th. So here's our day in pictures:

9:00
Drew & Ella folding up their pajamas after their bath

10:00
Playing with legos

11:00
Roman loves brushing his teeth

12:00
Tripp eating the panini I made him for lunch

1:00
My current read

2:00
The kids, my friend Sarah and I are leaving the airport after welcoming a new family to our program. Somehow Mr. Dave Forney made it into our picture...hmmmm

3:00
getting ready to wake sweet Romie who's been asleep for almost 3 hours

4:00
Drew & Ella in their bathing suits ready to head to the pool

5:00
Sarah having a blast with the kids. We had a welcome dinner at the pool for the new family that had just arrived.

6:00
Eating dinner

Long Umung Church Conference

2011-08-01T09:17:00.000+07:00

July was a month of lots of church conference flying here in East Kalimantan. We actually had two separate church conferences going on at nearly the same time: the first, bigger one, in the Apo Kayan region, and the second, smaller one in the Krayan region. The one in the Krayan was held at the village of Long Umung, which has an airstrip that we haven't used in a long time. So the kind folks in Long Umung spent several days cleaning up the airstrip for us to use. Whereas the church conference in the Apo Kayan was so big they were requesting something like 30 Caravan loads (our biggest plane, and that doesn't include all the flying our other planes were doing there), this one was small enough that I was able to handle all the flying loads with the little old Cessna 206 by myself.

Typically for church conference flying we're flying lots of short legs - 15 minutes or less. We're usually flying the people from all the surrounding villages to the village where the conference is being held. So, in order to get more done, we also typically will spend a night or two in the region to fly as much as possible. We're literally flying from when the clouds break in the morning until almost sunset in the evening! It'd be great if we could fly at the crack of dawn, but the villages are almost always covered with fog and low clouds until about 9am.

I was flying for the GKII church (Gereja Kemah Injil Indonesia), which is similar to the Christian & Missionary Alliance churches in the US. It was CMA missionaries who first pioneered this area some 80 years ago, and the fruit of those early missionaries' labor continues to this day. I felt really privileged to do this for a couple of reasons: First, I love flying for these church conferences and enabling the local church to do their ministry. It's one of my favorite things we do, and the need for the airplane is very apparent. Second, I got to spend the night in this beautiful little village, which is always fun for me. Who else gets to go camping with an airplane for their job? To me staying in the village kind of feels like camping. And now for some pictures...

I took off from one village to go pick up passengers in Long Layu, but there was a major rain shower covering the village, so I couldn't land. After waiting it out in nearby Long Bawan, I made it in to what was now a very wet airstrip:

The village of Buduk Kubul has one of the most beautiful airstrips I've seen...it's almost like a golf course. They keep it nice there with some really great fertilizer:

And here's the one doing the fertilizing:

Notice how this one is tied up? That's how they're supposed to be. At Buduk Kubul, they're not tied up (yet), and I had a herd of 4-5 run out in front of me as I began takeoff! I aborted, and with the pastor sitting next to me, I shut down and explained that if they wanted us to come back here, they need to tie up their water buffaloes. I think he understood the seriousness of the situation.

Village Life

What's all that wood for? Cooking, of course! No gas fires here:

School boys cutting the grass of the school yard in the morning:

The churches from the different villages have singing competitions, and here Long Umung was practicing for the big competition. They were really good!

I mentioned it was kind of like camping, and here's one example. Maybe next time I'll show you how they bathe interior. All I can say is BRRRRRR!!! (it involves a drum of cold water and a little dipper)
I think I remember my grandparents telling me about these things when they were kids:

Well, I didn't mean to have a "poop" theme in this post! Next time I'll try to keep it a little cleaner. ;-) Actually, next time we'll have to tell you about our wonderful vacation in Bali. We just got back yesterday and had a GREAT time of relaxation.

July 10

2011-07-11T20:35:00.003+07:00

In June I decided to start documenting the 10th of every month with pictures. Here's what happened yesterday in pictures:

9:00
bath time

10:00
family worship time

11:00
caught red-handed in the refrigerator eating Nerds

12:00
lunch - chicken, rice & eggplant

1:00
reviewing letter recognition & sounds with Drew & Ella

2:00
cleaning up after room time

3:00
crafting with mommy

4:00
Drew doing what he does best.....drawing planes

5:00
on our way to a friend's house

6:00
playing

Date with Daddy

2011-06-26T15:43:00.000+07:00

I've been taking Ella on "dates" lately, and they've become such a highlight for her that she's always asking me to take her on dates now. I take Drew on similar one-on-one outings - we just don't call them dates. :-) Ella loves getting dressed up. I got her the scarf she has on here on a previous date, which she picked out on her own. Last night, while we were eating at KFC on our date (that's where she always want to go, and there's not really many other options for her), I told her that one day there might be a boy who would want to take her on a date. I asked her if she would want to go on a date with someone other than me, and she looked at me kind of funny and said emphatically, "No!" I hope she still feels that way when she's 16!

The Big Picture

2011-06-18T20:37:00.002+07:00

I've always enjoyed The Boston Globe's The Big Picture, so I thought I'd try something similar here. Not that our life or pictures are anywhere near as cool or interesting, but it's the idea that counts, right? Plus I've never been much of a writer anyway! So here's a review of the past couple weeks or so in pictures.

Ella loves putting on Heather's makeup. She's almost ready for her Toddler's and Tiaras audition (over my dead body!):

Putting the "mechanic" side of my "pilot/mechanic" responsibilities to good use on a flight day... Normally we like to do the maintenance in the shade of our own hangar, but sometimes we like to change things up a bit:

Ready for blastoff from Long Metun:

Pretty soon we're going to be losing our Program Manager, neighbors, and good friends, David and Natalie Holsten. They'll be moving to Papua to continue on with MAF there, after serving in East Kalimantan for 10 years. Here they are with all their loot, given to them as they visited some of the interior villages to say good-bye. They will be missed:

We found a nice place to take the kids on a walk last weekend. Lately we've kind of been getting "island fever," so we decided to get out and explore some of our little island:

The other day I "bumped into" fellow MAF pilot Paul College a couple of times while out flying. Both on the ground:

...and in the air:

Holy Tailwind Batman, check out that groundspeed! (the one marked "GS") Yeah, yeah, I'm in a descent, but still, that's 201 knots in a Cessna 206:

Just today I flew a 28 year old girl to her home village. She has a tumor (according to what I was told), and had gone to get medical help in the big city of Surabaya. They told her they couldn't do anything else to help her, so she returned home to live her last days surrounded by her family and friends. She has a husband and two little kids. Very sad flight:

Since it was Saturday and a "pop-up" flight, Drew got to go along. I had fun with him, despite the sad circumstances of the flight. Here we are on the way back:

Happy Father's Day to my Dad, and also to the newest Dad I know, my brother George. Congrats!

June 10

2011-06-11T18:15:00.005+07:00

Several months ago I decided I wanted to contribute more to the blog which is why I wrote the last post. I also wanted to capture the moments, actually write them down, so we would have a place to go to remember all that's happened in our lives. So in an effort to do more of that, on the 10th of every month I will be taking pictures of life here every hour for 10 consecutive hours - ten on ten. My first go at it was yesterday and let me tell you....it wasn't easy. Number one: I'm not used to lugging Tripp's 20 pound camera [that's just the lens so add another 10 pounds for the actual camera] around with me, number two: I am NOT a photographer, number 3: life is extremely busy with three littles and whipping the camera out trying to take a picture with someone hanging onto your leg or wanting to be held is a little difficult. BUT I did it....with a little help from Tripp at the end of the day. So here's our day yesterday in pictures:

9:00
went to the beach with friends

10:00
made sand castles

11:00
collected driftwood

12:00
pb&j for lunch

1:00
playing with puppets in room time

2:00
chicken for dinner - it's cookbook club night and I'm making chicken tikka masala

3:00
grocery shopping

4:00
Ella eating a lemon used in the chicken recipe

5:00
Drew playing angry birds on the iPhone

6:00
there's no picture for this hour. Just imagine craziness. We're hosting dinner for 16, Tripp and I are trying to get the kids fed and ready for bed, I'm trying to clean up the house, cook and a hundred other things so no time for a picture.

The Latest

2011-05-21T10:32:00.005+07:00

The other night I sat down at the computer and looked at the posts Tripp and I've made [mostly Tripp] over the last couple of years. The posts that had me smiling from ear to ear were the ones that recounted the "firsts" or where I shared about what our family was involved in at the time. So I decided I'm going to start making regular posts about the latest happenings with each person in our family. It's a way for me to remember, with a thankful heart, all that's happened in our lives and I figure you guys might like to know what we're up to as well.

So I'll start off with my wonderful husband and what's been going on with him:

Tripp:
*Tripp has been flying operational for about a year now and is flying 50 hours a month.
*He's been enjoying going into the neighborhoods here and photographing the locals. He's got some amazing shots.
*Tripp will be flying his most precious passenger [ME] in the coming months. I have never actually seen all that goes into a typical flying day for Tripp when he goes interior. I'll be going on a fly-along soon to see for myself.
*Lately Tripp's weekends have been filled with helping me complete projects around the house and repairing faucets, AC units & door handles that keep breaking.

Heather
*In the last 6 months I've really been enjoying decorating our home and crafting. I've made a ton of headbands and hairpins for Ella, necklaces, bracelets, etc. And I've also been making lots of homemade decor as I don't have anything close to Homegoods, Ikea or Goodwill here.
*A friend and fellow crafter and I are going to be starting a crafting group with some local Indonesian women.
*I'm currently reading One Thousand Gifts by Ann Voskamp and The Help by Kathryn Stockett.
*I am really enjoying the ages of our kids right now. Drew is 4 1/2, Ella is a little over 3, and Roman is 15 months. I love how they interact with one another [most of the time], how they help each other, and how their little minds process things.
*Every couple of months the ladies on my team and I gather for dinner. We call it the Cookbook Club. Whoever is hosting provides the main dish and everyone else will either bring a side, salad, bread or appetizer. Coming up in June we're having Indian night and the husbands are also invited:)

Drew
*Drew still loves to draw. He can go through a whole pack of paper in less than a month.....all by himself. He can whip out a drawing of a bi-plane or fighter jet in seconds.
*Drew is now riding his bike without training wheels. For some reason seeing my "little baby" ride his bike like a big boy brought tears to my eyes. Times like those are hard for me. Seeing your kids, right there in front you, growing up.
*He prefaces everything with, "Excuse me!" I'm not sure where he got that from, but I think it's kind of sweet and very polite.
*He and Ella LOVE watching home videos. Tripp and I love it too.
*He will sit down for an extended amount of time and do puzzles, draw, play with play-doh, etc.
*He will officially start preschool this fall. I'll be doing the Hubbards Cupboard curriculum with him. It's free and I love the character trait section.
*When our helper, Emily, leaves for the day he will often say, "Bye Emily, miss you!!" How sweet is that? And the other day one of his friends was leaving to go home and Drew yells out, "Bye, Love you!"

Ella
*Ella is just plain sassy. I don't know any other way to say it. Today when I picked her up from playing at a friend's house I found her laying on a little table with her feet propped up in the air acting like what was having a conversation on the phone. My friend told me she was pretending she was talking with her daddy but he just wasn't talking back to her:):)
*She still loves to change her clothes several times a day....that hasn't changed since her birthday.
*Ella will be starting Indonesian preschool in July. She is so excited and we're excited too. I can't wait to hear all the stories she'll have to tell.
*She is such a mommy. The other day when I walked out of the room and Roman started crying I could hear Ella say, "It's okay baby boy, she's comin' right back."
*Ella loves to pretend she's pregnant or preg-a-nit as she likes to say it.
*Ella has the most precious smile that can melt your heart in seconds. I think it's her cheeks.
*She has an amazing memory and recalls things that happened months or even years ago.
*She was visited by the binky fairy [Thanks for the idea Ryan & Audrey] who took her binky while she was sleeping and left her some presents - lipgloss being one of them. She hasn't asked for it once since then.

Roman
*Roman is our dirt lover/eater. I know we've said it on the blog before but that is seriously his favorite past time right now. He loves to eat dirt and suck on rocks. Whenever the kids in our neighborhood see him partaking they always cry, "Ada batu, ada batu!!!" There's a rock, there's a rock.
*Roman is starting to mimic us and the things we do. He pushes a chair up to the counter so he can see what momma's cooking just like Drew and Ella. Whenever he has something to eat or drink he immediately goes and sits down at the big boy table. Today when I was telling Drew and Ella to be quiet I put my finger to my lips and said, "Shhhhh." I look down at Roman and he's doing the exact same thing.
*He knows when I say, "Go see daddy!" that means Tripp just got home on the motorcycle and it's time to go outside. It's so cute seeing him rush out the door for a glimpse of his daddy. Seeing his eyes light up and his arms start flailing because he can't wait to get into his daddy's arms is priceless.
*He can say "susu" which means milk, "daddy" and "apple."
*He can hold his own when it comes to battles over toys. He gets a death grip on a toy and Drew and Ella have a really hard time prying it out of his hands.
*He still sucks his thumb.
*He will only let me rock him for a few minutes at a time now until he's up out of my lap.....sniff sniff.
*He is fearless when it comes to most things. We went to the pool a few weeks ago and we couldn't keep him out. He would walk right in if someone was there to catch him or not. He's a little fish.
*He's just plain downright cute [said in my best southern voice].

Muddy Planes

2011-05-14T12:14:00.000+07:00

When we were packing to move to Indonesia, MAF gave us a list of things we'd probably want to bring, and one of the things on there for pilots was a good set of leather shoes. I've always been someone who loves waterproof shoes that are Gore Tex or eVent lined (me and my college roommate Tim used to love to go stand in ankle deep water during backpacking trips just to test them out). Here in Indonesia, I get to test those waterproof shoes out almost every day, especially when I fly. And now, my beloved eVent and Gore Tex lined shoes have apparently developed holes in the lining because they're not waterproof anymore! But enough about me and my shoes; just look at what these planes have to endure when we take them to these wet, soft and muddy airstrips:

Mud on the nosewheel in Data Dian:

Here the people of Pa'Upan (the place I wrote about in my post on the MAF blog) help me get the 206 out of the mud. This was the first time I had gotten stuck!

Here's me taking off at the village of Long Layu, video courtesy of Wilbert Rietveld. Now if you're a pilot, especially an MAF pilot, and you're watching this, you will probably observe that my soft field technique here is not quite perfect, since the tail is a little too low. So let's just get that out of the way. But I've made adjustments since seeing this. Looks like the plane is going through lakes on takeoff:

Same day, but landing Long Layu. Notice the wheels as the plane gets closer:

The same airstrip from above, to give you the bird's eye view:

Slippin' and slidin' in the mud with the plane can be fun, as long as the airstrip is long enough. It's always fun coming home and the end of the day with the plane covered in mud. Our airstrips here are quite different than the ones MAF uses in Papua. Theirs tend to be high in the mountains, with significant slope on them, which is challenging in its own right. Our challenging strips here tend to be short and flat, and if it's also wet, that can be a very dangerous combination! So we generally avoid those short, flat strips when they're wet.

I'm not the only one who likes to play in the mud. Actually, I don't really like it. However, Roman loves playing in the mud. Usually when we let him go outside, he goes straight for the mud puddles. I say "let him go outside" because we generally know if Roman goes outside he's going to get dirty. We've gotten to the point that we just strip him naked when he's done, hose him off, and sometimes even go ahead and just bathe him outside. Generally the dirt goes straight to his mouth:

Thankfully, it looks like the wet season is behind us. Now with the dry season beginning, instead of mud, we can look forward to smoke and reduced visibility! Hopefully it won't be too bad this year.

From the Flight Log

2011-05-12T20:31:00.000+07:00

Click here to read my post on the MAF blog about one of my recent flights...

Kampung Craziness

2011-04-17T13:46:00.000+07:00

Yesterday a few of us took the opportunity to go out into a kampung (local neighborhood) to visit with some new folks. It was a fun time and we met lots of new people, but it's also somewhat stressful for our kids since everyone seems to want to touch their skin and hair (especially Ella's hair). When we were in language school we often went out for walks just for fun like this, so it was good to visit with some new people again.

At one point Ella was being chased by a lady who wanted to touch her hair, to the point that she almost ran in front of a motorcycle. Thankfully it wasn't going fast since the street is so crowded. This shot gives you a bit of an idea of the craziness (it's actually pretty tame here):

I'm not sure if this little girl's shirt was really from the Gap or not. Typically you see shirts with bad English or even obscenities on them (even though the one wearing it probably has no idea what it means):

As they say here at church in Indonesia, "Selamat hari Minggu!" (literally "happy Sunday") May you be rested both physically and spiritually. After a long week of flying, where on one especially long day I flew a bunch of pastors and other folks from a church conference, and on another day I saw a lightning strike just a couple miles ahead of me (I turned around, don't worry!), I know personally I felt particularly exhausted this week. Enjoy your Sabbath rest!

