Happy New Year!

" Do you think I cannot call on My Father, and He will at once put at My disposal more than twelve legions of angels? But how then would the scriptures be fulfilled that say it must happen this way?" (Matthew 26:52-53)

"In bringing many sons and daughters to glory, it was fitting that God, for Whom and through Whom everything exists, should make the pioneer of their salvation perfect through what He suffered."
(Hebrews 2:10)

As this year draws to a close, I am becoming more and more humbled by the means God used to display Himself through Jesus.  The first verse above is taken from Jesus' arrest, where it appears his disciples are expecting Him to finally take charge against the Romans and lead the Jewish people to victory.  He could take charge and do much more than just overcome the Roman rule...but something bigger is going on. There is a cup He must drink, and He alone can drink it (Jn 18:11).  Angels were there to celebrate and proclaim His birth, but He has them sit on the bench during the time when you would think they would be needed most.  The coming event of the cross would cause everyone to approach in silent wonder, both then and for all eternity - "Jesus of Nazareth, The King of the Jews" (Jn 19:19-22).  It appears that this is what the angels were praising God for during the birth of Jesus (Luke 2:13-14).  Seems odd to have any King of a people, let alone the King of Kings nailed to a cross with that kind of sign over His head.  The wisdom and humility of God are magnified!  "It is finished!" (Jn 19:30), and something new is happening!  The way John Piper said it, "The wisdom of God made a way for the love of God to overcome the wrath of God, by the grace of God, without compromising the justice of God." (Desiring God) 

If Jesus had the right to execute judgment and rule (more so than anyone else), yet passed on it in order to endure God's wrath, how should this affect me?  I can think of a number of answers from the bible and experience, yet nothing will happen unless I become more humble before God.  As John the Baptist put it, "He must become greater; I must become less." (Jn 3:30)  I heard a sermon last year leading up to the new year that emphasized giving thanks as a key to remaining humble.  I believe this from practice, and want to remain increasingly aware of God's work around me so I can celebrate it and thank Him for it so that I remain in a posture of humility and reverence.

It's easy to get caught up in the blessings God gives us and miss the character of the Giver behind the gifts.  I am deeply thankful for my wife and children, but even more thankful and humbled to see how God is shaping me through these relationships.

I am eager to get out there and 'get to work' so to speak.  I want to use the knowledge, skill, and experience God has blessed me with to share the good news of the gospel wherever God would lead us.  Yet I am surrendered and humble - knowing that what is most important is that I follow Him and trust that He will determine the rest.

This past semester was both fun and a great success! One of my friends from class and I got to do pretty much a complete overhaul on this Continental IO-470 engine.  This involved taking it all apart, cleaning and inspecting everything, measuring clearances between all the parts, doing some repairs, and then putting it all back together again (the way we found it).  

We also got to do pretty much the same thing to this old Lycoming T53-L1A turbine engine (used in old Huey helicopters).  We spent the whole semester exploring every system related to both reciprocating and turbine engines... it was awesome!

Another exciting achievement of Erin's this summer was becoming an IBCLC (International Board Certified Lactation Consultant).  She loves working with new mom's and babies with breastfeeding, and thought it would be a great skill-set to have for ministry opportunities down the road.  I truly don't know how she was able to do it given our lack of free time for studying, but she did great!
 

We are down to one more semester left of A&P school now, and we are both looking forward to it! Erin has started her bible school training online, and is plugging away with it little by little.  We are planning on working through the summer and doing our interview with Mission Aviation Fellowship in October this coming year.  We are excited as we approach that date, yet we are increasingly aware of God's current activity around us and are trying to keep a good balance of anticipation and faith in the here and now.  We are deeply thankful for your prayer and support as we continue following the road toward the field.  May God bless you and your families this year! Happy New Year!

What a Summer!

This summer literally flew by!  Working as a maintenance intern with the Fargo Jet Center proved to be an amazing experience for me.  I gained some confidence working on a wide variety of aircraft and learned a lot from some experienced mechanics and inspectors.  I was even invited to come help out during school breaks and next summer if the opportunity arises.  I think what I enjoyed most about it was the close proximity to Erin's family in Fargo.  I spent most of the summer riding my bike to work and seeing everyone during lunch breaks and in the evenings.  It's kind of nice to get paid to have fun all day!

We were blessed with a lot of quality time together as a family despite the busy schedules and never-ending activity.  Sammy discovered an intense passion for the riding lawn mower (which he calls a tractor).  We went camping out in Cohasset, MN at a big family reunion, and Sammy got to ride a real tractor on the family farm.

Shortly after shooting this picture, Sammy went from just saying "tractor" to "tractor-ride".  I think the boy likes tractors!

When I say that we were at the family farm (really more like a big airstrip with houses and forest all around it), I mean they even have a street named after them there! We had an awesome time connecting with family and playing on the farm.  We hope to get back to visit real soon.


Because it was so close to where I did my internship all summer, we spent a lot of time down in Fargo with what we lovingly called our commune... 3 families, 3 toddlers, 2 dogs, and lots of great memories!  We got to spend some time together out back with the annual bonfire.  Elsie and Sammy are wearing fire helmets that they got from visiting the Mentor volunteer fire dept. near Maple lake, MN.