2011 Family Conference (EDIT: Now with Videos)

2011-04-09T13:52:00.002+07:00

Last week our entire MAF Kalimantan team headed to Balikpapan, East Kalimantan (Indonesia) for our annual Family Conference. It's something everyone looks forward to for months, especially the wives, since it's a rare chance for them to get off the little island of Tarakan. Thanks to Joy Forney and Laura Persenaire for all their hard work planning the conference this year! What do we do there? We get to hear a great speakers (Kevin & Linda Swanson for the 2nd year in a row), sing worship to our Saviour (thanks Chris & Julene for leading us), have our annual staff meeting where we talk about what we've done and where we're at, hear from our Regional Director, and of course we also swim at the pool, eat well, and shop at the mall. We also have a VBS team come in to teach our kids while the adults are meeting. And this year, we had a "talent and skit night" which was a real hit. I think everyone would have to agree that Rebecca Hopkins and Natalie Holsten stole the show with their skits, although all were great. Here's their rendition of Testy Time, a commentary on the realities of being on a team (don't take it too seriously - we all honestly get along really well):

Are you married to a pilot and confused by all the abbreviations in aviation, or are you new to Indonesia and find yourself lost in the dizzying array of abbreviations and acronyms? Rebecca may have just the product for you (note to our readers outside of Indonesia: this country has a crazy amount of acronyms and abbreviations - this video may only be funny for those of us living in Indonesia, or if you're a pilot or know one):

One thing that was disappointing was the pool was closed almost the entire time because of maintenance issues, so we only got to swim for one day. That was a big bummer since the kids have been looking forward to this week for a long time, especially the swimming. The one day we did get to swim was still lots of fun for everyone though!

Throwing kids in the pool:

Dave Ringenberg vs. all the MAF kids:

Banquet night:

Kids and VBS team:

Our team is quite large right now. I say "right now" because we're getting ready to lose a couple of families pretty soon. :-( Here's the whole team, plus the Swansons's and VBS team:

Click here to view team photo large.

Binuang

2011-03-26T14:25:00.000+07:00

A couple of months ago, when Heather's dad was here, we tried to take a family trip to the interior village of Binuang. It didn't work out because of weather, so ever since then we've been looking to go back there. You may be wondering what exactly I mean by "interior." Let me explain. Where we live on the coast, in Tarakan, we have regular electricity (although we do have frequent power outages), regular grocery stores, internet access, a hospital, and an airport with several 737's coming in every day. We live in civilization, although there's still many modern conveniences we miss from America. In the villages we fly to everyday, it's quite different. There's no electricity except for maybe a couple of hours at night (and only if you turn on your generator), the running water comes from the water trickling off the mountain, and the food the people eat is either grown there, hunted there, or flown in by us (they LOVE their sugar!). The women cook over a fire and most people raise pigs and grown rice to eat. To us, it kind of feels like camping.

We stayed at my friend Kalvin's house, who is kind of a leader in Binuang who often arranges flights with MAF to get gas, sugar, and other daily necessities. Of course, they pulled out all the stops for us as their guests: they killed a pig for a big feast for us, Kalvin invited everyone over to his house that night for a worship service in honor of us being there, and the next morning at church they invited me up to speak to share a bit. It was extremely humbling seeing everything they did to welcome us as their guests. One of the most fun things for us while we were there was going on a boat ride on the river on a dug out canoe. I wish I had a picture of it, but I'm glad I didn't take my camera along: the canoe is literally a big tree that has been "dug out" to make the shape of a canoe. There is an engine driven propeller on the back on a long shaft, and you have to be very stable so as not to tip the canoe over. Drew and Ella didn't really like it until they were sitting right in me and Heather's laps. Thankfully we left Roman behind in the village...he would have fallen in the river for sure!

Roman was obviously a big hit with everyone:

We brought Emily, our helper, with us, along with her two kids. I think she had a great time as well:

They killed the pig outside, and then brought it inside to cut it up. If you're thinking it's like a good ole' fashioned NC pig pickin', think again. If you like to eat pig fat, you'd be in heaven!

The village is very pretty, and the higher elevation makes the weather cool and comfortable:

Kalvin and his son:

In the plane headed home. Notice Ella hanging on to Heather's finger. She did not like the flying!

Daddy's copilot, who loved the flying:

What a blessing the folks in Binuang are. We were humbled by how they treat their guests.

Sibling Rivalry

2011-03-20T22:52:00.000+07:00

You may remember that Ella's new bike that she got for Christmas was stolen less than two weeks after she got it. Well, we finally got her another one, so she doesn't have to share Drew's anymore. We like our kids having to share things, but sometimes it's just more fun when everyone has their own. Especially when you're racing. As you can see, Drew showed her no mercy.

We just got back from a trip to the village of Binuang, so I'll hopefully be posting about that soon.

THREE

2011-03-13T19:15:00.004+07:00

Ella turned 3 two Saturdays ago on the 5th. We had a monogram themed brunch to celebrate her birthday. Of course I loved planning every bit of it and us moms can sometimes get carried away with birthday parties, but I wanted to make it special for our little princess! Ella wore her new strawberry dress [thanks Patrice] along with her strawberry shoes, purse and shades. She looked just precious.

I remember one year ago celebrating Ella's second birthday and thinking she couldn't possibly get any cuter, but she has AND she's a little sassier too [I don't know where she gets that from:)]. Ella keeps Tripp and I laughing non-stop. She very much likes to be the center of attention and if she notices us laughing at her she will go the extra mile to make us laugh even more. Ella absolutely loves to pick out what she's going to wear in the morning, afternoon, late afternoon, and evening. Yes, she changes her clothes on average 2-3 times a day.....I'm not kidding. She loves, loves, loves to wear shrugs. So far she's got a white one and a green one. She goes to the potty by herself and wipes too without ever telling me. She loves to read. One of her favorite books is The Very Hungry Caterpillar. At one point she could recite almost the whole book by memory. She is very smart and has a great memory. I've been going through the Westminster Shorter Catechism for kids with Drew and Ella for a while now and Ella knows every single answer to the 25 questions we've gone through thus far. She loves to dance. I like to listen to music in the kitchen while I'm cooking and Ella will often be at my feet dancing or asking me to twirl with her.

Ah, these are times that I don't want to pass by so quickly. I want them to linger on and on and on. Before I know it my little girl won't be so little anymore and she won't be asking me to twirl with her in the kitchen. Life is made up of moments and these are moments I don't ever want to forget.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY SWEET ELLA GIRL!

Heavy Maintenance!

2011-03-09T22:11:00.000+07:00

We've had some big projects going on in the hangar lately, and one of those is the "Hot Section Inspection" on our Caravan's engine. Since our Caravan is the first turbine engine plane on the program and since we're all pretty green at the turbine engine maintenance, we brought another MAF mechanic in from Nampa to help us with it. Everyone has been pretty eager to learn and see these turbines that spin at 35,000+ RPM. I took the opportunity to take some fun photos during the inspection.

Pak Nelson, one of our karyawan (Indonesian employees):

Tim Maynard, our Chief of Maintenance, inspecting inside the engine:

Karl Vanderline, our other Maintenance Specialist, who along with Tim is invaluable in keeping these planes running in top shape:

India Flies Again

Today was a momentous day, at least for one of our airplanes. PK-MPI, affectionately known simply as "India" (taken from the last letter of its registration...its full call sign is "Mike Papa India," but we normally just call her "India"), flew operationally for the first time in almost 8 months! She's been a hangar queen for sure the past 8 months, but an ugly duckling she is no more: she got a brand new paint job (which is a major project and took up most of the time), all new glass/windshield, a new engine, and she went through a very major inspection. At one point this poor plane was missing an engine, a tail, landing gear, all its radios & instruments, interior, and of course its paint, but now India truly is the queen of the hangar. I was pretty excited to be the first pilot to fly her on an operational day (there was another pilot who flew her for a couple hours solo around Tarakan, doing the engine break-in).

Just about everyone in the hangar was involved in India's restoration, which included a whole lot of sweat and hard work. We even brought in Keith Parker, an MAF mechanic from Nampa, to do the paint job. Many thanks to Keith and Karl especially, who were involved with so much of the restoration, and all of our karyawan, who were very involved with stripping the paint for the paint job. I was personally involved on a lot of the work on the new engine, so you can imagine how relieved I was when it took its first flight without any major problems!

When I flew it interior today, everyone kept commenting on the "new plane." I was pretty proud to be pulling up in my new ride, even if it was a little dirty after landing on the muddy Slip 'n Slide we call airstrips:

In the past 10 months or so we've put three new engines on our 206's, finished India's restoration complete with a new paint job, and now we're finishing up the Hot Section Inspection on our Caravan's engine. It feels pretty good to have all that big time maintenance behind us. Many thanks to our Maintenance Specialists and karyawan for all their hard work and dedication!

ONE

2011-02-18T18:24:00.000+07:00

Our little baby turned one on Sunday. My mind has been flooded with so many memories of the days/hours leading up to his birth. I was so excited to see our precious little one yet so overwhelmed with feelings of grief and sadness that my mom wouldn't be there with me to usher in his arrival. I know my mom would be just smitten with Roman and his precious smile, his contagious laugh, his tender heart, and his love of being held all.the.time.

Drew, Ella, and Roman all have different personalities. I learned early on with Roman that he is our sweet, tenderhearted child when at 8 1/2 months old I heard him cry that cry. Not the "I've just bumped my head and it hurts" cry, but the cry that says my feelings have been crushed and I need someone to just hold me right now and make it all better. Drew had just plopped Roman down outside of his bedroom door and shut it in Roman's face because Roman kept bothering him while he was trying to play with his legos. I was in the kitchen and heard Roman crying and I just knew it was because he'd gotten his feelings hurt. He had the biggest tears running down his face.....I'll never forget his pitiful little face.

Roman started taking steps over a month ago, but still prefers to crawl. He is relentless when it comes to turning the knobs on the oven. He will stop everything and come a crawling when he hears me turn on the stove. He likes to "wrestle" with Tripp before bedtime. He knows when Tripp lays him down on the bed to change him into his pajamas it's time to wrestle. He likes to be outside and eat dirt:) and he absolutely loves to dance. He really breaks it down when we play Going the Distance by Cake.

For Roman's birthday I kept things pretty simple. I made a s'mores cake. I made a bunch of individual s'mores with the Indonesian equivalent of graham crackers and dipped them in chocolate and then stacked them on top of each other. We celebrated after Roman woke up from his nap which probably wasn't the best time but we went with it. Drew and Ella were so excited to put on their party hats and sing to little Romie [Yes, we call him that. My personal favorites are Romie Romerson and Romie Romes].

Roman has brought so much life and joy into our family and I can't imagine my days without him. While these days are certainly filled with stresses and frustrations with three littles in tow, I'm trusting that God will take those frustrations and make something eternally valuable out of them. There WILL come a blessing and a strength, praise the Lord!!
So to my sweet, lovable, precious, spirited, tenacious little brown eyed baby boy - I love you so much and pray God's grace on you. Love, Momma

Granddad Visit

2011-02-07T21:05:00.000+07:00

Heather's dad came to visit us in January, and we all really enjoyed having him here. He was here for two weeks, which is plenty of time to show him all the "sights" of Tarakan. I don't think he came to see the sights of Tarakan though. :-) We had even planned to go interior to the village of Binuang with the whole family and spend the night, but that didn't work out because of weather. We did however, pack up all our stuff, pack up the plane, and even fly it all the way out to Binuang, or at least over top of it, but I wasn't able to find a way in since the weather was pretty crummy. It's kind of ironic, since we are generally able to make it to our destination probably 95% of the time, and the one time I bring my whole family I couldn't get in. Oh well...kids were pretty disappointed, especially Ella. Drew, who slept most of the flight, was confused when he woke up to find us back in Tarakan again!

I've been flying a lot lately, as I'm now checked out in the Apo Kayan region and find myself being one of two primary 206 drivers. My buddy Dave Forney, who for a long time has been the guy who flies 4-5 days a week, is going to begin his Kodiak checkout soon, and thus will not be flying a 206 for a while (like close to 6 months). And now that I'm checked out in most of our regularly used airstrips now, I'm being called on to carry a lot of the flying load, which I don't mind at all! Today I carried a lady who was hemorrhaging back to Tarakan to get medical help, then carried two church loads from Long Sule to Long Lebusan, then carried a bunch or "orang sakit" (sick patients) from two different villages back to Malinau. I left Lebusan with 8 passengers on board, with I think 3 different people on board with various illnesses, to get medical help. That's right, 8 passengers plus me for a total of 9 people on board, in a plane that only has 6 seats! Three of the passengers were kids, held on the lap of an adult. As I left I was thinking what a privilege it is to be able to serve God and help others with the airplane like that. These airplanes are well utilized too, flying about 50 hours every 2-3 weeks, to help the hurting, isolated, and to support the work of the church and missions in eastern Borneo.

Picture time

Did I mention Roman is walking a little now?

Heather's dad Phil and the kids:

Last weekend, Heather and some of the other ladies cooked some nasi goreng (fried rice) and took it to the hospital to give to the new moms in the maternity ward. They were cooking up a storm over here:

Our helper, Emily:

Sarah, Rebecca, and Heather:

I couldn't resist throwing this one in of Roman from the beach the other weekend:

Borneo to Papua Ferry Flight

2011-01-16T13:35:00.001+07:00

Every so often, a flight comes up where we have to take a plane to another base or area. With all the Kodiaks we have coming to Indonesia (we've received one and Papua has received three so far), that also means we'll be getting rid of some of the older planes in the fleet. For a while our MAF program here in Tarakan has been looking to get rid of our last remaining normally aspirated (ie, non-turbocharged) 206. Since the MAF program in Papua is also looking to get rid of a bunch of their 206's (in fact they're not going to have any 206's pretty soon), we decided to fly PK-MPR (the registration of the plane, which is how it's identified) to Papua where it will be taken apart and put into a shipping container and sent back to the US to be sold.

So I and our chief pilot, Dave Ringenberg, were chosen to be the pilots who get to make the 1500 nautical mile trip to Sentani, Papua, which is almost as far east in Indonesia as you can go. Doing a trip this long in the US would take much less planning than it did here in Indonesia - you can almost just hop in the plane and go. Things are a little different here. First, we were flying over lots of water, and obviously we were in a single engine plane, so if the engine quit, we were going swimming! On our longest stretch we were over water for about an hour and half straight, and only saw one little tiny island. Second, there were only a handful of airports we could go to. There are airports about every 30 miles in the US which give you lots of options in case the weather turns bad, but airports here are few and far between. On our second leg, which took 4 1/2 hours and covered over 500nm, there was only one airport we came near where we could have landed (actually, we discovered a couple more on the way that weren't marked on our charts, but we didn't know about them until we flew over them). The third thing that made this trip difficult is that our plane burns avgas and you cannot get avgas anywhere in Indonesia. This meant we had to carry all the gas we were going to burn - we filled up the tanks in the wings to the brim, carried two 55 gallon drums in the plane filled up with avgas, and also had three jerry cans in the pod when we left Tarakan. The entire trip ended up taking about 13 hours of flying time, covered about 1500 nautical miles, and we did it making just two stops (and spent the night at one of the stops). And of course we got to see some of the most beautiful scenery in Indonesia, if not the whole earth:

Check out this volcano near the city of Ternate in Maluku (the famous spice islands):

When we stopped to refuel, we had to siphon the fuel out of our drums in the back of the plane into the 6 gallon jerry cans, then fill it up over the wings. It took about an hour to refuel the plane:

Dave:

Seeing all this beautiful scenery was great, but after a while it kind of started becoming a bit of a tease! I would think, "That would be a great place to go diving or snorkeling." Or, "I want to bring Heather back here one day..." And if you're in Papua, I don't feel a bit sorry for you after seeing the beaches you guys have nearby! Here's the approach into Sentani from the west:

Since we were flying over so much water, Dave and I decided it'd be best to wear our life jackets (the same kind you see the flight attendants demo on the airlines) the whole time, as well as carry our Personal Locator Beacons (PLB's) around our necks. If we were going down we wanted someone to know where we were! Dave was ready to go swimming too - check out his swim goggles around his neck:

Dave was also carrying a big knife on his leg, to fend off sharks I guess. He said, "If a shark is coming after me, I'm going down fighting." I guess that's kind of a trademark of an MAF pilot: we do every flight preparing for a crash!

Visiting the Papua program was lots of fun and interesting. The people in eastern Indonesia look very different from the Dayak people we serve:

One of the best parts was seeing some of our friends from language school and from when we joined MAF, like the Juneau's, Erickson's, and Fagerlie's. Just wish Heather could have been there too!

A New Year With No Bike

2011-01-10T20:19:00.001+07:00

In case you were wondering, I made the 1500 mile trip to Papua and back without a hitch, so thanks for praying! It was a great trip, with some of the most beautiful scenery on earth, plus I got to see some old friends from language school. I intend to make a full post about it later, so stay tuned.

Remember Ella's new bike she just got for Christmas? Well, she went out yesterday to go ride it (she loves it!), telling us she was going to "Bible study," but came back in and said it wasn't there. Alas, I looked everywhere and it was no where to be found, so all we can conclude is someone jumped our fence while we were away or sleeping (which is always locked then) and got it. She was sweet because after I got back from going to the neighbors to ask if they knew anything about it, I saw her sitting on the curb praying. When I asked what she was doing, she replied that she was praying that we'd get her bike back. So we prayed some more, especially that God would convict whoever took it to bring it back! I've been hoping to see it miraculously show up in the driveway, but so far God hasn't answered that prayer. But when I asked her if she'd like to go out walking to see if we could "find" it (I guess I was hoping maybe we'd find it sitting on the side of the road), she of course had to get her purse before we left. She's so funny:

I think she thinks she's two years old going on 16...

Our little vacation to Balikpapan was fun, despite having our flight both there and back canceled just before we left. That's right, we woke up, just 4 hours before our flight was supposed to be departing, with an SMS from the airline (Mandala if you're reading this from Indonesia) saying "because of operational reasons the flight is canceled." And they weren't much help (as in they didn't do a thing) in getting us on another flight either. But it's all part of living in Indonesia!

Like my farmer's tan?

More of the purse carrying, lip gloss wearing, shoe & shrug aficionado:

Heather's Dad gets here on Saturday. We can't wait!

Christmas in Borneo

2010-12-29T12:02:00.000+07:00

We had very good, although much too busy, Christmas here in Tarakan this year. It was our first Christmas here in Tarakan (and only 2nd in Indonesia). Definitely didn't get any snow like most places in NC got! For us the fun didn't end there: Monday the 27th was Heather's birthday, and the girls on the team here took her out that night and surprised her with night on the town. Then tomorrow we all go on a much needed mini-vacation to the big metropolis of Balikpapan for a few days over New Year's. Balikpapan is a decent place to go to eat some good food, stay in a hotel, do some shopping and stock up on cheese, and it's not too terribly expensive to get there (no interstates here...we have to fly if we want to get off the island). Then, for me (Tripp), I get to do something next Monday that many MAF pilots never get to do: I'm going to be ferrying one of our 206's that we're getting rid of 1500 miles east to Papua, Indonesia, where it will be crated up, shipped to America, and sold. It should be a fun time as me and another pilot here will be flying over lots of open water, coral reefs, and some of the most beautiful terrain Indonesia has to offer. I can't wait! It's also a little stressful because we'll be flying over lots of ocean in a single engine plane. So please pray for me next Monday and Tuesday, January 3-4. On to some pictures from our Christmas:

Ella got a bike for Christmas:

Drew opening his stocking:

One thing people do here is host open houses with food and drinks for their friends to come visit them. So we hosted one a couple days before Christmas, and then on Christmas day went around and visited some of the people I work with at the hangar:

Drew and Ella really enjoyed all the food (which they have at every house!):

On Sunday afternoon we went and visited our helper and her two kids (she's a single mom). It's very humbling seeing the spread of food they put out for you:

She really loves "Loman," as she calls him (Indonesians have a hard time saying their R's, at least like we say them):

Then, on Monday I took Heather out for her birthday. She got all dressed up and looked pretty hot for someone who just turned 33!

God bless until next year!

Christmas Flying

2010-12-18T11:26:00.000+07:00

Sorry it's been such a long time since I've posted! I was sick a couple weeks ago but I'm finally up to full speed again. Passengers will sometimes feel nauseous in the plane, but it's never a good thing when the only pilot on board feels like throwing up! That's when you know it's time to cancel the rest of your flights that day (which I had to do for several days last week).

I hope you're ready for this because I've got lots of good stuff I've been wanting to post for a while, so here goes.

Apo Kayan Checkout
We have two main areas we fly in and out of here in East Kalimantan: the Krayan and the Apo Kayan. Since my checkout six months ago, I've been exclusively flying to the Krayan area. This past week, I started my Apo Kayan checkout, which is much further away from our base in Tarakan (about 1 1/2 hours). Since all the airstrips are much further out than the ones in the Krayan, and there are very few options to land in case you come upon some bad weather, they always wait a while to give new pilots here our checkout in the Apo Kayan.

One of the airstrips I got checked out in the other day was Long Metun. When we landed here the first time the other day, my IP, Dave Forney, shut the engine down, turned to me, and said, "Welcome to the big leagues." We don't have many airstrips here that are really steep on the side of a mountain, like they have in Papua, but Long Metun is pretty steep (it's the steepest one we have). It starts out relatively flat but then quickly goes up to 23% slope. So you want to land on the flat portion, check your brakes, and then add power to get to the top. The take off is even more fun:

Here's the view from the top:

If you're a pilot, here's the airstrip info: It's 365 meters long, elevation 1850' in the touchdown zone, 3% slope in the touchdown zone but then rises to 23%.

(Above photos courtesy Dave Forney, who also checked me out there).

Rice Loads

Meanwhile, in the Krayan region where I normally fly, some of the villages are having a rice shortage, while other nearby villages have a surplus. So, it makes sense that the villages with a surplus would sell their rice to the villages with a shortage. However, even though they may only be 10 miles apart by air, getting the rice between the villages by land or even water is virtually impossible, especially when you're talking about carrying thousands of pounds of rice. Sounds like a perfect mission for the MAF airplane!

About a month ago, David Holsten, our Program Manager, flew our Kodiak into Long Padi, while I flew a 206 in, to carry this rice over to the village of Long Layu. Here's the Kodiak landing in Long Padi, which was actually the first ever landing there for the Kodiak:

Loading the rice:

Here's another interesting fact, especially for the pilots & technical types. Since our Kodiak doesn't have a pod yet, it's very easy to load it beyond the aft center of gravity limit, which is something you definitely don't want to do! There was a Beech 1900 that crashed in Charlotte a few years ago (not an MAF plane!) partly because it was loaded with the weight too far in the rear, killing all 20 people on board. So it's extremely critical not to load it too far aft. Here is David very carefully checking to make sure the rice is loaded within CG limits on the Kodiak:

Here's some of the rice I delivered:

I can carry about 350 kg of rice (770 lb) per trip, while the Kodiak can carry about 500 kg of rice per load, and the trip only takes about 8 minutes by airplane. It's easily a full day trip by foot, and that's carrying just the bare essentials! All in all we carried close to 2500 kg of rice just between these two villages.

My Daily Routine
We had a photographer from MAF-UK here about a month ago, who took lots of pictures of all of us in our daily routine, so I thought it might be interesting at least to a few people to show them. All these photos on this post, except for the ones in Long Metun, are courtesy of Layton Thompson.

One thing that's always important to check is the tail, since we sometimes get damage from rocks hitting it. Then we go find the pilot who flew it the day before and give them a hard time!

Something else we often do is carry fuel and drop it at various villages interior into drums or jerry cans. We're like squirrels burying acorns for the winter - we like to keep stashes of fuel all over the places because you never know when you're going to need it! Here I am defueling:

And checking the fuel with our fuel dipsticks:

Finally, here's a shot I took of our Kodiak bringing in a patient who had a stroke:

Family Photo

2010-11-27T19:32:00.000+07:00

We had a group from MAF-UK come to visit the program a couple weeks ago, and the guy who stayed with us is actually a full-time photographer. His name is Layton Thompson and in addition to doing his MAF duties as photographer (he actually is a free lance photographer and MAF-UK is just one of his clients), he was also gracious enough to do some family photos of us one afternoon. Thanks Layton!

Four

2010-11-17T13:41:00.005+07:00

Last Saturday we celebrated Drew's 4th birthday. Ok, I've gotta say it.....it seems like just yesterday that we brought him home from the hospital. And it really does.
We started off the day with pancakes, which is our normal breakfast for Saturday morning. Drew really isn't into pancakes like the rest of us so I asked him if he wanted anything else and he just responded with the usual, cereal. Drew is pretty predictable when it comes to food. Earlier we'd given him his birthday present, a nice soccer ball and a sand castle building kit, so he spent quite a bit of time kicking his soccer ball and just enjoying being outside.
At 10:00 Drew's friends came over to help us celebrate his birthday. We decided to have a crayon themed party. Drew absolutely loves to color. So I taped paper to our dining room table and put out a ton of crayons for the kids to color.

After about 15 minutes or so most of the other kids were ready to move on to the next part of the party, which involved playing outside in the pool/slippin' slide, but Drew was still sitting contently at the table coloring. So I decided to bring out the cupcakes in hopes of luring the other kids back inside for a moment. Drew and I had made red velvet cupcakes with cream cheese icing the day before.

After cupcakes everyone made their way outside to play in the water. I think everyone had a great time. Before our friends left we gave them apple balls dipped in chocolate and oreos and homemade crayons as party favors. It was a wonderful time of being with friends and honoring Drew on his birthday.

Later that afternoon some friends of ours, Chris & Sarah, invited us over [mainly Tripp & Drew but the rest of us tagged along too] and Drew got a chance to play a racing game on Chris's computer. So sweet of them to think of Drew on his birthday! Drew had a great time. We then headed off to the ever exciting KFC. They have an indoor playground there which Drew and Ella love. Every. single. time we drive by it they scream, "There's chicken and french fries." That's where Drew wanted to go so that's where we went.
It was a GOOD day!!

Here are some of the things Drew's into/doing these days:
*He still loves all things planes/helicopters. He got some legos for his birthday and he stayed in his room building his "halicopter" for over 2 hours one day.
*He loves to sing/hum. When he goes to his room in the afternoon for "room time," I will often hear him singing. I heard him humming the tune to an Allison Krauss song the other day.
*He loves to cut stuff. For a 3-4 week period recently he was asking me for the scissors [daily] so he could cut stuff out.
*He loves playing with Ella & especially Roman. Roman is at the stage where he laughs at everything and is easily excitable. Drew loves to jump out from around the corner and scare Roman and Roman LOVES it. Right now as I write this Drew and Ella are outside making mud/dirt pies. I just heard Drew say, "Taste some of this dirt!!" Ella responded, "I don't want to taste that dirt...it's YUCK." Then Drew proceeds to show her how to eat it the pretend way by holding the dirt a couple of inches away from his mouth and taking huge bites. Ella then pretends to eat too. Oh, I love to see them playing together. SO SWEET!
*He is very helpful when it comes to "taking" care of Roman. If I'm busy cooking and Roman starts getting fussy or messing with the water dispenser, most times Drew will move him away or try to entertain him. Drew's favorite thing to say these days is, "I'm helping you mommy 'cause I'm your helper!"
*Every day when Tripp comes home Drew busts through our front door and screams, "Daddy!!" as he rushes to meet Tripp on his motorcycle. I know that puts a smile on Tripp's face everyday and he'll never grow tired of hearing it.

Tripp and I often find ourselves lying in bed at night re-capping the day's events, sharing stories about the kids, laughing at the hilarious things they say, thanking God for how they bless us in so many ways, and trying to remember what in the world we did before they entered our lives.

While being a parent is one of the most humbling jobs on the planet, I wouldn't trade all the hard, stressful, frustrating times for anything. I'm learning this is part of the "dying" process [dying to my flesh, my wants, my way] referenced in John 12:24. And through it there will be much fruit to bear. Praise God!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY SWEET BOY!!!

In Memory of Ben Uskert

2010-11-09T22:38:00.004+07:00

(What a somber weekend...never thought I'd be doing two "In Memory of" posts in a row.)

Sunday afternoon Heather and I were getting ready to have some family pictures taken of us by a photographer from England who is staying with us (more about that later, with the great pictures as well!). Actually we were arguing about what we were going to wear for the photo shoot, and we were late and our friend who was doing the pictures had to meet another family for dinner, so we were a little stressed. We got a knock on our door, and it was our Program Manager David Holsten, who said he wanted to talk with me briefly. "I've got some bad news," he said. "Ben Uskert died this afternoon in some sort of surfing accident." He had only passed away just a couple hours earlier at a beach off the coast of Sumatra where he lives. Somehow what we were going to wear for the pictures seemed very insignificant.

The initial word was that he had died surfing, but later we found out there was more to it: according to the report from MAF, he was part of a group taking some kids from an orphanage out surfing when a strong undertow threatened the lives of two of the teenage kids. Ben drowned trying to save them. Another adult who also went after the kids made it back, and one of the kids didn't and is presumed dead. It makes perfect sense that Ben died trying to help someone else because that was just who he was. Ben, who just turned 30 last week, leaves behind a wife and three-year-old son.

We met Ben and Katie when they joined us in language school in Salatiga. He was a very fun and energetic guy. Well, except when we climbed Mt. Merapi together (which is now raining down ash over Central Java and displacing tens of thousands of people). That was a fun time, but it about killed us both! Thankfully Ben and I climbed at about the same pace (ie a little slower than the others in our group). We quickly became good friends in language school and besides climbing Merapi, often took motorcycle rides around Salatiga and Central Java. He would always want to make a run to Dunkin Donuts, which was a good 40 minute motorcycle ride away, although Ben would usually say it was only 20 minutes. He was just a glass-half-full kind of guy, whether it was believing the best in people and encouraging them or believing it only took 20 minutes to get to Dunkin Donuts. I always loved that about him.

On his Facebook page several people have mentioned his smile, which certainly went along with his positive and energetic attitude. He and his wife served as a pilot/mechanic with MAF in Sumatra, and had a great heart for the people there. It's a program that doesn't fly a whole lot, and Ben knew that going into it. Ben was more interested in relationships with people and sharing Christ's love with them. In fact, while we were in language school and getting ready to come here to East Kalimantan, Ben was trying to get us to move to Sumatra where they would be going. We often talked about ministry, strategies, etc...we shared very similar views and he was definitely a kindred spirit.

Ben and Katie really wanted to adopt a kid from Indonesia, but as they looked into it they realized it's virtually impossible for a non-Indonesian to adopt an Indonesian child. So it makes sense that he was working with the kids from the orphanage (I remember them visiting an orphanage some in Salatiga as well).

I don't know why God took him. They were just getting going there in Sumatra with MAF, and he was such a shining light and a joy to be around. But God knows what he's doing. We last saw Katie and Ben and their little boy Jeremiah just a few months ago when they came here so he could help out with a big Caravan inspection (we were very short on people). It was a lot of fun having him around those two weeks. We took a motorcycle ride around the island while he was here, drank coffee together, and had some very meaningful conversation. He was a very good airplane mechanic, had flown all sorts of types of planes from Barons and Bonanzas to Stearmans, and was just great with people. Just an incredibly gifted but humble guy with an incredible combination of skills and talents.

I fly out to Banda Aceh tomorrow morning to meet his family and see Katie and Jeremiah. His body will be buried here in Indonesia, although I won't be able to stay for the funeral on Saturday. I'd always wanted to go to see him there, and we had talked about us coming to Banda. Ben, you will be missed, but I know I'll see you again!

Just Google Ben Uskert, and there are lots of stories about his untimely death. I liked this one, which doesn't just regurgitate the press release from MAF like many of the rest do.

Remembering Mimi

2010-11-06T14:21:00.000+07:00

Today is the anniversary of Heather's Mom's (aka "Mimi") home-going. So this morning, we got up early, and went out to the beach to just take some time to reflect. The kids had drawn pictures to remember Mimi and put them in bottles so they could throw them in the water. It's hard to believe that it was a year ago today that we arrived back in America, only it was not an expected trip home nor one filled with lots of great anticipation. So please pray for Heather today, that God would extend extra grace to her.

Roman enjoying the sand:

Apparently even sand tastes good to him:

The beach here is very different in many ways. Unlike America, it's generally not a place where high dollar homes are built; on the contrary very simple homes with generally poor people live there. I talked to a family there who were gathering seaweed and shrimp to eat (or maybe even sell). Like most Indonesians, they were very friendly and didn't mind that we were basically there in their front yard (the ocean):

The beach here is extremely flat, to the point you can see people out looking for fish and shrimp several hundred feet out, only knee deep in water. When we got there the tide was pretty high, but it was beginning to go out as we were leaving, which worked well for the kids throwing their bottles into the water (the bottles were actually carried out to sea!).

There they go!

Chef Drew

2010-11-03T20:46:00.000+07:00

Aaarrrgghh!!!