We even got new members in the commune during the middle of June when my folks made a surprise visit out to see us and the kids (they stayed in a hotel...don't know why)!  Elsie and Sammy had no idea they were coming, so it made for a fun surprise.  Grandma Lynn and Papa Paul made clues for them to follow at the hotel, and they had to find the room and knock on it for their big surprise... and boy were they!  It was a lot of fun being able to spend some quality time with all the family each day, and share sort of a day-in-the-life of summer time at the commune.  We played at parks, went to museums, got yummy treats, toured the hanger, played at the lake, and much more.

My Dad isn't smiling because he is sad that he could not sit on the elephant.  He really had a great time at the park!

My folks never had the opportunity to come and play at Maple lake, MN during the summer.  It brought back a lot of memories my Mom had growing up on the east coast near Thousand Islands.  We miss my parents and family a lot after moving out here, and it was an awesome surprise for them to visit and share some great memories together with us.



Later in the summer, I had the opportunity to do some flying with the commune!  After getting current again in the airplane, I was able to take shuttle flights for tours over Fargo with the commune.  I also got to fly Erin's Grandpa over Devil's Lake in central North Dakota (big lake).  The airplane they have available happens to be equipped with a glass cockpit (Garmin G1000)!  This is a pretty fancy instrument package that is beginning to replace more and more of the older round-dial instruments.  MAF uses them in the Kodiak.


This was Sammy's first time in a small airplane.  I taught him how to check his six, and get behind the controls.  I even had a little ramp crew that untied the plane (I think they were excited to go fly!).  It felt soooooo good to get up in the air again!  It was a great night to fly, and a great way to end a "work" day.

 One of the more recent adventures we got to go on together was a trip to the corn field.  Because it was a friend of the family, we got to get first dibs on however much corn we wanted before they harvested it.  We picked about 12 bags of a dozen ears of corn each!  That is a lot of free corn, and a huge blessing!  The kids had a ton of fun, and we all get to enjoy the good farm food for months to come.

As the sun sets on our adventurous summer, we are looking forward to the coming year.  It's exciting to think that a year from now, we will be done with the technical training aspect of our journey, and on to where God is leading us.  The truth is that all of this is part of the journey that God has us on, and we will never stop learning!  We are learning to keep our vision fixed on the long-term calling God has placed in our hearts while keeping our eyes open to what He is doing here and now.



Looking ahead, this is going to be a busy school year for both of us. While I am dissecting and re-assembling engines, Erin is beginning to dive deeper in the Word with an online Bible curriculum. We have been majorly blessed since we set out on this road, and we are very thankful for your prayers and thoughts.

From our family to yours, may God bless you abundantly in Christ!

One year complete/One year to go

It has been an awesome semester, an awesome year at school, and an awesome year for our family!
This semester was very hands-on, with a lot of work bending metal and making cool projects (see pictures below), taking apart struts and other hydraulic components, rigging flight controls, and treating corrosion.

The highlight has to be the very end, when Erin and the kids came to see the airplanes and hang out with me for the afternoon after finals were over.  Elsie just had to see the 'band-aid' I put on the airplane (left and below).  We hopped into several airplanes and let her and Sammy pretend to fly.  Elsie was scared when we sat in the newest addition to the school's fleet: the former Detroit Piston's (basketball team) DC-9.  She felt like she was so high up while sitting up in the flight deck.  So what does she do next?... She points to the older DC-9 in our hanger and wants to look at the tail section, which is up three flights of scaffolding with little to no guarded rails on the sides!  Apparently, this is not scary, but sitting cozy in the flight deck on cushy seats and tons of buttons is just too much.

After finals were completely done, we took the kids to a water park in town and had a blast!  The internship with the Fargo Jet Center begins on Monday, May 20th.  It looks like it will be a very hands-on internship as well.  We are so blessed by all the open doors we see God unfolding before us.  Thank you for praying for us and thinking about our family as we continue pursuing the call God has placed on our hearts!  We are looking forward to a fun summer close to family, and hope you will all be able to enjoy quality time with your friends and family.

 Elsie beginning to get scared...

 Elsie running out the back of the plane...

Elsie climbed next to the top of this scaffolding (with me guiding her.  No big deal apparently.



















In just one year, we hope to be showing up in Idaho for our big interview with Mission Aviation Fellowship! We are excited to arrive at that point, but we are also enjoying where God has us here and now.

Bless you all in Christ!

Here are some more pictures of some the fun projects in sheet metal...

 This is a curved piece with three different bended supports attached (the outer two are common rivets and the center are countersunk or flush)

 This is called a pulley bracket, and it is an actual part from a Boeing 727.  This combines pretty much everything we learned in the class, and was a lot of fun to make!

This was just an extra fun project that I worked on outside of class.  It's a spark plug holder, which will come in handy down the road when working on engines.

Maintenance Internship!!!