2010-10-31T14:16:00.001+07:00

Last night a bunch o' scallywags got together fer a night o' fun at th' Salty Sea Dog. Heather an' Natalie did a lot o' work fer th' festivities...she sailed' as One Eyed Wanda an' I be Merciless Morgan.

There be a murder (I won`t let ye in on who be murdered or who th' murdered be in case ere be goin' t' do th' same Murder Mystery Party), food, an' I think sea dogs an' land lubbers had a good time.

Here`s some photos from th' party:

One Eyed Wanda & Merciless Morgan (yours truly):

The Governor and his wife:

Cap'n Redbeard (who won best dressed and best performance) & Rovin Reynolds:

The Commodore and Sharktooth Brandy:

The rest o' th' Scallywags.

And o' course this wee one wantin' t' join in on th' fun:

Pythons, Volcanoes, and Earthquakes, Oh My!

2010-10-27T21:08:00.001+07:00

For those of you who follow the news, you may have heard there was recently an earthquake and subsequent tsunami in Indonesia, as well as a volcano erupting. We typically get lots of "Are you guys OK?" emails when this happens, and if you know anything about Indonesia, you know these natural disasters happen quite frequently, although they rarely affect us. I'll try to give a quick Indonesian geography lesson: we live in Borneo, which is a pretty long ways (1000 miles or more) from the "Ring of Fire" where all the geothermal activity happens. The earthquakes/tsunamis almost always occur on or near the large island of Sumatra, in western Indonesia, which is where this one yesterday occurred as well. The volcano that erupted was Mt. Merapi, only about 14 miles (as the crow flies) from where we lived in Salatiga during language school, but also about 1000 miles from our current location. You may remember I about killed myself (not literally, I just felt like dying) climbing Mt. Merapi a little over a year ago:

Several people have been killed, even though, like almost every time Merapi erupts, the government was telling people to evacuate. Ironically, Mbah Marijan, the so-called "gatekeeper" of Mt. Merapi, was apparently found dead as well yesterday. He is like a spiritual advisor of sorts who supposedly tries to keep the spirit of Merapi "happy." Many listen to him and will not leave Merapi even though it is getting ready to erupt. I haven't read this anywhere, but I'm sure several of the ones who died in the eruptions yesterday stayed because Marijan said to stay. He was very respected by the people, and I guess supposedly communicated with the gods of Merapi, but now he's supposedly been found dead as a result of the eruption. Maybe the gods were angry with him? Very interesting, at the very least.

We had an exciting day here in Tarakan today. My buddy Dave and Paul, who live just down the road from us (not together!), found a 16 foot long python next to their houses this morning. Dave, being the smart guy that he is, called a couple of our guys from the hangar to help capture this beast. It had just killed a cat and was getting ready to enjoy breakfast when they captured her. They surmised that this python was the mother of the 25 or so baby pythons they found behind their house about a month ago. Of course they brought her in to the hangar, and all of us did our best Steve Irwin impressions, including yours truly:

I was just amazed how strong this thing was...just holding it by the tail you could just feel her strength. Just a beautiful and powerful creature. And just think she's been living only about 100 feet from our house this whole time! I know Heather is thrilled to know that. Hopefully we can find the daddy python next.

This is Pak Nelson, a man I had a lot of respect for before (he's just a godly man who I really admire), but even more when I found that he's basically the Indonesian version of the Crocodile Hunter:

So what did we do with the snake? Well, let's just say Pak Nelson and the boys pretty much eat anything that moves. This is Borneo after all! There's just something innate in these guys to hunt and eat animals that I would never think of eating. The cool thing is, Pak Nelson is very tenderhearted, compassionate, and caring as well. He's like the wild man of Borneo who's been transformed by the grace of God. And I count it a privilege that I get to work alongside godly men like Pak Nelson, who can care for the sick and injured, lead devotions from the Word, and wrestle a 5 meter python to the ground.

Crucified with Christ

2010-10-11T21:21:00.000+07:00

The other night after dinner I went out to our backyard and saw Drew lying on the ground. When I asked him what he was doing, he said, "I'm being like Jesus."

iFun

2010-10-04T19:22:00.000+07:00

One of the best parts about having my iPhone with me is that I always have pictures of the fam I can show people. Here's those kids I was telling you about at the wedding a couple weeks ago (photo courtesy Dave Forney):

Meanwhile, things have returned to normal here in Tarakan since the two fighting people groups (the Bugis and Tidung) signed a peace agreement last week:

The conflicting parties in Tarakan, East Kalimantan, made peace on Thursday, allowing normalcy to return after days of deadly clashes between natives and migrants.
Banks, markets and shops reopened and residents resumed their daily routines. The Grand Tarakan mall, one of the biggest shopping centers in the city, also reopened.
Thousands of people who took shelter at military and police premises at the height of the conflict, which pitted locals and migrant Bugis, were streaming back home Thursday.
Police claimed they had brought the situation under control following clashes in which five people were killed and another six severely injured.
“We have signed a peace treaty,” Sabirin Sanyong, a representative for the native Tidung ethnic group, said. “We hope Tarakan will return to normal soon,” said Suddin, a Buginese.

Continue reading...

They sent in the National Police (kind of like the National Guard) to watch over things for the next few weeks, so everywhere you go now there are military all over the city carrying big guns. Feels kind of weird for our little sleepy town. After all, this isn't Kabul or Baghdad!

Tribal Conflict

2010-09-29T12:44:00.001+07:00

So in case you're not on Facebook or haven't heard yet, there's been a little situation here in Tarakan the last few days. I'll just let you read what the Jakarta Globe had to say:

Police in Tarakan, East Kalimantan, have arrested two people over the death of a tribal elder that led to his followers going on the rampage on Monday.

The clash between the indigenous Tidung tribe and youths from the Bugis ethnic group broke out after Tidung leader Abdullah, 50, was killed on Sunday night while confronting the youths over allegations that they had assaulted his son.

In retaliation, thousands of Tidung tribesmen went door to door on Monday searching for the perpetrators before burning down two homes.

The National Police said on Tuesday they had made two arrests and were still looking for three other suspects involved in Abdullah’s murder.

Continue reading...

Things have escalated even since this article was written, with many Tidung people donning yellow headbands and armbands, and going around with guns and knives looking for the other Bugis people involved in the murder. Tidung people are flying yellow flags at their houses and all but declaring war against the Bugis people. Many Indonesians (who are not Tidung or Bugis) have fled from their homes to nearby military bases where they seek refuge and safety. Our house helper is one of those - she spent the night last night at the Air Force base near our MAF hangar. Just about everyone in her neighborhood has fled.

So far this little conflict has claimed the lives of a few Bugis people, as well as the original Tidung people. You may be wondering what the police and Indonesian military are doing in the midst of all this? Well apparently two big plane loads of additional military troops arrived last night, so hopefully that will help placate the situation.

We have our bags packed, ready to evacuate, in case things get worse, but we feel like as long as we lay low and stay at home (which is what we're doing now), and don't get caught in the middle of all this, we should be fine. Most businesses are closed, all MAF flights were cancelled for today, and we're all at home like it's a snow day. So it's kind of fun! (I know people being killed in a tribal conflict like this isn't fun, but I'm just trying to look on the bright side). I went and picked up Emily, our house helper, and her little boy earlier this morning, so she'll probably spend the night with us tonight. Thanks for praying! I'll leave you with some fun pictures of Roman and Ella from this weekend:

Ella loves her lip gloss:

Roman giving us his meanest look:

Village Kids

2010-09-25T22:10:00.001+07:00

Last weekend one of the guys from the hangar, Isto, got married, so a bunch of us took a boat ride up the river to go to his wedding. Whenever we fly it's typically "go, go, go," so it's nice to be able to relax and talk with the people, even though this isn't a village that we serve with the airplane since it has good transportation right on the river. I'm pretty sure this little village was the hottest place in Indonesia - I've never sweat so much in my life just walking around. Most of the places we fly to are at a higher elevation (around 3000 feet), so it's actually pretty comfortable when we get out of the plane, but this place was down around sea level so it was hotter than fire under the sun.

While we were waiting for the reception we took some time to walk around the village. Somehow I made a bunch of friends with about 15 kids, and they followed me around for the next hour or so. It was a lot of fun, especially since most of the time when I try to talk to the kids at the villages we fly into, they just giggle and run away. Of course I tried to take some pictures of them (which is why I was so popular), but every time I did, this is what it looked like in front of my lens:

I was beginning to think they couldn't do a picture without some sort of a hand sign:

The girls were much more relaxed:

This is a very typical farming community in Indonesia:

My new friends finally being more relaxed:

Last but not least, Isto and his new bride:

Kiddos

2010-09-22T19:49:00.000+07:00

Don't ask me why Drew's hair was up in a rubber band like that!

Daddy & Drew

2010-09-07T20:23:00.000+07:00

Taken by Dave with his fine photography skills:

Weekly Update

2010-09-05T20:59:00.000+07:00

This past Monday I got my Long Rungan and Long Padi checkouts. These are the two remaining airstrips I wasn't checked out in among the area I regularly fly into. They are both what MAF calls Class III airstrips - the "black diamond" of MAF airstrips, to borrow a snow skiing term. So I was pretty stoked to get my checkout in these strips.

Rungan is famous for being slippery. Almost every pilot here has a story about slipping and sliding to near the end of the strip, so I have a healthy fear of it already. The morning we landed there it had rained the night before, so Dave was very diligent about getting a good report about the condition of the airstrip before we landed. Even though it was relatively dry and we got stopped with plenty of margin, we still did a fair bit of slipping and sliding:

The other airstrip I got checked out in, Long Padi, has a big hill at the end of the strip, so for me, the scariest part was back taxiing up the hill for takeoff. If you go too slow you won't make it up the hill (and risk sliding down backwards, something I definitely don't want to try), but if you go too fast, you risk going over the "ledge" at the top of the strip, because the turn around area at the top is quite small (just big enough for a 206 to turn around). Who would have thought that the scariest part of the whole flight might be taxiing to the end of the runway for takeoff? I'll have to get a picture of it.

Here's Dave working it at another airstrip:

It was fun getting to fly with Dave again. It's going to be pretty rare from here on out that I'll be flying with another pilot.

Since I took Drew on our trip to Kampung Baru, I had promised Ella that we would go on a date. So last Friday night, she got all dressed up, and we went to get "chicken and french fries," a.k.a. KFC:

Then yesterday she put on her princess dress. She's definitely a girly girl:

Drew, meanwhile, started preschool last week. He was so excited to go. Here he is before heading off to school:

Heather and another lady on our team, Beth, are teaching 8 preschoolers (including Drew) every Friday. So Heather lately has been getting in school mode, and in fact, is planning to do additional preschool sessions with both Drew and Ella two other days during the week.

Today, even though it was Sunday, I did a short flight taking a body (corpse) back to one of our interior hubs. We rarely do Sunday flights, so it has to be pretty important for us to do one. It was really sad, because from what I was told this guy was young (around 20), and had committed suicide by eating poison. He supposedly did this because he got his girlfriend pregnant, and her parents wanted them to get married, and I guess all the pressure got to him. He was apparently living in Tarakan going to school. When we arrived at the destination airport there were quite a few people there (maybe 75-100) waiting for us to arrive. After I shut down, I opened the back cargo door to the plane, and a lady who I can only assume was his mother just threw herself on top of the body, crying and wailing. It was all pretty intense, and very sad. I wish all the stories could be joyful and encouraging, but that's the world we live in.

Kampung Baru

2010-08-29T19:22:00.002+07:00

Last Saturday, two MAF families and another family from our church (14 people) piled in our Cessna Caravan, while me, Drew, and six others loaded into a Cessna 206 (which only has six seats). It was a full plane:

When we arrived we had to walk about 45 minutes to the village. Along the way we met a very interesting man:

He stopped to talk to us and asked if we were Americans. We told him we were, and he mentioned a plane that crashed with Americans on board. I didn't think too much of it, until we talked a little more and found that he was referring to the American bomber that was shot down by the Japanese during WWII. There was a book written about it called The Airmen and the Headhunters and recently a documentary was also made about this famous story (MAF flew in the folks making the documentary). And this man we were talking to was one of the ones helping out the downed Americans (well, I think it was mostly his parents...he was seven at the time). Here's the Reader's Digest version: after the plane went down the local people helped to protect the Americans from the Japanese for several months, hiding them in the jungle and bringing them food. They did this because of the recent influence of American missionaries. In the end, however, they "resurrected" their feared practice of headhunting by hunting down the Japanese and, well, let's just say the headhunters won. The really cool part is that the Bible school that we were visiting in Kampung Baru was named after the American missionary who had such a profound influence on the Dayak people during the 1940's. His name was John Willfinger, a C&MA missionary who was killed by the Japanese just before the American bomber was shot down (hence the reason the Dayak people did not like the Japanese and wanted to protect the American airmen).

It is a fascinating story and though I haven't read the book yet, I saw the documentary and it's worth watching, especially if you know the back story of the missionaries' influence on these "headhunters." My friend and fellow MAF pilot Dave Forney, who was with us, has a much more in depth write up on the whole John Willfinger/headhunters story over at his blog. It's a great entry and I highly recommend checking it out!

We stayed at the house of the man who was the head of the Bible school. They did a lot of cooking for us!

Of course the kids had lots of fun:

Their church:

The purpose of this trip was to visit the Bible school folks (teachers and students), encourage them, and let our families have a chance to go see the ministry interior. The exciting thing about John Willfinger's influence over the Dayak people was that the church mostly grew without western influence. Today, the Bible school in Kampung Baru is primarily focused on evangelizing and studying the Bible. It was great for me to see the way MAF helps to support this school by flying in teachers, students, and supplies, so they can take the good news of Jesus Christ to other parts of Borneo and Indonesia!

Our program manager David preached the Sunday morning service:

And at the end they gave us all hats as presents. Check out David's hat:

They gave the kids hats too:

The whole group getting ready to head home:

It was really great to see people who love Jesus and want to make His name great. It was also good to hear their needs and ways we can help them out in other ways to support their students, teachers, and school.

Binuang

2010-08-20T21:01:00.000+07:00

It's always fun seeing the little kids run up to the airplane as soon as you shut down. Yesterday I visited the village of Binuang three times. The first time I didn't have any passengers, just 350 kilos of "barang" (stuff). I'm not sure what all was in there, but all the kids were pretty excited to see all this stuff unloaded:

On the second run to Binuang, I was carrying these five ladies from the nearby village of Long Padi. Their village is not far from Binuang, maybe 4 minutes by airplane. I asked one of them how long it would take to walk it (which they were getting ready to do after we landed in Binuang), and she said, "Three hours Pak." I sensed a bit of frustration in her voice when she responded. You see, they have an airstrip at their village too, but I'm not checked out there yet. It's a little bit trickier than the "rookie" strips I'm currently going into, but hopefully I'll be getting checked out there in the not-too-distant future (it's next on the list). I told them the exercise was good for them (just kidding!):

You know what I like to do after a long day of flying? Maintenance! I just can't get enough of these airplanes. Don't I look like I'm having fun? (photo courtesy of Paul College who grabbed my camera sitting on my toolbox)

Of course the best part of my day is seeing Drew & Ella run out to greet me when I get home, especially when Ella looks like this. Apparently she decided to color all over herself, her comforter, and the walls in her room instead of taking a nap. Seems like I remember this happening one other time...her mommy was not very pleased, although I thought she looked pretty cute:

Tomorrow a bunch of us are going to the little village of Kampung Baru to visit a Bible school there. Our program manager David is going to speak Sunday morning at church, and we're going to show the film The End of the Spear on Saturday night. I'm taking Drew for his first ride in an MAF airplane and first time interior! Hopefully I can make a post about it later.

8~14~04

2010-08-15T18:58:00.011+07:00

Yesterday Tripp and I celebrated our 6th wedding anniversary. We decided to take a day trip to the big city of Balikpapan. It is an hour flight away from our little town of Tarakan. We left our house a little before 10am and returned 12 hours later. Our helper, Emily, watched Drew, Ella, and Roman. She didn't do it all by herself though. One thing we have come to love and cherish about our team here is the fact that everyone treats our kids as if they were their own. One friend,Paul, took Drew and Ella to the beach for the morning along with his four boys. Several others offered to have Drew and Ella come and play at their homes and my good friend, Rebecca, came over [with her 4 week old] and help put Drew and Ella to bed and stayed the rest of the night until we got home. Our teammates are such a huge blessing to our family!!

Tripp and I arrived in Balikpapan around noon and headed straight to the Novotel Hotel where we had a buffet lunch. Our favorite part......SUSHI. Wow, it was so good. Tripp and I are branching out and eating the real stuff, not just the California rolls which don't have raw fish in them. They had an assortment of cheeses [the only cheese availabe to us in Tarakan is mozzarella] and breads, food made to order, and pretty decent desserts. YUM!

Tripp at the hotel:

Talking with Drew and Ella. I love hearing their precious little voices on the phone:

After eating we did some shopping and ended up at the mall. A new mall recently opened up with a Pizza Hut AND a Starbucks. I was so excited, not about the coffee, but the fact that I could get some milk that wasn't ultra heat treated [the stuff in cartons that doesn't need to be refrigerated]. If you know me at all, you know that I L.O.V.E milk. Well, since we moved overseas I haven't had a lick of it because honestly I just can't stand the taste. So I figured if anyone would have some good milk it would be Starbucks and they definitely didn't disappoint.

Me enjoying some cheesecake:

It was such a fun getaway for me and Tripp. We had a lot of good, uninterrupted conversations and just enjoyed being together, just the two of us. I know I haven't made many [if any] blog posts this year, but I wanted to write this post in particular because I wanted to share how thankful I am for Tripp and how he has been my cheerleader and encourager this past year. Our last anniversary was in language school just weeks before I found out about my mom's cancer. This past year has been the hardest year of my life and our marriage, particularly the first couple of months after returning to Tarakan. And Tripp has been a steady source of truth and love in those times that I've wanted to give up and go home, in those times when I've missed my mom so much and wished she could be here to see our life and her precious grandkids, in those times when I didn't know what my purpose was and just wanted to go to my room and never come out. I thank God for bringing Tripp into my life and I pray that we'll have many more years together to worship our Savior.
HAPPY ANNIVERSARY, babe! I love you!

What greater thing is there for two human souls
than to feel that they are joined together to strengthen
each other in all labor, to minister to each other in all sorrow
to share with each other in all gladness,
to be one with each other in all the silent
unspoken memories?
George Eliot (1819-1880)

Medivac Week

2010-08-08T15:51:00.002+07:00

Apparently everyone in northeast Borneo decided this was the week to get sick, have accidents, and have babies because we sure did more than a normal amount of "orang sakit" (medical evacuation) flights this week. One was a kid about 13-14 years old who was hurt pretty badly in a motorcycle accident (broken leg and looked like a broken shoulder or collar bone as well). On the next flight I flew out a woman in labor. The next day I flew out a guy who broke his leg playing soccer at a big tournament at an interior village (the same village that had the church conference). Ironically this guy's life was saved a while back by an MAF flight when he had some sort of bad accident in the jungle which caused his "insides" (guts) to come out! He was featured in our All Over the World: Borneo video that I linked to a while back. And I know other fellow MAF pilots had several medical evacuations as well this week. There are lots of people alive today in the jungles of Borneo because of the little MAF plane, and this makes up a relatively small but very significant percentage of our total flying. It's fun being a part of it!

While I was waiting out weather one day in Long Bawan (the same place I got stuck last week...I honestly thought I was going to get stuck again!), I met this guy who is one of the teachers at the theological school near Long Bawan. Supporting the church and theological schools is another significant part of MAF's work:

Here's some passengers waiting with me (for the weather) to board. It's not exactly a major international airport terminal:

This man's son works as an airstrip agent at one of our major "hub" airports:

On the home front, Drew has really taken to his bike lately. He even asked me to take off the training wheels, but that didn't last long, as he quickly wanted them back on:

Of course anything Drew does Ella wants to do too. She got on Drew's bike and said, "I want to be a boy." I told her, "Girls can ride bikes too Ella!" Love her expression here:

Poor Roman has been sick most of the week. We even broke down and took him to the local hospital here, but that didn't help very much. They immediately told us he has asthma then also added in bronchitis. We've been giving him breathing treatments (thankfully we already have a nebulizer for Drew) and he seems to be doing better now, at least breathing wise. He's still not himself though, so please pray for baby Roman.

Stuck Interior!

2010-08-01T19:53:00.002+07:00

The other day I had my first experience of being "stuck" interior on an unplanned overnight. Every morning as I pre-flight the plane, we always grab our helmet, flight bag, and our small overnight bag (mine is basically just a toiletries bag) in case we have to spend the night interior because of weather. Up until this past Thursday in my brief MAF career I haven't had any unplanned nights interior, and thus have never actually had to use that little bag I carry every day!

I'm learning a LOT about weather here because you have to be your own weather man when you fly here. In America when you fly you have all sorts of tools at your disposal: virtually every airport has a radar picture of the weather at a computer (you can get this in your plane now or even on your smart phone!); most airports have automated weather reporting giving the wind conditions, cloud conditions and heights, etc. Plus there are people who work for the government whose sole job is to talk to pilots and give them weather reports, either on the phone or in the air. I didn't realize how spoiled I was flying in America! Here, we have our airstrip agents who actually do a pretty good job of telling us the current conditions, and we have other pilots who can tell us what it looks like. That's pretty much it. No weather radar, no automated reporting, etc. So when we blast off in the morning, we don't always know what we're going to get. Thursday when I left the weather wasn't great, but by about halfway to my first destination, Long Bawan, the weather started looking better. After making a couple of runs to villages near Long Bawan, the weather was actually looking pretty nice. It was going to be a short day for me, and all I had left was to go back to Tarakan, so I ate lunch in Long Bawan thinking I was going to get home early. When I came back to the plane about 1pm the weather was definitely deteriorating - I could see a few rain showers nearby and knew I needed to leave soon. I took off, called our base back in Tarakan, and they told me it was raining hard there and had been for quite some time. No problem, I thought, I'll just stop in Malinau, which is halfway to Tarakan, and wait it out there. But it didn't take long to realize that the weather around me was closing in fast, worse than I originally thought. It wasn't just a couple of little rain showers like I was used to seeing, and after flying about 15 miles with no open path toward Tarakan, I turned around to return to Long Bawan. By the time I got back (only about 6 minutes after I turned around), it was quickly deteriorating there as well, with strong winds on the approach in light rain. By the time I pulled into the parking area and shut down, it started pouring. I was definitely glad to be on the ground now! At that point it was about 1:15pm, so I still had plenty of time to wait this out. But two hours later, it was still steadily raining with no improvement in sight, and everywhere around, all the way to Tarakan over 100 miles to the east, was also raining. So I made the decision to spend the night. Good choice too, since the rain continued to come down until early the next morning.

It amazes me to see how the people in these villages live. Their houses are very simple: they cook over wood fire and it seems to take hours just to cook dinner. Where I stayed their house has 3 rooms - the main room which is the kitchen/living room/eating area, and 2 bedrooms. Of course as their guest I'm given preferential treatment: where I stayed they gave me their bedroom, while they slept in the other room with their kid, and several other kids (nephews and nieces) slept in the living room on the hard floor, with no covers or anything. I wish I had my camera with me, but I don't normally carry it with me, so no pictures. Remember that TV Show "The Simple Life" with Paris Hilton and that other spoiled celebrity (oh yeah, I was a big fan of the show...NOT!!)...well, that's kind of how I feel spending the night in these villages (did I just compare myself to Paris Hilton???). They really do live very simply, although they do have cell phone service at this village (most don't) and almost everyone has a TV that they all watch as a family at night. Of course they have to crank up the generator to have the electricity to power up their TV. But it kind of feels like camping, which I love to do, but this is how they live every day. It's a great experience and I can't wait to take Heather and the kids in for a family overnight interior!

Here is a video of our new Kodiak during the church conference in Long Layu a couple weeks ago. From where I was taking the video, the Turbo 206 I was flying was barely off the ground (in ground effect for the pilot readers), yet the Kodiak is comfortably climbing away. Of course I was loaded up to gross weight, and I know the Kodiak was loaded up with as much as it could take too. The only thing it's missing is a pod (the thing under the belly of the plane), which we're still waiting on.

And just to mix things up a bit, here's one of Roman in his "bumbo" seat:

Long Layu Church Conference

2010-07-17T12:44:00.000+07:00

My first few weeks of flying have been busy! And that's fine by me...I'm really loving it! With several of our pilots gone right now, there are only four of us here now who can fly (there's a fifth receiving training to fly our Caravan currently but he's not solo yet) right now. And with a big church conference going on in the village of Long Layu, we're plenty busy. People have come from all over Borneo to attend this church conference, and for most of them the only way in is by airplane (a few of the closer villages can take boats or just hike it). This past Monday night I was asked to spend the night in Long Layu so we could get more loads in (this village is an hour away by airplane from Tarakan). So that was lots of fun. On Monday we start carrying them back out again as the conference is ending. With about 200 folks to carry out and only 5 available seats in our little 206's, we're going to be seeing a lot of this village next week.

I got up early to check out the weather and take some pictures. What a beautiful morning:

The GKII church at this village (GKII is the Indonesian equivalent of the Christian & Missionary Alliance churches in the US):

Just to frighten new pilots (and maybe the passengers too), there are not one but two crashed airplanes laying beside the airstrip! Neither of them are MAF planes. At least they looked pretty survivable. Ironically, this airstrip is actually relatively long with plenty of margin, which is why I'm checked out there initially, so I'm not sure what happened.

Not a monkey, but a gibbon (much friendlier than a monkey):

On their way to school (yes they have schools in the interior villages!):

Thankfully our Kodiak has 8 seats (versus the 6 in the 206), and eventually will have 10. Once it gets a pod to go on its belly we will install the additional 2 seats. Check out the splash it made here on landing (it rained a lot the night before):

Staying there was a lot of fun, but I was pretty worn out and ready to come home. And why wouldn't I when I have this to come home to:

What a privilege to be able to serve the Indonesian Church here like this!

MAF Solo

2010-07-03T13:06:00.001+07:00

We've lived in Indonesia almost a year and a half, been with MAF nearly 3 years, I've had my pilot's license for nearly 7 years, and I've been pursuing this mission aviation thing for about 8 years now (I say "I" only because it started before Heather and I were married), and just last week, I made my first flight "solo" with MAF. This has been a long time coming!

I was actually scheduled to fly last Thursday, but because of a holdup with the paperwork for my Indonesian pilot's license, I didn't fly. To be honest, I wasn't all that disappointed because I had stayed up late the night before watching Team USA's dramatic win over Algeria. However, the next morning when I woke up, I saw an email from Berna, our lady in Jakarta, saying I'm all cleared to fly. I thought, "Oh good." And that was about it, since I wasn't scheduled to fly that day. But then about 10 minutes later Dave Forney, my Instructor Pilot, called to let me know that I was going to be flying that day! And that's when I started getting nervous. Even though I've flown plenty on my own before without an instructor (about 600 hours), this felt like doing my initial solo again for the first time. The ironic thing is that on this day, June 25, 2010, it had been exactly 3 years to the day since my last flight without an instructor sitting next to me.

Heather and the kids came to the airport to watch me takeoff and to see the "pinning of the bars" ceremony when they put the epaulettes on me (OK, it wasn't really a ceremony, but they did pray over me and give me my epaulettes). The first flight was uneventful. I delivered two of our mechanics a short 30 minute flight to do maintenance on one of our planes that has been stuck interior for quite a while now (it's getting a new engine). As the day went on, my nervousness turned into confidence and excitement. The program here puts lots of restrictions on new pilots at first, which I appreciate: I'm carrying cargo only as much as possible (although this isn't always practical, so I ended up carrying passengers on a couple flights the first day anyway); my weather minimums are relatively high (meaning I have to play it more conservative); and on the more marginal airstrips I have weight restrictions.

When I got home that first day they had called all the MAF wives to bring out their kids for one of their favorite times: they get to drench the new pilot with water. I don't know where it started, but one of the traditions here (and I think much of the aviation world) is to drench a new pilot after his first day. The kids had a blast throwing buckets of water on me, which went on for about 15 minutes.

Here's a video of the big day:

And here's some pictures from my checkout, courtesy of Dave Forney:

This kind of feels like the end of the beginning. Thanks to everyone who has prayed for us, supported us financially, and encouraged us along the way!

Beach

2010-06-22T20:37:00.000+07:00

Got to go to the beach the other evening with some friends, and I thought I'd share a few of the pictures.

Drew caught with his pants down (if I keep showing our kids' bums on here this blog isn't going to be deemed family friendly anymore!):

Everyone wants a bite of Tyler's dinner...

...so he unselfishly shares with Drew...

...and his twin brother Tanner...

...and though she was the youngest and the only girl here, even Ella gets a bite:

I was practicing some off camera lighting techniques, with the stoic Dave as my subject:

The boys may outnumber the girls here in Tarakan, but Ella is learning to keep up with 'em:

But even if she doesn't want to, the girls have their own stuff too. Here's Heather and Ella on their way to a girls only, no-boys-allowed tea party (it was a birthday party):

As for me, I just got back from a whirlwind trip to Jakarta to get my medical renewed. It looks like I have my Indonesian pilot's license (I say looks like because the paperwork here seems to always hang in limbo). I'm on the schedule to fly solo for the first time on Thursday, as long as all the paperwork goes through OK, so please pray for me, that I won't be too nervous!

Roman Pictures

2010-06-19T22:00:00.003+07:00

As promised, we did a little photo shoot with Roman the other day. If you object to seeing pictures of babies' bums, you probably won't like this (sorry Grandpa). I just don't see anything objectionable about seeing a baby's "bunga" (as Drew and Ella call it)...maybe it's a generational thing.

For comparison, here's Drew at the same age (4 months):

And Ella at 6 months:

I need to get a new pose I guess.

I'm off to Jakarta tomorrow to renew my medical for flying and get my Indonesian pilot license taken care of. I'm on the flight schedule to fly by myself for the first time on Thursday!

World Cup Fever

2010-06-11T20:51:00.000+07:00

This post doesn't really have anything to do with the World Cup, other than the fact that I'm getting ready to go over to my friend Dave's house to watch the first game of the 2010 World Cup in South Africa. I don't plan on watching many of the games, since most of them are on so late here, but I will definitely be awake Sunday morning at 2:30am (2:30pm EDT Saturday afternoon) to see the US take on England. There are actually quite a few of us here who love soccer, which is quite rare among a group of Americans, but I guess we're kind of an odd group to begin with.

Here's some fun shots of the kids, since they haven't been getting any love on the blog lately:

Ella doing what she loves best (actually mopping would probably be her favorite activity):

I'm not lying when I tell you I did not pose Drew like this. I may have had him get under the shade of the tree, but that's it. He was really "posing it" for the camera though:

OK hopefully Roman will get some love from the camera soon. He really needs to, because he's such a happy baby. I've had it on my list of things I want to do recently, but just haven't gotten around to it. Maybe tomorrow!

Checkout Almost COMPLETE!

2010-05-30T13:54:00.001+07:00

Pretty soon I'm going to be on my own flying in the jungles of Borneo. For about three weeks before we had to suddenly leave in November 2009, and since we've been back the past 2 months, I've been going through what MAF calls "field checkout." This is when I get oriented with the flying here, the airstrips, communication (which is the hardest part), and general ways of doing things here in East Kalimantan. I have two flights scheduled this week with my IP Dave Forney, where he'll basically just be riding along and observing (not much training). Up until now I've been checked out at all my initial airstrips I'll be flying into, plus we've done terrain flying, emergencies, air drops, talked a lot about the weather here (we don't have radar, NEXRAD, or any of the conveniences you'd find in the US other than our eyes and what the MAF airstrip agents report to us), etc. Hopefully, next week, a guy from the DGCA (the Indonesian equivalent of the FAA) will be coming down and giving me a check ride to give me my Indonesian pilot's license and I'll be flying on my own!

Here's some more photos from my checkout.

We walk the entire length of almost all the airstrips we go into. Here I'm using my inclinometer (which measures slopes and degrees of incline) to look at obstacles I need to look out for on takeoff:

This is at the village of Pa'Upan, with Dave (my IP) and Pak "I forgot his name." I've met so many different people at several different airstrips I can't keep track of them all. Dave's holding the measuring wheel (to measure the length of the airstrip) and Pak is carrying the marker that indicates the 75% point on the airstrip (which needed to be replaced):

Some kids at Pa'Upan enjoying the shade of the airplane's wing:

Later our friend invited us in for lunch, which was my first time in someone's home at an interior village. If you're thinking this home looks pretty nice for an interior village, you're right. Apparently this guy is relatively well off, so all the homes interior don't look like this. Don't feel sorry for me "having" to eat all sorts of "weird" food, because, I won't lie to you, it was really good. Fresh pineapple, veggies, rice from their rice fields, deer and some sort of small cat like animal that were both hunted down...nothing came from a store (except for possibly something that may have been brought in on an MAF plane):

On another flight, we went into a village, the airstrip agents loaded us up while we took care of ticketing/paperwork and checking fuel, and then flew 15 minutes to our main interior "hub" and, unbeknownst to me or Dave, the guys there unloaded this ant eater out of the cargo pod:

It probably weighed over 30 lbs! Apparently it's used for medicine here, and goes for a pretty good price.

Blessings!