                                             

God has blessed us and answered prayer for a tremendous opportunity as a maintenance intern with the Fargo Jet Center!  During the internship, I will work alongside other professional mechanics on a wide variety of aircraft and be able to apply the education from this last year into a real-world setting.  Fargo Jet Center has an outstanding reputation in the region, and even the world, for high quality maintenance.  They work with everything from corporate jets, to local commercial operators, to aircraft in their flight school, and several private owners of small aircraft.  This is really a huge honor!

Did I mention that we know some people (Erin's folks) who live right across the street too!  God is so good!  We want to thank everyone who continues to pray for us as we follow the path laid before us.  We hope you are all enjoying a warm spring (warm... as in NOT 35 degrees like us)!

Busy, Busy, Busy!

 Elsie runs to the door to greet me after getting done with school for the day!  As I run to meet her from the other side of the door, I can hardly wait.  She struggles to open our front door, (which sticks due to a tight fit), and after a little help, the door opens and I see what I have been waiting for since I started the day 12 hours and 15 minutes before.  Elsie is smiling and laughing, with stories flying out of her about nearly everything that happened during the day, questions about my day, questions about whether I want to play with her... I stop to make sure she is still stopping to take a breath every now and then.  Then I look at Sammy, who is also smiling big and making his best efforts to say "da-da-da-da" and crawling like a race car in my direction.  I give each of them a warm embrace and spend quality time catching up with all that I missed, then it's time to share a meal at supper together.  This is what life is all about folks!  When I was flying with the airlines, I would only get this kind of greeting once a week.  I was missing out!

Our average day is like most in this phase of life: busy!  I was challenged in a recent sermon to evaluate my love for God and others.  I realized that the lens I look through on most days is more of a task-completion lens... what needs to be done, what do I need to prepare for next, what can I do to get ahead and stay on top of things... wrong lens.  While all of that is important, and still needs to be addressed in every day life, it falls short of truly living.   This mindset is an easy trap to fall into. It leads to more doing and planning, more stress and worry - while producing less reliance on God, less rest, less peace, and less joy.  As Paul so eloquently described, "And I will show you a still more excellent way. If I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but do not have love, I have become a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.  If I have the gift of prophecy, and know all mysteries and all knowledge; and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. And if I give all my possessions to feed the poor, and if I surrender my body to be burned, but do not have love, it profits me nothing. (I Corinthians 12: 30- 13:1-3)  In this letter to the Corinthian church, on the subject of worship, love is Paul's answer to our greatest means of genuine worship.  If the church gets that right, it will be on the right track.  Focusing on other goals or programs while failing to genuinely love means failure no matter how great the appearances seem from the surface.  You have to really be intentional about putting on that lens and living through it day after day.  This message has been stirring within me for the past week as I have considered how I am doing with loving God and others.  Is this my focus?  Would others close to me say of me that I am loving them in such a way that they know the love of God?  I am praying for a deepening capacity to love, and I am seeking a greater capacity to see the world around me through the lens that the Father sees.

"Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.  No one has seen God at any time; if we love one another, God abides in us, and His love is perfected in us." (I John 4:11-12)

"This is My commandment, that you love one another, just as I have loved you." (John 15:12)

School is going awesome!  I was absolutely stunned to learn about a scholarship opportunity on a recent Friday afternoon, as the school receptionist was walking through the lunch area asking random students who were residents of North Dakota.  I picked one up, filled out a short essay over the weekend, turned in a couple teacher recommendations, and submitted in on Monday.  On Wednesday, I was notified I had received the $1000 scholarship!!!  God is so good!  This is another demonstration, on top of several others in recent weeks, where God has abundantly supplied our needs as we have trusted Him and waited for Him to act.  Here are some recent projects at school, where good times are being had by all!

 This is a Piper Aztec twin engine aircraft with no rudder... yet.

 This is the rudder being put back on with a lot of help and coordination.  We had taken it off to do a control surface balance, which is important to prevent flutter (vibration during flight).

 I'm pretty sure that these pieces of metal will not come apart!  In sheet metal, we have done a lot of riveting, drilling, re-drilling, rivet-removal, and re-installation of more rivets.  There are thousands of these on most aircraft... and they hold everything together.

 This is actually two channels of sheet metal that were carefully calculated to fit into each other at specific dimensions (the next picture shows them side by side, in this one they are together).  Bending is a lot of fun!

 Before you can produce the finished bend with the correct dimensions, you do a lot of simple math and lay everything out so you can apply the math to the tool that makes the bend.

 These are copper tools that we hand made with a hammer and welding torch.  They are used in hydraulic systems to install and remove O-Rings.

Below is an I-beam made from four separate flanges and another middle piece.  The big whole is called a lightening whole which has nothing to do with lightning.  It reduces weight.

                                                                   

                           

 This is a spoiler actuator from our DC-9, taken off and disassembled.  It was fun and a bit of a challenge getting this off the plane correctly.

 This is called a spool valve, and it converts mechanical motion from a cable and linkage shown on the left side of the valve, to hydraulic actuation to drive the spoilers during flight.  This valve specifically ensures that as that mechanical motion translates into hydraulic power, it happens proportionally versus all at once.

 This is what it looks like all together re-installed, tucked in safe and sound.

 More on the way!  This semester is flying by pretty fast!