Back in the Saddle

2010-05-17T20:00:00.001+07:00

I got to fly "interior" today (ie to the interior of Borneo into the villages we serve) for the first time since we got back from furlough. I've been scheduled to fly several times, but have been sick twice and we had a radio problem one time that forced us to cancel our flight.

Right now I'm still in my "checkout" phase, which means I'm under the authority and instruction of an Instructor Pilot (IP), who will check me out at each of the different airstrips I'll be flying into.

Because my training doesn't always line up with the flight requests and where we need to fly, sometimes you go into airstrips that you won't be checked out in initially. MAF divides airstrips into three basic classes: Class I are long runways that any general aviation pilot should be able to land at. The typical airport you find in the U.S. would fall in this category, and they generally don't have anything unusual about them. Class II are intermediate airstrips that offer additional challenges. They're usually quite a bit shorter than the Class I runways, and may have some slope or unusual approach profiles. I'll initially be checked out at Class II airstrips, in addition to the Class I runways. However, at the Class II airstrips, my Instructor Pilot will take me in and demonstrate a takeoff and landing, and then I'll do several myself, and we'll also get out and walk the entire airstrip and look at obstacles and things to watch out for. The last MAF classification is the Class III airstrips, which as you probably would guess, are the advanced airstrips. I won't be checked out at any Class III strips at first. I'm thankful that they don't just throw the rookies into the fire!

Today we got to go into two pretty tricky Class III airstrips. Since I won't be checked out in them for a while, my IP did the takeoffs and landings. The first one is called Pujungan. Notice the hooking approach on final, and you may not be able to tell here, but it is fairly short and the runway is pretty rough and narrow:

Here's the view for the takeoff. Notice how it's not straight either:

Next we went to Long Alongo, which although it's flat and the approach to it (from the south at least) is pretty normal, it's a pretty short airstrip for a Cessna 206, and it can really get your attention (I'm told) when it's wet. The takeoff was pretty exciting too, since you're turning and banking almost immediately after getting airborne in order to follow the river and avoid the terrain. Here's the view from above:

Dave Forney, my Instructor Pilot, chatting with the airstrip agent:

Last, we picked up a medical patient who had to be flown out on a medivac flight. We do lots of these all the time and there are countless people out in the villages whose lives have been saved by the MAF airplane:

Tomorrow we get to do it again. What a blessing!

Roman

2010-05-16T21:49:00.000+07:00

We're pretty confident he has eczema, and since one thing that irritates eczema is big temperature swings, we moved his bed out of our bedroom with AC and into our guest room without it. His face and the rest of his skin cleared up immediately since doing that. It was pretty bad before that...his skin felt like sandpaper and he was always scratching his head, but thankfully he's doing much better now!

Calming the Sea

2010-05-12T21:29:00.000+07:00

Not sure what Drew's trying to do here...maybe reading the story about Jesus calming the sea really had an effect on him?

Roman:

Tomorrow we celebrate Jesus' Ascension here in Indonesia (it's a "red letter day" here, meaning it's a national holiday for everyone). I believe they celebrate it 40 days after Resurrection Day (a.k.a. "Easter"). We have a girl here our team knows who became a believer not too long ago and she is being baptized tomorrow along with several other new believers. I think it's kind of cool that Christians here celebrate Jesus' Ascension, something we don't do in America at least.

View from the Cheap Seats

2010-05-02T14:18:00.000+07:00

There is no doubt in my mind that Heather's job at home with Drew, Ella, and Roman is MUCH harder than my job at the hangar. It's hard enough being a SAHM in America; being one here in Indonesia adds several difficulties:

1. Your kitchen, and pretty much entire house, is HOT and doesn't have AC. Yesterday I did a couple of projects around the house, and I gotta tell you it felt like I was 16 again working for Flythe Construction as a grunt laborer on the job site with sweat pouring off me. There's just no getting around it: it's hot in your house, and even more so in the kitchen, and that heat just takes the energy out of you.

2. Your washer (and our recently purchased dryer!) are half size, which is equivalent to having to do twice the amount of laundry. Plus, because we don't have unlimited amount of electricity running to our house (meaning, you have to turn off your AC units usually while running the dryer on high), you can't just dry your clothes all day. You have to line dry them first and then throw them in the dryer to "finish them off."

3. Getting groceries - this is always a challenge. Obviously we can't buy everything you'd buy at an American grocery store, plus you have to go to several different places just to get basic groceries like bread, cereal, veggies, fruit, etc.

4. Cooking - A LOT more cooking from scratch. Here below, Heather is cooking an apple pie from scratch. There's no boxed recipes here, no frozen pizzas or frozen anything really. Especially if you're cooking American food, the whole cooking thing just takes a lot longer and takes a lot more planning. And if you don't feel like cooking? Well, let's just say the take-out choices here aren't as many or varied as you'd find in America. Definitely no ordering pizza (although we do have a KFC here!).

5. Dishwasher - no dishwasher here, so everything has to be washed by hand. I know plenty of people in America don't have dishwashers either though.

I hope it doesn't sound like I'm complaining, because I'm not. I hope it does, however, sound like I am VERY appreciative of my wonderful wife and think I am one heck of a blessed guy. Not many women could live this life. Recently we've been wondering if we're going to be able to make it here long term! So please pray for us. We're actively looking for a house helper who can help relieve some of the burdens I mention above. Every other MAF family here has one except for us...they're pretty much a necessity, not a luxury, if you have small kids like us and want to make it here long term without a nervous breakdown.

Roman
I've had a request for some Roman shots. The poor 3rd child never gets as many photos as the firstborn! The little guy fell off our bed last night, onto our hard tile floor, so we were pretty concerned but he seems to be doing well (he does have a big knot on his forehead). Heather was in the kitchen, making dinner, with the other two kids, and I was outside trying to mow the lawn (I say trying because I never got the lawn mower cranked). She set him on the middle of our bed and somehow, even at just two months old, he managed to scoot himself off the edge. We were pretty shaken up but he never had any signs of a concussion, PTL.

He's such a sweet baby, usually only crying when he's hungry or needs something. Drew and Ella both just seemed a lot fussier than Roman.

Ella
I shared this on Facebook, but not here yet. The week before last while at our MAF Kalimantan Family Conference, all the women had a luncheon one day. Which meant I was left alone with three kids in a little hotel room. After feeding them lunch, I put Ella's pack n play in the bathroom for her nap, or else she'd never get to sleep. Well, apparently I should've moved Heather's make up bag far from her reach, because when I checked on her about 30 minutes after putting her down, this is what she looked like:

Have a blessed day!

2010 Kalimantan Family Conference

2010-04-23T14:09:00.000+07:00

We've had a great week here in Balikpapan, the largest city in East Kalimantan, at our annual MAF Family Conference for our program here in Central and East Kalimantan. Kevin & Linda Swanson, the former President of MAF, were our speakers for the conference. There was a VBS team from the US that came in and did a VBS program for all our kids while the adults were at our sessions. Although we just returned to Indonesia, for everyone else it's a much needed week to get away and rejuvenate. The theme of the conference, at least for the adults, was joy, and how we can be joyful no matter what our circumstances.

It was truly a "joy" to be with everyone, especially the folks from the float plane base down in Central Kalimantan, since we don't get to see them very often. Here's some pictures from the week.

Here is the group shot of everyone, probably around 50 people total, including the VBS team and the Swanson's:

Kevin & Linda Swanson, who spoke on joy:

We had a sand castle building contest for the kids. The water had lots of trash in it though so you definitely didn't want to swim in it.

The worship was awesome. I'm amazed how much talent we have here:

The VBS team and kids:

VBS was in a hotel room with the bed moved out:

We had a banquet, so everyone got dressed up and we ate a nice meal. Very fun.

Some of the ladies got makeovers, which doesn't sound like fun to me but I think they enjoyed it! Thanks Katrina for doing that!

Time to get back to work!

Last Day in America

2010-04-17T05:52:00.000+07:00

Getting ready to get on a plane and head out to our annual MAF East Kalimantan family conference in Balikpapan...I know, I know, we just get here and then we're leaving again? That's just how it worked out. Hopefully we can stock up on some cheese and bacon while we're there.

Just wanted to share a few photos for the family from the day before we left America.

Grandpa:

Grandpa & Grandma:

Mom & Roman:

Cole & Ella:

Granddad & the kiddos:

My side of the family:

Mom & Dad with our kids:

Mom & Dad with Christopher & Laura's kids:

Addison:

Christopher & Laura, Andrew, Cole, & Addison:

George, MG, and Belle:

FYI, I'm the oldest, Christopher (on right) is #2, and George (on left) is the baby:

The 45 Hour Journey of Fun

2010-04-11T13:33:00.002+07:00

We're back in Indonesia! Our house is finally unpacked from the long journey and from furlough and we're mostly over jet lag, so I think we can say that we're almost out of survival mode. Our whole MAF team here has been extremely helpful and caring, probably because they've all done it before as well, some with more kids than us. Here was what it was like to make the trip to Indonesia with a 3 year old, 2 year old, and 7 week old baby:

Monday 6:30AM EDT: We left my parents's house with our 7 bags of checked luggage in my grandpa's pickup, all exactly 50 pounds each.

Monday 7:00AM EDT: Our luggage is all unloaded and being weighed as I'm checking in an hour and a half before our flight leaves, while Heather, the kids, my parents, brother & wife, and Heather's Dad wait and visit one last time. The lady I'm checking in with remarks, "I'm glad you got here early."

Monday 8:00AM EDT: Still at the counter as the lady is now frantically trying to get our boarding passes printed out for all our flights. Apparently we didn't get here early enough! She actually escorts us through TSA security and helps us all the way to the gate as she was REALLY worried we would miss our flight (and I think she felt responsible since I don't think it should take an hour to check in, even if it is a long international flight). We got on the plane and then ended up sitting for another half hour as they had to kick some people off since the flight was overbooked anyway! Nothing like a little stress to start off the trip.

Monday 12:15PM CDT: We are crammed in the back of a United 747 and leaving Chicago for the 12 hour trip to Tokyo. This will be our longest flight. I don't know what it is, but United has the most cramped 747's I've ever been on. On top of that, we weren't able to get a bassinet for Roman (normally people with infant tickets get a bassinet which goes at the bulkhead) so between me and Heather (mostly Heather) we're going to be holding him almost this entire trip.

The kids did pretty well on this long leg. Drew watched lots of movies and can generally entertain himself pretty well:

Ella gets pretty fidgety and so I take her for lots of walks up and down the aisles and take her to the bathroom several times just for a change of scenery:

Finally all the kids are asleep! I talked to a few guys in the back of the plane, and they remark how well the kids are doing (but I think most people were looking at us like we're crazy). Roman is on my chest with Drew and Ella sleeping in between me and Heather:

Tuesday, 3:00pm Tokyo time (2:00am EDT, almost 20 hours since we left): We land in Tokyo tired, but the kids can run around for a couple of hours and they even have a little play area just for kids there. The kids are surprisingly energetic at this point and having a blast. We got them some McDonald's to eat before the 6 1/2 hour trip to Singapore:

Tuesday, 6:00pm Tokyo time (5:00am EDT): We leave Tokyo on a United 777 bound for Singapore, our last long leg. Even better, we were given bulkhead seating, the option of a bassinet, and the flight isn't very full so we even have an extra seat. On top of that, the flight attendants were all mostly Japanese and much friendlier than our previous flight. In case you've never been on an Asian airline (even though this was United), they tend to be the best in the world. Singapore, Malaysia, Thai, and Cathay Pacific Airlines are always the top rated in the world. There's just something about that Asian hospitality! So I'm feeling pretty good at this point.

Tuesday, 9:00pm Tokyo time (8:00am EDT, nearly 26 hours into our journey): We're about halfway done with this flight, the kids are all sleeping, Heather and I are asleep and happy and then it happened.....Ella wakes up not happy and starts throwing an absolute fit. That wakes up Drew, who also wakes up crying. You guessed it, Romans wakes up crying too. Ella is having a tantrum and doesn't even want to be held, screaming at the top of her lungs. She wants Heather to hold her (if I remember correctly) but she's holding Roman. Eventually she does let me hold her, but is still screaming and crying. Drew also wants to be held, but we're outnumbered. This went on for probably 20-25 minutes, but it felt like an eternity. We were gracious with them, since it was obvious Ella was just at the end of her rope and couldn't handle this no-good-sleep thing any longer (at this point she had probably slept 5 hours at most the entire trip, and not consecutively).

Wednesday, 12:00am Singapore time (Tuesday 12pm EDT, nearly 30 hours into the trip): We land in Singapore, which I'm pretty sure is the biggest airport in the world. We have a hotel reservation at a transit hotel within the airport, which is nice because we don't have to go through Customs or pick up luggage. However, because this is the biggest airport EVER and because they don't have very good signs pointing to where this hotel is, we didn't get to our room until almost 1:00am, an hour after we landed. And yes, we asked around 6 or 7 different people for directions along the way, some of them giving us conflicting directions. This airport has a massive mall built into it, lots of things to do, hotels, and a movie theatre from what I've heard. But all we wanted to do was go to bed, since our next flight left at 8:00am the next morning.

We ended up getting to sleep for 4 hours, from 1-5am Singapore time. But we only have a 2 hour flight and 1 hour flight left to get to our home in Tarakan.

Wednesday, 10:30am Balikpapan, Indonesia time (10:30pm Tuesday EDT, 40 hours into the trip): We arrive in Balikpapan, Indonesia, our port of entry into Indonesia, clear customs, pick up all our luggage, and pay $15 to hang out in the "Blue Sky Lounge" for a few hours while we wait for our last flight of the journey.

Wednesday, 3:30pm Tarakan time (3:30am EDT Wednesday, 45 hours since we left my parents' house): Our MAF team is waiting at the airport in Tarakan, East Kalimantan, Indonesia for us and greets us. It's so great to see everyone again! But we're worn out. They gather all our luggage and take us to our house. When we get to our house, we have some work to do before we can go to sleep. Our water isn't quite working, and our sheets on our bed have mold all over them. We had stuffed most of our important stuff into one room and left the AC on in there, and we're glad we did because everywhere else it's pretty musty and moldy. But we're SOOO glad to finally be here! Hopefully the next time we have to do this the kids will be much older and be able to take care of themselves more. But overall, they did pretty well.

Thank you to all of you who prayed for us!

One Week To Go!

2010-03-30T21:56:00.001+07:00

I have a confession. I'm still in America! I was supposed to leave to go back to Indonesia March 6, with Heather, the kids, and my mom to join me a month later. So here's what happened: On March 5, less than 24 hours before I was to leave, I got a call from the MAF Director of Personnel (I think that's his title), who asked how I felt about being separated from Heather for a month. Heather and I weren't too excited about being separated for a month, and she had grown increasingly anxious as my leave date approached. I was excited to get back to Indonesia, to get back to our ministry and the work there, but also wanted to be with my family. So I felt torn. But MAF graciously gave me the option to stay behind and return with my family, and Heather was SOO relieved. And I'm glad I was able to be here with my family! Having said that, I am REALLY excited to get back to Indonesia. We leave next Monday, April 5, and would appreciate your prayers as we make the 45 hour journey to Indonesia with a 3 year old, a 2 year old, and a 7 week old. Speaking of those kids, since we haven't posted in a while, I've got lots of pictures of them to show off!

Drew would be happy to have someone read to him all day if we could:

I love this one..."Sibling Rivary" -

My little assistant:

Checking the results:

Happy Birthday, Ella!

2010-03-10T07:53:00.004+07:00

Last Friday, March 5th, we celebrated Ella's 2nd birthday. I know it sounds so cliche to say, but I really can't believe she is already 2. It seems like just yesterday that she was Roman's size and could fit perfectly in my lap. In so many ways milestones, like birthdays, and just the passage of time are reminders to me of my mom's death. I know it might sound weird, but thinking of Ella turning 2 and my mom not being here to see it breaks my heart. God is gracious though and quickly reminds me of all the wonderful things my mom was here to see and I begin to praise Him for those times and cherish them.

Ella has really developed quite a personality in the last several months. She is constantly making us laugh with her antics and loves to be the center of attention. She loves to play with her baby doll and stroller, read books, sweep and mop, wear my lipgloss, help me put on my make-up, and go "shopping" at the store for mommy.

Tripp, Drew and I are so blessed to have Ella as a part of our family. She is a precious gift from God and it is such a privilege to be her mommy.

Happy Birthday, Ella!

Reliving My Childhood

2010-03-02T10:11:00.000+07:00

When I was a kid I loved building model rockets. I loved building pretty much anything really. My dad had bought a scale model of the Saturn V rocket that carried the Apollo astronauts to the moon, but for whatever reason, never actually built it (he bought it back in 88 or 89 I think). So back in November I asked him if I could build his Saturn V, and that's been my little project since we've been home on furlough in November. Now you know what I've been doing all furlough! Yesterday me, my dad, and my brother went out and launched it, which was a lot of fun. Drew and Ella enjoyed it from the car (Drew HATES fireworks and this is too close to being fireworks for him).

Here's a video of two of the launches:

Furlough Slideshow

2010-02-24T23:18:00.001+07:00

This is the slideshow we've been showing as we've gone around speaking at our churches and small groups, in addition to the abridged version of the video I posted about earlier. It's a summary of our 15 months we spent in Indonesia from August 2008 to November 2009. I (Tripp) head back to Indonesia next Saturday, March 6, while Heather and the kids will stay here until April 5 and come back with my mom. Please pray for Heather and me during this month apart (not fun to be separated), and especially for Heather having to look after a newborn, 2 year old, and 3 year old on her own (although we're blessed to have my family helping out a LOT).

Peaceful Sleep

2010-02-22T14:57:00.001+07:00

Too bad it's not like this at night...

Welcome Roman Philip Flythe

2010-02-13T19:28:00.000+07:00

Heather went into labor this morning while snow was piling up on the ground (thankfully not much). We arrived at the hospital just before 8AM and by 11:34AM we had a baby boy! Heather did great, and both mom and baby are doing great. Ironically, we followed almost the exact same plan as for Ella. Labor started at the same time, we arrived at the hospital at the same time, and they were born within minutes of each other. To top it off, they were even born in the exact same room! Roman came in at 8 lb 6 oz, the lightweight of our three (Drew and Ella were both 8 lb 13 oz). Thanks for praying!

We dropped off Ella at my parents' this morning. Drew was spending the night with Heather's Dad:

We had a great midwife:

Just moments after birth:

All Over the World: Borneo

2010-02-11T08:51:00.000+07:00

As we've traveled around speaking at our churches and with our supporters, we've been showing a video that highlights our ministry in East Kalimantan. A group from All Over the World came out about a year and a half ago and shot a documentary on our MAF team in East Kalimantan. Although we're not in this video, we're really proud of it because it's still our team and the people we serve and, well, the fact that it shows perfectly our life and ministry in Indonesia! When we show this we normally only show the 6 minute abridged version of the documentary, but now you have an opportunity to watch the full 28 minute feature length film, right at the comfort of your computer! I know I've promised to send the full DVD to some of you, but it's copyrighted and I don't feel right about making lots of copies of the DVD and this is just a lot easier. So please click here to watch the All Over the World: Borneo documentary (I wish I could just embed it here, but I didn't have that option). Enjoy!

The Great NC Snow of 2010

2010-02-02T22:31:00.000+07:00

We were especially loving the snow since this will probably be the last time we enjoy snow for several years. Of course, that could be true of anyone living in North Carolina, but we definitely don't see snow in Indonesia since it never goes below 75 degrees where we live! I think we were more excited for the kids to play in the snow than they were. In fact, Ella didn't enjoy it at all...maybe on our next furlough in another four years she'll like it. We were a little concerned that Heather might go into labor, which would've made things really interesting considering UNC Hospital (where she'll deliver) is about 25 miles away.

Hope everyone else in the NC area had fun! Are you ready for it to melt? Or, if you're reading this from Indonesia, are you jealous a little?

This one below was one of the few where Ella was walking:

37 Weeks

2010-01-31T00:03:00.000+07:00

Due date is February 14. With all this snow/sleet, I sure hope Heather doesn't go into labor this weekend!

January Happenings

2010-01-17T16:08:00.000+07:00

We've had a pretty busy January visiting with friends and supporting churches, which has been a blast! We were at Center Grove Baptist Church last weekend, which is always fun. This was our third visit there so we're starting to feel like we really know them. They're always super friendly and very missions focused. Then Wednesday night we were at my parents' church, North Ridge Bible Chapel, and then at Heather's home church today, Grace Community Church. It's always fun and encouraging seeing the people that are praying and giving toward your ministry, especially when you haven't seen them in a while. Heather and I always walk away talking about how blessed we are!

In other news, Drew finally started doing #2 in the potty this past week! That was pretty exciting news around the Flythe house since he seemed like he would never do it. All it took was being able to watch Curious George while sitting on the potty, and maybe a few bribes (and the threat of a suppository). But we celebrated afterwards:

The Heather Tribute

2009-12-28T12:35:00.000+07:00

Heather turned 32 yesterday, and I had planned to post this on her birthday, but things got a little crazy around here yesterday so it's a little late. Sorry if this is a little mushy. I'm not really known for being the romantic of the family anyway, so I guess it's worth a try right?

After seeing Heather lose her mom and going to two more funerals in the past month, one of which was a guy from high school who left behind a wife and two young daughters, I've kind of considered what life would be like without my wife. To be honest, I don't know what I'd do. It would be devastating to say the least. As we've been traveling and seeing old friends while being home on furlough and going to Christmas parties, I've also thought how proud I am to be married to her. That's something that's even part of being a "Proverbs 31 woman," that her husband and children "rise up and call her blessed" (I'm quoting from memory...I hope that's right). I'm just really glad to be married to her and to be able to serve her, especially during this time of grieving.

It's funny because when we moved in with my grandparents where all our stuff is stored one of the first things I wanted to do was to go and look back through old photos (not really old, just before digital). Some of the pictures and rolls of film you remember and just kind of fly through them but I found myself really enjoying seeing the photos of me and Heather from years past. So much so that I went and got a film scanner so I could scan them in and always have them with me! We just can't carry back shoeboxes of prints and negatives to Indonesia with us. So I thought I'd share some of the "old" (pre-digital) pictures of Heather that I like, since this is the "Heather" post.

Believe it or not I actually took these bridal pictures of Heather, even though it was almost a year after we got married. I was kind of practicing bridal portraits (back when I was an aspiring wedding photographer) and also wanted to have one of her, since we didn't really have one of her:

This was the week before we got married:

Did you know Heather was voted best dancer in high school?

At our rehearsal dinner:

The day after our wedding, waiting to get on the plane for our honeymoon! What a fun time:

With her mom, also not long before we got married (2004):

These obviously aren't old, but just another reminder of why I'm thankful for Heather and the 3 wonderful little blessings she's given me:

Sorry for the cheesy post, I just feel very blessed. Maybe when we get back to Indonesia I can make more posts about airplanes and flying into the remote jungles to serve the people there...you know, more manly stuff. I just wanted to share how much I love and appreciate my wife!

Ginger Bread House

2009-12-24T23:00:00.000+07:00

Mom bought a Ginger Bread House for the kids. Ella was into it for the first 20 minutes or so, well at least she was into eating the candy for it. Drew was really into it the whole time though. He really likes building things, whether it's a Ginger Bread House or with Legos.

George & Mary Grace

2009-12-22T20:55:00.001+07:00

Here's George & Mary Grace, my brother and sister-in-law, with their dog Belle and cat Charlie. You'd never guess he was a soldier fighting for us in Afghanistan this time last Christmas would you?

Charlie wasn't too thrilled:

Bowling

2009-12-13T22:40:00.000+07:00

Bowling at Andrew, Cole, and Addison's birthday party. Drew really liked bowling...

Not from bowling yesterday, but I really like this shot of Ella and had to share:

Happy Birthday!

2009-12-02T13:35:00.003+07:00

Today would've been my mom's 63rd birthday and I want to celebrate and honor her life today. My mom did that so well with her family....especially her grandchildren:) Anyone who knew my mom knew that she was a gift giver and expressed her love through gifts, cards, thoughtful emails, and her time. I had a conversation with my mom after her surgery in September and the first thing she asked was what she could get Drew for his birthday. I told her she didn't have to worry about it, but knowing my mom I knew she would have something in the mail for him in time for his birthday and sure enough she did. There is a package waiting for Drew when we get back to Indonesia.

As I think about my mom what I remember most is her sweet and gentle spirit and her love for the Lord. I can't remember a morning when my mom didn't sit on the couch in the living room and read her Bible. Every morning she got up early before work to read the Bible. What an example she was to me and I hope I can be that same kind of example to my children. I want my children to see me actively pursuing righteousness, just like their Mimi.

I never thought that when we left for Indonesia 15 months ago I would never have a conversation, face-to-face, with my mom again or be able to give her a hug, but as Tripp has so graciously reminded me I WILL get to see my mom again. I don't know what it will be like, but I do know that one day we will be praising our Savior together.

While my heart is aching right now and I can't even begin to imagine my life on this earth without my mom, I know that in the midst of this God is still good and that all this suffering is meant for my gain and ultimately God's glory. God has not wavered in his wisdom, love and omnipotence and knowing that draws my heart even closer to Him. God has chosen to take my mom from this world, but He has given me so much peace in that my mom can now behold with her eyes what those of us in Christ here long to see.

One thing I desperately want to do for my children is to keep the memory of their Mimi alive. If you have any ways that you do this with your family for those you have lost please share them with me.

Happy Birthday, Mom!

Happy Thanksgiving!

2009-11-27T11:13:00.002+07:00

Happy Thanksgiving! While so many of the people in the world struggle to find food, we had a feast today. We Americans are truly blessed by our Creator. Living in the developing world makes you realize just how much you have to be thankful for.

Granddad's House

2009-11-20T14:41:00.000+07:00

We've had a good time catching up with Heather's Dad the last two weeks. Here's a little slideshow of what the Flythe's have been up to since returning to America. Nothing terribly exciting, but the kids were pretty happy to play with a very friendly cat in the backyard that kept coming over.

Space Ship

2009-11-16T09:14:00.003+07:00

Friday Drew celebrated his 3rd birthday, and his Granddad (Heather's Dad) gave him a model rocket. I was really into model rockets as a kid, so I was pretty excited myself to go shoot it off. I think I'm going to have to dig out my old ones out of my parents' basement pretty soon!

He was actually a lot more excited than he looks here, at least until the 2nd launch. He calls it his "space ship":

Ella and Heather enjoying the beautiful fall day here in NC, not something we thought we'd get to experience just a couple weeks ago sitting in Indonesia:

Mimi

2009-11-12T01:55:00.002+07:00

Thank you so much for all your kind comments and for your prayer. We made it back to America safely from Indonesia, and the kids (especially Drew) were great on the plane. Ella was good when she was sleeping :-).

Heather's mom, known as "Mimi" by the grandkids, was able to hang on long enough for us to see her at the ICU. Heather was able to say her goodbye's, even though she wasn't responding much. Later that evening she was taken off life support and went to be with Jesus at 10:49pm Friday night. When Drew asks where Mimi is, we tell him, "Mimi went to see Jesus." And he responds, "I wanna see Jesus too!" It's pretty cute.

Below are some of the photos of Mimi we showed in a slideshow at her funeral.

Since we didn't have any winter clothes for Ella and Drew, they've graciously been given some new clothes for them to wear. Ella is especially excited each morning when she gets to put on her new clothes. When she saw this dress, which she wore to Mimi's funeral, she immediately wanted to try it on. And she's only 20 months old!

Our plan for now is to remain in the States until the baby is born, which is in February. After that we'll return to Indonesia. Heather is doing well considering the circumstances, although she very much misses her mom.

Going Home

2009-11-04T13:34:00.002+07:00

I just want to make a quick post to let anyone who doesn't get our email updates know about what's going on. We're packing for America right now, getting on a plane tomorrow. Right when we got here Heather's mom found out she had ovarian cancer. The initial prognosis was good and it seemed beatable: she would undergo chemo, and the doctors were confident that she could beat it. Even just a few weeks ago, after her first (and only) chemo treament, she seemed to be improving and doing better. We had considered Heather and the kids going home with a couple here who were also visiting the States for a month. But we decided to wait, and combine going home with having the baby in February. If she got worse, we could still all hop on a plane. Well, this past weekend Heather's Dad took her to the hospital because she was having difficulty breathing. They also found she had an infection, and were throwing everything at it they could. At this point we were also scrambling to get tickets to come home, but getting tickets from Indonesia to America is not quick. We finally got tickets to leave Thursday from Indonesia, arriving Friday afternoon in Raleigh. But her condition deteriorated so quickly that it appears it's too late. They're trying to keep her alive until we get home, but even that may not happen. She's in an almost coma like state, but is responding a little. Heather's Dad has told her, "Heather's coming!" And she opened her eyes when he told her that, so please pray that she can hold on long enough for Heather to say goodbye. It's just a sad situation. Heather's devastated that she likely won't get to see her mom again, certainly not spend any quality time with her. I'm regretting not sending her on a plane sooner, but no one, certainly not the doctors, thought she would go this quickly. Hospice was never called, and they never indicated at any point that this could be the beginning of the end. But we leave tomorrow nonetheless, and it is what it is. God is good. Cancer is just one more reminder of the fallen world we live in.

Random Stuff

2009-10-31T15:48:00.003+07:00

One of the issues we're having to deal with now is an airport project that is threatening to overtake our hangar. The airport where MAF is based has a long 7500 foot runway, long enough for most commercial jets to use. In fact, there are about 5 jet flights (737 or equivalent) per day that takeoff and land here in Tarakan. However, there is no taxiway for them to use, just runway that they have to back taxi for takeoff. It's quite an inconvenience for these jets of course, so the airport has undertaken a massive and expensive project to build a taxiway so they don't have to back taxi for takeoff (the sarcasm is in full gear now). Nevermind the fact that there are about a dozen other things they could do to improve the airport, like install radar. But I guess they've been granted some money, so they're going to spend it whether they need to or not. So the new runway they're hoping to build (I say hoping because we're hoping they run out of money, which is also a likely possibility) is going to come right by our hangar, forcing us to move. Our program manager here has been trying to secure a spot on the airport for us to move into, should that become a reality. So last week we set off on a photo flight to survey the airport, and show the airport managers some of the spots they had picked out for us. It's been a huge frustration, because depending on who you talk to, you can get all sorts of different answers. But the photo flight was a lot of fun for me, since I got to sit in the back of a 206 with the doors off and take pictures! I would've jumped out if I'd had a parachute!

Here's our house from the air. It's to the left of the one with the green roof. If you look really close, you can see Drew and Ella looking up at us:

Here's a shot of the airport, with the town of Tarakan in the background:

Not from the air, but here's the hangar:

This is Yulius, one of our staff fueling a 206 before a medivac flight to pick up a sick person interior:

On another note, last weekend we went out to the beach for the first time since we've been here. We've been here two months and live only about 10 miles from the beach! But it does take some time to get there, and it's not quite the same as going to the beach in America. There were lots of Indonesians there who seemed like they had never seen a foreigner before. We often draw stares, but this time was even more than normal. We went with another family and had taken a picnic dinner, and there was a crowd of about 20 kids gathered around us just staring at us while we ate dinner! Ella was like a celebrity, with several kids crowding around her and taking pictures of her with their cell phones.

Heather making friends:

And just to keep this post really random, here's some recent stuff of the kids enjoying the blow up pool in the backyard:

Ride-A-Long

2009-10-19T18:44:00.002+07:00

The other day I went on a "ride-a-long" with fellow MAF pilot Paul College. I thought I'd share what a typical day for him looks like.

Paul doing the preflight. The pilots arrive at 7am to do the preflight and get ready for the day. The planes depart around 8am.

Bags being loaded by our national staff:

There's a lot to do on the first leg out interior. Paul spent quite a bit of time arranging the schedule and talking to the strip agents (in the villages), who call to ask how much he can carry. So he's busy talking to them, calculating fuel loads, and basically determining what he can take (there's always more to carry than we're able). He's of course doing this in Indonesian over HF radio, which doesn't sound like a "normal" VHF radio (which is more commonly used by pilots). I can barely understand English over an HF radio, let alone Indonesian! Oh yeah, he's also fighting weather while doing all this:

Passengers:

Our first stop for the day, Binuang. I'll be checked out here soon too (I'm only checked out on the easiest strips initially):

We're immediately greeted by throngs of people who come to see what the little red and white airplane has brought. The people are so friendly here, and Paul has even been "adopted" into a family at one of the villages. They give us each some rice to take home, and even ask me if I can bring my family here for Christmas!

One thing that has to be carefully managed is fuel. Since no one sells this interior, we have to bring it in ourselves. Here Paul is defueling the plane, so it can be used later. We were frequently adding 5 gallons here and there, just enough to get us to the next village.

I've already begun my flight checkout, and will begin flying interior (with an Instructor Pilot) this Friday! There's still quite a bit to learn. Hopefully I'll be "operational" (going solo) by early December.

Tarakan Happenings

2009-10-10T20:19:00.002+07:00

OK, I'd like to apologize to everyone wondering "What is going on with the Flythe's? Did they get hit by the earthquake?" This past six weeks for us, since we moved to our MAF program base in Tarakan, East Kalimantan, Indonesia, from language school in Central Java, Indonesia, has been quite hectic to say the least. But we're happy to report that we've moved into our permanent house after staying 3 weeks in temporary housing. We're also pretty settled in already, thanks to the fact that we bought most of our furniture in Java and shipped it here in a container. In fact, apparently most of the MAF folks here spend most of their first year getting their houses set up because we keep hearing from our teammates here, "You guys look like you've been here for 3 years already!"

As for the earthquake, that happened about 1000 miles away on the island of Sumatra, so we didn't feel a thing. The MAF plane in Banda Aceh did fly down to help out with the relief, although its services weren't needed as much like they were after the 2004 tsunami.

Since we've been much busier, I haven't had many chances to take pictures. However, it's been a month since we last posted so I'll show a few pictures that hopefully kind of shows some snapshots over the past month.

One of our crates that arrived from the US arrived with termite damage. The crates sat at the port of entry in Surabaya, Indonesia, for almost 3 months, probably outside, so I'm almost certain that's where the termites ate their way in. They got into EVERYTHING in this crate, but thankfully, it was mostly kitchen stuff, so very little was actually destroyed. Everything was covered in "termite poop" or whatever it is they leave behind, which is very difficult to remove. Very gross, but we're thankful that after feeling kind of sick unpacking it, it was mostly OK!

I haven't started my flight checkout yet (I start this week), but I've been in the hangar working on the MAF planes, which I also really enjoy. If you're a pilot or A&P mechanic, you probably know that in the US only a prop shop is allowed to do maintenance on a propeller. We were taught in A&P school that as A&P mechanics we don't touch propellers, but here I am putting one back together! That's because here in Indonesia, we get a special exception to do this because we cannot get a fully assembled propeller delivered to us like you would in the US. I'm sure this is boring to anyone else, but I thought it was kind of cool:

Getting the gas for our Cessna 206's here (avgas) has always been interesting because it's either very hard to get or very expensive (usually both). Here we are taking a shipment of avgas. We put it into drums, and then roll them away for storage. It was a lot of work, but also a lot of fun:

Ella enjoying herself:

I thought some might like to see pictures of our house too. Before we moved here we always wondered what the houses were like, and the general "How do missionaries live?" After all, most people probably think we live in grass huts ;-). Our house is actually very nice. It has A/C in 3 of the bedrooms. The rest of the house is hot, but we have fans and are getting used to the heat.

Here's the living room. This is the view you get walking into the house:

Dining room:

Kitchen, with Ella helping Heather prepare dinner. We shipped that black oven from the US, and we are SO glad we did. It would have cost twice as much to get an oven here that isn't even half the quality:

Kids Room. Drew sleeps on the bunk bed, and Ella is still sleeping in the Pack n Play, although she will move to the "big bed" there soon. It also has a trundle, so there's room for four kids in here:

The Office. The Lazy Boy recliner there on the left got relegated here since it didn't fit the decor of the living room :-) It makes a nice reading chair though, especially since it's in a room with A/C:

Our Bedroom. That bed was made in Central Java out of teak wood. However, since we have the A/C in here most of the time, many parts of the bed have actually started shrinking to where you can actually see unpainted parts of the bed, presumably because it's losing moisture. That's a pretty common problem here. Having furniture warp because the wood wasn't fully dry is also a common problem.

So that's our house! We also live really close with our other MAF team mates here. Three are just a stone's throw away, and two more are just a 2 minute walk.

We're Here!

2009-09-09T20:04:00.003+07:00

Sorry it's been a while since we've updated our blog, especially since I'm sure some of you were wondering if we eventually made it to East Kalimantan or not! We did arrive in Tarakan, East Kalimantan, eventually, and are enjoying it so far, especially our great MAF team here. We're staying in another family's home that is currently on furlough (Dave & Joy Forney) while our house is getting ready. Our crates from the States finally made it as well (getting crates wrestled out of the port of entry in Surabaya, East Java, Indonesia has been anything but easy for the MAF folks here lately). However, the crates are sitting in our MAF hangar since we're not allowed to open them until our work permit and visa are processed fully. It feels kind of like a Christmas present sitting under the tree: can't open them until Christmas, or in our case until our Kitas comes through.

Besides trying to get our house set up with furniture and appliances, I've also started working in the MAF hangar. And they didn't start me with any light maintenance either: me and another guy have been doing a top overhaul on one of our Cessna TU-206's, which is some pretty major surgery on the engine...basically tearing most of the engine apart! In a few weeks hopefully I'll also begin flying, although recently there has been a lot of smoke from the farmers in Borneo burning their fields, which reduces the visibility and doesn't allow us to fly. Just last night 3 of our airplanes couldn't make it back into Tarakan because the airport was closed because of visibility. This smoke is coming from hundreds of miles away in Central Kalimantan...I'm guessing it's big enough to be seen from space. So who knows how long this will continue, but right now we're not flying.

One thing we're learning to deal with is the heat. It's way hotter here than it was in Salatiga! We didn't even have AC in our house there (you didn't really need it, although it did get hot sometimes), but our house here has AC in 3 of the bedrooms. The rest of the house? Right now, at 9:30pm, it's 90 degrees and 65% humidity. It's really zapping our energy too...but hopefully we'll get used to it. We definitely weren't expecting the heat to affect our daily lives like this!

Sorry no pictures...we're still in "survival mode." Thankfully everyone here has been great, providing meals for the first week, and doing anything else they can to help.

We're Illegal Aliens!

2009-08-26T13:02:00.002+07:00

We left Salatiga, Central Java, on August 18 and were supposed to spend 3 nights in Jakarta and then arrive at our new home in Tarakan, East Kalimantan, Indonesia, on August 21. We were using the time in Jakarta for me (Tripp) to get my flight physical, which took almost an entire day, and also to get doctor checkups for the kids and Heather with #3 in utero. Another thing that was supposed to happen was we were going to sign our new Kitas, which is our permission to live in Indonesia as foreigners. However, somewhere someone dropped the ball and our Kitas wasn't being processed and so we're still in Jakarta waiting to sign our new Kitas (it's basically like a Green Card in the US). Not only that, but our old Kitas (they're valid for a year) expired on August 21, so technically for a few days we were here illegally! But it's all being processed now so there's nothing to worry about. We've been staying with our MAF lady who runs the MAF office here in Jakarta and takes care of all the paperwork to keep MAF flying in Indonesia. It's crazy all the security clearances, visas, and general paperwork that have to be dealt with every day by her and her staff here...we're thankful to have them take care of all this.

Another thing we're trying to figure out is where we're going to stay while we have the baby in February. We plan on being here for at least a month before the baby comes, so we need to find somewhere to live during that time. The hospital where we're having the baby is just outside of Jakarta, and with Jakarta's traffic it could take up to 3 hours to get there during peak traffic, even though it's just 10-15 miles outside the main city! But we have at least been enjoying all the good restaurants and shopping. The amount of money in Jakarta compared to the rest of Indonesia is crazy. We were certainly considered wealthy where we lived in language school, but here in Jakarta we're finding it quite expensive to live and we're definitely not wealthy here. So we're kind of ready to get to Tarakan! For that reason, most Indonesians want to find work in Jakarta, hoping that they can find work and make lots of money. In fact, there's an Indonesian proverb used to describe it here: Where there is sugar, there are ants.

Hopefully, we'll be able to leave this Friday the 28th if they get our Kitas ready.

Goodbye Salatiga!

2009-08-18T21:14:00.002+07:00

We said goodbye to our friends in Salatiga, Central Java, this morning, where we've been living for the past year. It was hard, but I know it's harder being left behind. So right now we're in Jakarta for a few days before we head to Tarakan, East Kalimantan. Even when we get there we'll be living in another family's home who are on furlough right now, while we wait for our container and crates to get there to set up our home. So we're once again living in transition, which we've kind of gotten used to (but have never particularly enjoyed!).

Here's our container, which we sent off last Friday. It was a lot fuller than I thought, but we'll pretty much be ready to go once it arrives and won't have to spend 2 months setting up our house:

Two of my favorite instructors at our school, Pak Adi and Pak Yovan:

This is Heather's friend Ratih, who Ella adored. Anytime a motorcycle would pull up to our house she thought it was her, and would start calling out "Ratih, Ratih!"

So that's where we are...just wanted to let everyone know!

Big Wheels

2009-08-02T22:09:00.002+07:00

There was supposed to be this big carnival at the main town square here in Salatiga this weekend, but when we got there today around 2:30pm it was just shutting down...apparently it stopped at 2pm. So instead, we let the kids rent these motorized cars that you could drive around the main town square (called the Pancasila). Drew was also chasing birds all over the place...pretty funny.

Pak Theo

2009-07-30T14:49:00.002+07:00

I got an SMS Tuesday morning that one of our teachers, Pak Theo, had died early that morning. He had just taught us the day before and seemed fine. He was 46 years old and had just recently been remarried this past December after his first wife passed away.

He's the 2nd from the left here (the guy on the far left is Javanese, and Pak Theo was Papuan):

Nobody really knows what happened, since he died so suddenly, before he could even get to a hospital. Maybe a heart attack? We'll never know. Pak Theo was our one and only teacher from Papua, which is almost as far culturally from Javanese culture (where we live now) as American culture is from Java. He was a very godly man, with a heart for Muslims living around him, and a love for the Word of God and his Saviour Jesus. He often preached at his church and from his funeral it was apparent he was involved with people all over the city. He normally taught the upper classes at IMLAC (our language school), which means for us that he was teaching me and Heather a lot recently. In fact, we had him almost every day, usually for Bible class and for one-on-one interviews where we ask them about different cultural issues. Our language classes are very small, with our unit only being me and Heather, which means we got to know Pak Theo fairly well. We're shocked and sad to see him go, but as his pastor preached at his funeral, his task on earth was finished so God called him home. The message his pastor delivered at the funeral was "luar biasa" (outstanding) as Pak Theo would always say, pointing to the Gospel and Jesus over and over to an audience that had many non-believers present. From Scripture he pointed to several passages that point with certainty to where Pak Theo's spirit is now (with Christ), which is very different from the typical Javanese belief (they are very unsure). I talked to him about it afterwards, telling him I thought it was a great message, and he told me, "So many people here are scared to die because they don't know where their spirit goes afterwards." In fact, for a Muslim who passes away in Java, they normally pray for 3 straight nights so that hopefully his spirit will go to heaven. They believe that the spirit of the deceased might hang around here, waiting for God's judgment as to whether it can enter heaven or not. In fact, they have ceremonies and prayer times for the spirit of the deceased on the 3rd, 7th, 100th, and 1000th day after they die to pray for the spirit to enter heaven. The belief is that the further it is from the day of death, the more likely the spirit is to not be living around here (on earth) anymore.

We see or hear about so many people dying around here, and many of them young, dying suddenly like Pak Theo. There was a guy just down the street from us who was killed in a motorcycle accident (he was in his forties with young kids still); there was a girl also just down the street from us in her early 20's, married less than a year, and 8 months pregnant who died suddenly (no one knows from what, but we suspected pre-eclampsia or eclampsia); and just recently our neighbors and friends Pak Jono and Ibu Kazum suffered a loss when Ibu Kazum's only remaining brother fell out of a coconut tree and died. At one time she had four siblings; now it's just her, with both parents having passed as well. Obviously with medical care being what it is in a developing country and safety in general not being very important, the mortality rate for the typical Indonesian is pretty high. The ironic thing is, most people in America are probably more worried about us dying in a terrorist attack than anything else (especially in light of the recent Jakarta bombings), when the chance of that happening is tiny. I recently saw on an expat-in-Indonesia forum some statistic about how you're many multiple times more likely to be shot, raped, or violently killed (basically any kind of violent crime) in America than in Indonesia. However, I can virtually guarantee the chance of dying in a more ordinary way, like a motorcycle accident, is higher here. I know I've become way more conservative and defensive in driving since coming to Indonesia. Thankfully we won't be doing much driving at all in Kalimantan since we'll be living on a very small island! Sorry, not trying to scare anyone...in the end it probably evens out for us anyway! God is ultimately the Giver and Taker of life.

Pak Theo leaves behind his newlywed wife and two high-school aged children. He will surely be missed!

O Solo Mio

2009-07-26T21:55:00.002+07:00

There's a little Italian restaurant in a nearby town, Solo, that we like to go to whenever we're there. In fact, sometimes we go to Solo just to go to this restaurant, cleverly called "O Solo Mio." So, this past Thursday (for my birthday and for our anniversary), Heather and I left the kids with the helpers, packed a bag for one night, and rode the motorcycle to Solo. Normally it's a 1 1/2 hour trip, but on the bike it was just over an hour! Lest you think I was speeding, keep in mind it's only about 55 kilometers away, or a little further than Raleigh to Chapel Hill. If you can average over 30 mph on the road here you are making GREAT time! We had a good time, but as always we were ready to get back to the kiddos.

Here's a picture of just me in front of O Solo Mio, at the request of my mom (despite the thousands of photos I have on my computer, I have very few of myself!):

Heather, looking beautiful as always:

Took the kiddos to the playground today. Ella was really enjoying the sandbox:

Drew giving us his "surprised" look:

My favorite from today:

Drew + Ella + 1

2009-07-20T19:45:00.008+07:00

To view it full screen (which I highly recommend), click on the button above at the lower right corner.

There's a picture toward the middle of the show with Heather in it, and if you look closely you'll see she's holding a bag of "Cha Cha's" (basically the Indonesian equivalent to M&M's). That was the bribe!

Baby #3 is due February 14, 2010!! Drew is already hoping for a little brother.

Climbing Merapi

2009-07-12T21:32:00.005+07:00

This past Friday night, three friends of mine and I set off to climb nearby Mt. Merapi, which is famous not only because it's the most active volcano in Indonesia, but also because of the spiritual power it holds. Indeed, there is a "paranormal" or person who is the "in-between" between the spirit of Merapi and the regular people. His name is Marijan. This man, who lives nearby, holds so much power that even politicians who campaign try to get his endorsement. Even when the mountain is brewing and the government tells people to leave, if he tells people to stay, they stay. They stay to give offerings and sacrifices to the god of Merapi to try to keep it happy. As a result, this mountain has killed many people in recent years. Lots of people live all around it. So, ever since I learned about Merapi it's been my desire to climb it, since I've never climbed an active volcano let alone one of the most active in the world.

For some reason most people climb it at night in order to see the sunrise, so that's what we did. I'm all about seeing sunrises, but foregoing a whole night's sleep for it? None of us had sleeping bags, so we just decided to go straight to the top. There was some confusion as to how long it would take, but we ended up starting the climb at 11pm with a goal of getting to the top by about 5am. You can see the smoke coming off the top in this shot taken at 1:30am:

Here's the view of neighboring Mt. Merbabu at night:

Two of the faster climbers in our party reached the area Indonesians call "the desert," which is kind of a resting place before the final ascent, at around 2am. They sat there for the next 2 hours or so and froze their little behinds off, resting, while me and Ben got there about 4am. Being at 10,000 feet, I knew it would be cold, but I don't think I was prepared for how cold it would be. Plus it was incredibly windy...my fingers were numb (and I was wearing gloves) and I was exhausted both from not sleeping and the climb. I was definitely not in shape for the climb! The afternoon before we left I had taken Benadryl and slept for 4 hours to try to get some sleep, but I think that may have just messed me up. Actually by the time I got to the bottom the next morning, I had a fever, felt like throwing up, and could hardly move. I was kind of worried it could have been altitude sickness, since I was pushing myself pretty hard at an altitude I wasn't used to. I felt much better after we got back to Salatiga, maybe because there was more oxygen!

The final ascent on the dome part was steep and very rocky. You had to be careful where you stepped and watch out for falling rocks from people above you (believe it or not there were quite a few people there in the pitch black at 4:30am doing this with us!). It kind of looked like what I picture the moon looking like. This is looking toward Mt. Merbabu:

Cold and exhausted:

My friend Ben was no dummy. Although we didn't bring tents or sleeping bags, he found someone with a tent and took a nap:

Looking toward the town of Solo to the east, about 30 minutes before sunrise. This one is much better if viewed larger:

Here's the actual dome, or summit, behind me. It's actually much bigger than it looks here (because of the super wide angle lens I was using). The smell of sulfur coming off the top was stronger as you went higher:

One of the offerings made to the spirit of Merapi (at least that's what I thought it was for);

To watch a full size slideshow of these photos and a few more, click here.

Well, I can now say I've climbed an active volcano. I've always loved the idea of climbing the huge peaks in the Himalaya's, but after doing this little one (only 10,000 feet), I think I've learned my lesson! It really kicked my tail! It was probably a combination of not being in good enough shape, doing it in the middle of the night with no sleep, and doing it while freezing cold (I didn't really bring many warm clothes to Indonesia, I mean, it's on the equator!)...let's just say I was glad to get home!